POST-CONSERVATION EVALUATION (PCE) ON HISTORIC BUILDINGS: AUTHENTICITY OF ADAPTIVE REUSE MUSEUMS IN GEORGE TOWN, UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE

Adaptive reuse has apparently become a favourable means of built heritage conservation in the UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) of Melaka and George Town. In most cases, adaptive reuse implementations inflict conflicting demands to historic buildings in terms of meeting new functional needs and retaining physical authenticity. Inappropriate implementation of adaptive reuse for historic buildings within WHS may result in the violation of Outstanding Universal Values (OUVs). The purpose of this study is to determine the authenticity condition of historic buildings on their post-conservation phase, after adaptive reuse implementation. Five historic buildings namely the Penang State Museum (PSM), Made in Penang Interactive Museum (MIPIM), Sun Yat Sen Museum (SYSM), Batik Painting Museum (BPM) and Dark Mansion-3D Glow in the Dark Museum (DM) were evaluated through field observation. In accommodating the museum function, three elements were found to be intervened inappropriately at these buildings namely the internal wall, windows, and building services. The findings of this evaluative study can be useful to technical review panels appointed by heritage authorities, in scrutinising heritage impact assessment (HIA) reports and evaluating future proposals concerning adaptive reuse projects of historic buildings within WHS.

Beyond Good Intentions: The Role of the Building Passport for the Sustainable Conservation of Built Heritage to Behavioural Change

Despite the recognised importance of built heritage for sustainable development, and the multiple tools, recommendations, guidelines, and policies developed in recent years to support decision-making, good sustainable conservation practices often fail to be implemented. Challenges faced by practitioners often relate to external factors, and there is a gap in the understanding of the role of the nature of the designer and the behavioural dimension of the challenges in implementation. This research applies the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to verify how a building passport for sustainable conservation (BPSC) impacts design students’ intentions and actual design decisions towards built heritage conservation. This research aims to ascertain the role of the BPSC to affect attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions and ultimately change conservation behaviours. The results show that this tool has a positive contribution to reinforce existing attitudinal beliefs. Still, no significant changes were found in the overall conservation behaviours, suggesting that beliefs hindering implementation may more often be related to aesthetic reasons, creativity and innovation, and program requirements, than with beliefs regarding the sustainable performance of the building. This study demonstrates that using the TPB to analyse design processes in the context of built heritage is an innovative methodological approach that contributes to a deeper understanding of the psychological factors affecting sustainability and built heritage conservation decisions.

Challenges, opportunities and prospects for linking green infrastructure and the conservation of urban built heritage

<p>Green infrastructure and other nature-based solutions (NbS) offer opportunities to incorporate green elements into cultural heritage conservation and management practice in cities and unlock their associated co-benefits. There are concerns, however, about the potential negative impacts of nature on built heritage including biodeterioration, the loss of heritage values, and practical challenges for heritage conservation and management. These issues can act as barriers to the wider uptake of GI, especially in historic cities. Here, we illustrate how built heritage can benefit from GI interventions by reducing or mitigating the deterioration of heritage materials, improving the visitor experience, enhancing values, and stimulating investment. At the same time, built heritage conservation can support the delivery, connectedness, and success of GI schemes by offering additional locations for implementation, providing inspiration for closer relationships between nature and society, and enriching the benefits of GI by adding a cultural element. Better integration of built heritage into the wider GI paradigm shows great promise for strengthening and broadening these linkages in cities.</p>

The Challenges of Social Engagement: Lessons from Conservation Practice

People are central to the idea of any intervention The unprotected urban heritage in Indian historic cities and towns is getting lost at a very fast pace. Heritage buildings have been abandoned, neglected, abused and left to decay. Innumerable risk factors, at the macro and the micro level of the historic urban settlements have been responsible for the decay of heritage buildings, posing a serious threat to the existence of the unprotected urban heritage. This article highlights the problems impacting urban heritage by investigating the built heritage in Bharatpur and Shekhawati regions of Rajasthan in India. The article draws attention towards lack of involvement of local communities in protecting the urban heritage. It discusses the role of local communities, especially owners and craftsmen, in conserving heritage buildings. Majority of the owners and occupants are not interested in conserving these structures nor do they have the necessary technical and financial means to do so. In this scenario, a participatory approach to conservation and management is the only means to conserve unprotected heritage buildings and structures. The article shares practical experiences and learnings from 21 years of practice in the field of built heritage conservation, highlighting the social aspects in the conservation of built heritage.

Going beyond Good Intentions for the Sustainable Conservation of Built Heritage: A Systematic Literature Review

This research addresses the performance gap between intentions towards a sustainable conservation of built heritage and its actual implementation. Socio-psychological models of human behaviour, such as the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), have been studying this dissonance between intention and behaviour, and allow to recognise latent critical factors. This paper provides a systematic literature review of research publications on the intersection of the topics of human behaviour, heritage, and sustainability. It aims to analyse how the TPB has been used in the field of sustainable conservation of built heritage. The studies are categorised according to the type of heritage, main actors targeted, aims, and methodology. A total of 140 publications were analysed. The results show a recent field of research. In the domain of built heritage conservation, behaviour is commonly addressed as a synonym of performance, targeting the building itself. Most publications relating socio-psychological constructs of behaviour and heritage sustainability can be found in the tourism and hospitality field, focusing on tourists’ and residents’ behaviours. The review shows that practitioners are still absent from the literature. However, research addressing other stakeholders shows that the theoretical framework can play an important role in the implementation of sustainable conservation practices in the built heritage.

KNOWLEDGE MODELING FOR HERITAGE CONSERVATION PROCESS: FROM SURVEY TO HBIM IMPLEMENTATION

This paper aims to develop a strategy for architectural knowledge modeling in order to actively support the built heritage conservation process by fostering collaboration among stakeholders and interoperability between datasets. The integration of two modeling systems, one ontology-based and one in BIM environment, seems to be the right way to meet this objective: the former is rather exhaustive to represent the semantic contents of conservation activities, especially non-geometrical data, the latter is absolutely suitable to represent the logic of the construction, above all geometrical-constructive aspects typical of any architectural organism. Thus, this study proposes a side-by-side approach to synchronize these different ways of representing reality by managing the complexity of cultural heritage on the one hand and of technology tools, such as information systems, on the other. The proposed methodology was tested on the city walls of San Ginesio (Macerata, Italy) and included different steps considering the in-use technologies (notably geomatics and information technologies) as key enablers to acquire, hierarchically order, model and enrich the knowledge of that heritage site. The result is a knowledge-led strategy moving from survey to HBIM implementation, as a way to enhance representation and management in architectural heritage processes.

An IoT Smart Infrastructure for S. Domenico Church in Matera’s “Sassi’’: A Multiscale Perspective to Built Heritage Conservation

Architectural heritage is perhaps the most important marker of the Italian and European landscapes. Over the last decades, its strategic relevance for local economic development has led to prioritize tourism-oriented promotion objectives. Therefore, new light has been thrown on once unknown resources that have thus received the attention of tourists interested in new visit experiences. To this end, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have delivered a crucial support mainly in terms of public attraction and creation of new cultural offers. However, new urgent challenges now face tangible heritage, whose physical existence is jeopardized through extreme events and poor maintenance. Unexpected intense visit flows represent in themselves a further threat for sensitive heritages. ICTs have then to cope with more complex conservation tasks and the Internet of Things (IoT) can facilitate appropriate solutions. The paper presents a smart sensor-based infrastructure for the structural monitoring of S. Domenico Church in Matera, an emblematic city for the concerns described, which also highlighted the need for a wider conservation concept also embracing context and fruition issues. The article introduces the case study and its delicate environment, and the technological background of heritage monitoring solutions; the proposed IoT infrastructure is then described, discussing its potentialities and IoT contribution to creating more holistic and multiscale perspectives to heritage conservation.