Managing the conservation of 20th century cultural heritage

Abstract

Natural deterioration caused by the ageing of the materials and their exposure tosevere environmental conditions leads to a significant increase of the vulnerability ofconstructions. When facing the need to make conservation interventions to preserve or restoredegraded cultural heritage elements, there are a number of restrictions that must be dealt with.Such restrictions are related to the safeguarding of the heritages cultural value and significancethat has to be weighed against safety and durability requirements, as well as against durationand budget constraints of the intervention. To assist in this decision-making process, amethodology is proposed which consists of an intervention index that gauges the criteriainfluencing the type of intervention. The development of this index is presented for the decisionmakingprocess related to the conservation intervention scheduled for the reinforced concretedecorative elements of the 20th century Teatro Nacional de São João (São João NationalTheatre), in Porto, Portugal. The selected criteria are presented and the advantages of theproposed procedure for the development of a sustainable conservation plan are addressed.