Icomos híradó különszám (A 37. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 2007 Eger, 2007)

Ingva! Maxwell It's Time to Change: an Integrated Approach to the Needs of Repair and Maintenance in the Built Heritage is Long Overdue Abstract There are many challenges currently facing the construction industry. With a habitual emphasis of education and training on newbuild activities a legitimate criticism can be levied that the industry has repeatedly ignored the repair and maintenance sector. Evidence is emerging that this type of work can amount to half the total industry expenditure in any one year, and there is an increasingly recognised need to rebalance the situation to ensure that the industry is fully prepared for the work it actually does. Currently, it could be argued that due to a lack of knowledge, skills and materials, much compromise is being reached in trying to undertake appropriate remedial work. Quite simply, that knowledge, degree of required skills, and access to an appropriate range of traditional building materials is missing. Much needs to be done to achieve that balance and this requires involvement from all sectors of the industry, and the building material suppliers. Context The integration of knowledge, skills and materials is essential to ensure the right conditions to undertake effective conservation work. In many countries, the collective body that constitutes the construction industry has generally forgotten that the use of local materials helps to identify the indigenous character and variations which can be found in traditionally constructed buildings. This diversity, quality and appearance is the direct result of a symbiotic relationship between the local environment, its geology and the emerging architecture. Regrettably, this previously intuitive link has been broken for much of the last century, and an awareness of the related needs generally lost. As a result, the quality of our native architecture is being steadily negated by the lack of knowledge, a limited availability of traditional craft skills and, perhaps more significantly, a lack of access to the range of original building materials which created the quality of the architecture in the first place. Ambivalence currently exists in dealing with the existing traditionally constructed building stock. This is occurring at all levels of the construction industry with designers being uncertain of traditional technologies and how they perform; engineers unable to accurately calculate the performance of standing masonry structures; contractors looking for the cheapest options; craftsmen working with, and applying, the wrong materials; trainers lacking the training; educators lacking the education; and building owners persistently taking a short-term view in decision making through lack of awareness. Frequently, many practical decisions taken in the supposed well-being of the buildings have been shown to be falsely informed, resulting in added difficulties having to be faced up to in the future. Meantime, Mother Nature has persistently exploited the weaknesses in the decision-making chain and, through the simple expediency of water penetration, has greatly added to the dilemmas now having to be faced. Maintenance is critical to the well-being of property (Photo: Ingval Maxwell) Through the increasing and persistent use of synthetic, alien and variable materials, along with inappropriate replacement elements such as windows and rainwater-good, the process of negation in the quality of the traditionally constructed building stock is relentless. There are many factors that contribute to this overall negative impact. In the past, pre masstransport era, traditional buildings were generally created from materials obtained from the immediate locality. This fashioned