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Understanding Historic Building Materials for Conservation

12.04.2017

Faculty of Architecture

Scientific understanding of historic building materials and techniques is a prerequisite for successful and sympathetic interventions on built heritage. Since January 2017, CEPT Laboratory and Conservation area at Faculty of Architecture have been working in collaboration with Faculty of Technology towards expanding the laboratory’s capacity for study and testing of historic building materials.

A variety of specialist equipment and materials have been acquired over the past semester for the purpose. The lab currently supports the course titled ‘Understanding Historic Building Materials for Conservation’ with a focus on understanding the physical and chemical properties of historic building materials in the context of built heritage conservation. Relevant tests on important historic building materials - bricks, stone and lime mortars have been conducted by the course faculty and students as part of the course. Further efforts are underway to augment the lab’s capacity to handle other historic building materials like wood, metal, ceramics etc.

As part of the course, a workshop on testing and analysis of lime mortars and renders was organized under the guidance of Dr. Neeta Das, founder of Lime Center, Kolkata in March 2017. The course has also benefited from special lectures by experienced researchers and professionals. Dr. Benny Kuriakose, Conservation Architect shared his extensive knowledge of wood and conservation processes with the students while Dr. Heman Majethiya, Geologist shared his understanding of building stones.

The course is being conducted under the guidance of Khushi Shah, Conservation Architect and visiting faculty and Bikramjit Chakraborty, Conservation Architect and Doctoral Candidate at CEPT University.

Understanding Historic Building Materials for Conservation