Institutional drivers of repair and replacement in traditional timber building renewal: implications for long-term carbon performance

The choice between repairing and replacing traditional timber buildings is often treated as a technical question of what can be repaired. This study argues that it is instead institutionally conditioned: whether repair remains a viable building renewal pathway depends on structural, material, and institutional conditions, not on technical feasibility alone. Through a structured qualitative synthesis of architectural, environmental, and institutional literature, this study develops a three-dimensional conceptual framework – structural repairability, material maintainability, and institutional continuity – and illustrates its explanatory value through the case of Japanese miyadaiku carpentry, where repair-oriented renewal coexists with a replacement-oriented default in general construction. The findings show that institutional continuity, sustained through craft knowledge transmission, practitioner networks, and organizational support, determines whether repair remains institutionally available even where buildings remain technically repairable; where this continuity weakens, renewal defaults toward replacement even where technical repair remains feasible. By reframing repairability as a property of building renewal pathways rather than of buildings themselves, this study extends existing repairability research and clarifies why repair-oriented and replacement-oriented pathways generate divergent long-term embodied carbon trajectories. These findings suggest that decarbonization policy should support not only technical innovation but also the institutional conditions that sustain repair as a viable renewal pathway.