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Report - GMPV10 Challenges to historical materials in urban/anthropic environment
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This was the first year to organise this session on "Challenges to historical materials in urban/anthropic environment". Motivation was that materials and technology constitute the physical basis of preservation issues. Regardless if common or heritage protected buildings, mineral materials play a role in urban sustainability. This session investigated the challenges related to historical materials in conservation projects in urban environment.
The call for contributions for the session was related, but not only, to:
- construction materials, properties, craftmanship, labor, know-how;
- changes in the use of materials induced by technological and industrial development;
- weathering;
- improvement possibilities;
- historic mortars;
- sustainability of street facades;
- preservation issues;
- investigation methods with minimum intervention;
- effects and incompatibilities on the existing materials of interventions made with new materials
had been issued.
The oral presentations were sheduled to take place on Monday, the 3rd of April, 10:30-12:00, while the posters were sheduled for the evening of the same day, 17:30-19:00.
The oral session was chaired by Luis M. Suárez del Río. Three oral presentations have been held, which gave plenty of time for discussion, time which was used this way in a very constructive atmosphere.
The first talk, solicited to be presented by Margarida Taborda Duarte was on "Estimation of deterioration induced in hypogean monuments by anthropic influence" (authors: Sánchez-Moral, S.; Taborda Duarte, M.; Cuezva, S.; Lario, J.), a topic from the European Marie Curie Network "Advanced Research Training on the Conservation of Cultural Heritage" (see http://mc-opportunities.cordis.lu/show-PRJ.cfm?obj_id=7576). Caves are hypogean monument that due to the existence of peculiar minerals and
speleothems, paintings or engravings, are made open to public and are therefore called monuments. In turn, the anthropic influence causes significant changes in the cave atmosphere affecting air temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration. In this paper we purpose a chemical –kinetic model for quantitative estimation of the deterioration of the walls and ceilings induced by the visitors. The evaluation of the amount of dissolved rock is performed for Castańar de Ibor cave (Cáceres, Spain) with the goal of preservation of the hypogean monument from the anthropic influence.
The second talk was given by Dolores Pereira on "Use and misuse of serpentinites as dimension stone" (authors: Pereira, D.; Yenes, M. ; Nespereira, J. ; Blanco, J.A.; Peinado, M.). Serpentinite is a very attractive rock, very commonly used as dimension stone, for example in the facades in Florence green serpentinite was employed. However, not all serpentinites can be used in this way. Taking into account their composition and textures, different rocks will evolve in different ways in a weathering environment. In replacing damaged serpentinite from a building, it is important that the new piece have the same characteristics, otherwise the replaced tiles will not look appropriate in aesthetic terms. This is particularly important in restoring monuments.
Torres-Vera, who submitted a contribution on "Correlation of structural patterns and hydrothermal alteration areas in mineralization zones in San Luis Potosí, México, using GIS and remote sensing techniques" was not attending.
Finally, the last talk was given by the convener of the session on "Historical structure materials in earthquakes". Most often, historically relevant buildings are touched by the wearing of their construction materials. Different from this, natural disasters like those caused by earthquakes have a non-uniform impact on urban areas as well as on individual buildings. In both cases the collapse mechanisms for buildings with structural elements out of certain construction materials are determinant for where is the historical building fabric the most vulnerable. Historical building materials are not only endangered by the damages induced by the natural catastrophy by itself, but also through the construction measures, which serve either the reparation of these damages or also the preventive retrofit, through the replacement of historical construction materials with contemporary ones, deemed as more performant.
The subsequent discussion focused on potential publications for the session. First a tentative proposal for special issue in a journal has been discussed, and concluded to entitle this, coherently with the types of contribution to the session, "Multidisciplinary approaches to [topic of the session]" and base the selection and the call for completing papers on that. The days which followed leaded, in a series of social events, to the birth of another publication project, together with Richard Prikryl and Ákos Török, the organisers of the session ERE10 "Natural stone resources for historical monuments" in the EGU section Energy, Ressources and the Environment.
The poster session was very successful. It was chaired by Lola Pereira. Richard Prikryl presented in a poster "Limestone resources for hydraulic lime production in medieval Bohemia (Czech Republic)". Another poster dealt with historic mortars, namely "Historic mortars and plasters as a tool for age determination" (author Michalska Nawrocka). Mariola Marszalek contributed a poster on "Application of Scanning Electron Microscopy and Optical Microscopy to the study of stone weathering", focusing on the problematic in Poland.
A very interesting contribution was that by Molnár, Komoróczi and Székely, entitled "Reconstructing Roman road network in Pannonia using anaglyph technology of rectified archive aerial photographs". The presentation was sustained by hands-on material on stereo views of the road, on different scales, also on the accompanying laptop.
Luis Suárez del Río contributed a poster on "Acoustic emission monitoring of the Cathedral of Palma de Mallorca (Spain)" (authors: Suarez del Rio, L.M.; Ruiz de Argandońa, V.G.; Calleja, L.; Rodriguez-Rey, A.; Grossi, C.M.; Montoto, M.). The motivation for the work is an investigation of current vulnerability, in absence of an earthquake, of the cathedral following earthquake pre-damage. From the same group from the University of Oviedo, Spain (authors: Rodríguez-Rey, A.; Suárez del Río, L.M.; Sánchez Delgado, N.; Ruiz de Argandońa, V.G.; Calleja, L.) originated a contribution entitled "Does the microfractography of the intact rock influence the sawability of granitic building stones?", the results of which have already been published in an international journal. A contribution has been transfered from another session, namely Kim et al "Geotectonic environments and its related copper Mineralization of Mongolia". Some further posters were cancelled.
The objective of the journal special issue based on the session is to put together critical investigations of the relationship between the formal discourse of the employment of materials in European heritage spaces and the technological developments that (trans)formed it.
A topic like that of this session is rather rare, as most frequently mineralogical approaches to the human built or modelled environment are approaching archaeological research. Nevertheless, a similar session was held in frame of the Annual Meeting of the German Mineralogical Society in 2004 in Karlsruhe, Germany, building on the research tradition of the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 315 "Preservation of Constructions of Historic Importance". The work of the SFB spanned 1985-1999 and featured the contribution from the Universität Karlsruhe (TH) of the Institutes for History of Architecture, the Institute for Structures, the Institute for Reinforced Concrete and Masonry Constructions and Construction Materials Technology, the Institute for Ground and Rock Mechanics, The Institute for Mineralogy, the Experimental Facility for Steel, Timber and Stone and the Monument Protection Office of the Land of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. No publication of full papers followed that special session. The experience gained within the SFB 315 built an important contribution when setting up the post-graduate programme "Maintenance of Existing Buildings" at the Faculty of Architecture of the Universität Karlsruhe (TH), with alumni since 1997, now issuing masters degrees. A call for this special issue has been sent to the teaching body of this Masters programme and several contributions received. In the research programme in Karlsruhe, the focus lays on the deterioration of the architectural heritage due to mainly aging, and still earthquakes are the most destructive action. Consistently with the approach followed, an invitation has been issued to experts in the field of earthquake engineering who were involved in both practical and research activities concerning historic built spaces in the long-term and short-term earthquake protection. Finally, to round up, a paper on research done towards the anthropic perception of heritage spaces is envisaged to be written by the editor of the special issue.
The studies to be included focus on the histories of building industry, materials, know-how, labor and craftsmanship as these have (trans)formed the theory, practice and conservation of architectures both over time and across different geographical contexts. In terms of preservation, issues related to technology, practice and materials continue to form the basis of the problem physically in conservation projects. As historical buildings often stay in close context with gardens – in some cases small architectures are to be seen as staffage of the garden or the garden as pure ornament around the building – without the understanding to the park concept the importance of the whole work of art cannot be understand totally. In order to give a view on this aspect, a contribution conceptualises Modernism broadly as an architectural/technological/industrial conquest of nature dealing with the topic of landscape: nature versus artefact. All contributions will present and discuss the technological challenges and their solutions in related case studies from the European continent.
For the next year it is proposed to organise the session again, however, in the "Energy, Ressources and the Environment" section, which was deemed to be more suitable for the subject. The motivation for the call originates from the XXIrd World Congress of Architecture, UIA Berlin 2002, the main theme of which was "Resource Architecture". The topic was in concordance with the growing importance of 'sustainable development', a lasting priority topic in the Framework Programmes of the European Union. One aspect of 'sustainable development' concerns the environment. Sometimes this has a focus on protection of the environment, for example from aging or disasters, other times it is explicitely oriented towards the cultural heritage, as it was in FP5 ("The City of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage").
The built environment stays at this junction between 'architecture' and 'urban planning', between the single building and the city.
The "ressource architecture" stays even more, at the junction between the natural and the build environment. The building process has uses the natural environment as a ressouce, while the built object is a ressouce in itself. The "ressource architecture" shapes and is shaped by the ecologic, social and cultural side of our lives.
Which is the role of geosciences in this process? Architecture takes place in a context, in a dialogue civilisations and cultures, but also of disciplines, as debated at the congress.
A dialogue of civilisations concerns the techniques, one of cultures of traditions, but the materials used in the process of buildings concern how innovations can build on traditions.
But the most important question to be addressed in this session remains the role of other disciplines towards the ressource architecture. Contributions to this session will address answers to this question, along but not only, the following lines:
- environmental impact, the ecological print of the elements of the build environment;
- role of construction and building materials in times of globalisation;
- local materials (material resource) and regional identity (spiritual resource);
- genius loci: how to build in context respecting the heritage in techniques and concepts of beauty formed over history and tradition;
- planing and building to protect the material resources and to increase spiritual resources (question of the UIA2002).
Many thanks for all presenters and for the audience for contributing to the success of this session, without the participation of which all those reported wouldn't have been possible.
Looking forward to welcome your contribution next year,
Maria Bostenaruy
Pavia, in June 2006.
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