Added value by benchmarking: Comparing existing buildings to demonstrate their potential

The urge to subdue the surrounding environment to the needs and expectations of the contemporary times is a recurrent phenomenon in the relation between humans and their inhabited space. The intervention on existing/ vernacular buildings is an opportunity to reorganize their consolidated energy and matter (Fernandez-Galiano 1998) and, as such, to recognize the validity, context and relations that resulted from successive layers of innovation. Assuming that we can only update what we "have and know" towards what we "want and expect", a compromise between "in situ" performance evaluations and "energy service" strategies is proposed to center buildings on users. Knowing that "history is, to a limited extent, a ready-made and naturally evolving clinical database" (Bachman 2009), the authors conclude that the perception of invisible parameters and thresholds through augmented reality can reinstate measurable enhancements, real savings and adaptive solutions while guaranteeing a good Indoor Environmental Quality in existing buildings.