Bath Stone, one of England’s famous limestones, and marble from Makrana in Rajasthan used to build the Taj Mahal are among the latest seven stones to be designated as Global Heritage Stone Resources (GHSRs) by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). Read more here.
Ireland classifies its dry stone buildings as Intangible Cultural Heritage
The Dry Stone Wall Association of Ireland has received news from the Department of Culture, Heritage & the Gaeltacht that an application it made to have dry stone walling recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ireland has been approved by the Minister. Read more here.
AABC Annual Conference 2019 – Twentieth Century Materials and Twenty First Century Techniques
Date: Thursday 17 October 2019
Venue: Coventry Cathedral, Priory St, Coventry, CV1 5FB
Time: 10am
Fee: £20
In 2019, the twentieth Anniversary of the AABC, our annual conference will be held in Coventry. As well as a day of interesting lectures and tours, the day will be a celebration of the AABC, the individuals on the register and all they have contributed to the protection of the historic built environment.
Whilst our ambition to protect the historic built environment endures, the methods by which we work and the technical aids available to us has, in many ways, dramatically changed in the relatively short period the AABC has been operating. In addition to this the buildings we choose to conserve and the materials we are commonly encountering is a constantly moving feat.
Our venue for the day will be Coventry Cathedral. The Cathedral sits alongside the Parish Church Cathedral of St Michael which was devastated by bombing in 1940. The old Cathedral was left as a ruin following the bombing to a be a lasting reminder of the devastation of war. With this decision a new Cathedral was needed and was designed by Sir Basil Spence and completed in 1962 following a six-year build. What resulted was one of the most iconic twentieth century ecclesiastical buildings.
The 2019 conference will focus on post war architecture and current conservation techniques. During the morning a series of lectures will be delivered in the nave of the Cathedral. The afternoon will be spent on professional led tours. We will also be incorporating demonstrations of conservation techniques and ways of working / documenting information. A final list of speakers and tour leaders will be announced shortly.
A celebratory glass of fizz and 20th anniversary cake will mark the end of the conference.
As it is our twentieth year we are offering a reduced fee of £20 to all attendees – do book early to avoid disappointment and we look forward to seeing you all in October.
Tickets can be purchased via Eventbrite by clicking HERE.
The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain – Coventry and Warwickshire Study Tour
Thursday 29 August – Sunday 1 September
Places are still available for our Annual Study Tour in Coventry and Warwickshire. These in-depth, expert-led tours provide delegates with rich opportunities to explore the region’s historic built environment, often providing privileged access to sites and monuments across the county and of all periods. The Annual Study Tour also provides fantastic networking opportunities, bringing together a broad range of expertise from students to established academics and heritage professionals.
Registration includes:
- All site admissions;
- Printed tour notes and talks from leading academics and heritage professionals;
- Return transport from University of Warwick to all locations;
- Three nights’ bed & breakfast accommodation at the University of Warwick;
- Supper on Thursday evening, dinner on Friday evening and lunch on Sunday
Our Study Tour is inclusive and open to all. It provides a particularly useful context for young professionals to get to know the Society’s work and make new contacts and connections. We are delighted to offer a limited number of bursaries covering the cost of registration for PhD students and early career professionals. Please apply using the online booking form by 15 July.
The full itinerary and programme is available on our website. Below is a sketch with particular highlights to whet your appetite. We hope you can join us in August.
***Please note that Tour B is now sold out, but there are places remaining on other tours, including Alistair Fair’s tour of Twentieth Century Theatre Architecture and Chris Pickford’s tour of Nineteenth Century Church Architecture***
***Successful bookings will receive a confirmatory email. Please email ast19@sahgb.org.uk if you have booked but not received an email***
Stone 2020 Announces Extension for Papers for the 14th International Congress on the Deterioration and Conservation of Stone
The deadline of the submission of abstract to STONE 2020 has been extended to August 5. For more information, see the website.
The University of Göttingen and the University of Kassel are delighted to be hosting the 14th International Congress on the Deterioration and Conservation of Stone (STONE 2020). The STONE 2020 is entitled: MONUMENT FUTURE: DECAY AND CONSERVATION OF STONE and will take place on the 7th-12th of September in Göttingen, Germany. The Congress is a quadrennial event. It is the main conference for disseminating the knowledge of practitioners and researchers working in the field of stone deterioration issues in cultural heritage conservation. In the past, it has attracted around 300 international delegates and publishes the proceedings that contains over 150 scientific contributions. It truly represents and captures the state-of-theart in the field of stone conservation and cultural heritage conservation.
Applications Open for the Advanced Masters in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions
After 10 years of European funding, 375 students and 65 countries, applications for the Advanced Masters in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions are opened up to July 20, 2019. This is the leading international course on conservation of heritage structures, winner of the 2017 European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage “Europa Nostra”, and a unique opportunity to meet people from all over the world.
This Master Course, which is running its 12th Edition, is organized by a Consortium of leading European Universities/Research Institutions in the field, composed by University of Minho (coordinating institution, Portugal), the Technical University of Catalonia (Spain), the Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic), the University of Padua (Italy) and the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Czech Republic).
The course combines the most recent advances in research and development with practical applications.
A significant number of scholarships, ranging from 4,000 to 13,000 Euro, are available to students of any nationality.
Please find full details on the MSc programme, as well as electronic application procedure, on the website www.msc-sahc.org
COTAC Celebrates 60th Anniversary with the First of a Series of Background Notes
In its 60th Anniversary year COTAC looks back on how and why it all started, exploring how the issues have changed since then – and how they’ve remained similar. Access the first Background Note here.
ICCROM Conference – Criteria Evaluation Applied in Stone Conservation Treatments
This call for papers is aimed at conservators, architects, engineers, archaeologists, scientists, art historians, geologists and any other professionals related to the study and conservation of stone, interested in critically reviewing the criteria used in the conservation practice of this material.
This international meeting (18-21 November 2019) will be framed into five main topics, distributed in three days where key speakers will introduce each topic, followed presentations by selected lectures, and closing with a discussion session. The fourth day will conclude with a study visit to the historic centre of Mexico City.
After the event, papers and discussed material will be collected in a digital publication.
See more information here.
BIM4Heritage Annual Conference 2019: Learning from the past to preserve the future
27-28 June, 2019
Middlesex University
The tragic events that happened at Notre-Dame Cathedral on the 15th April 2019 left the world in shock. Why did this happen? How could it occur? Could stakeholders have done more to prevent it?
This BIM4Heritage Conference will analyse the issue of digital asset management of heritage structures and, through lessons that might be learnt from this tragedy, what else might be done to help prevent it happening again. Digital technologies such as recording, documentation and Building Information Modelling (BIM) can all contribute important information on the fabric, components and spaces that make up a heritage structure as well as acting as a crisis management tool to support urgent interventions or reconstructions of such iconic monuments. The Conference will host a range of expert speakers and researchers to explore these themes and to showcase successful case studies, in order to learn from the past to preserve the future.
The link to register for free tickets is here: https://bit.ly/2WuwyIG
University of Minho – Positions available on Masonry Structures, Earthquake Engineering and Seismology
The Historical and Masonry Structures (www.hms.civil.uminho.pt) at ISISE, University of Minho, Portugal, will be opening soon two positions PhD students (3 years) and two positions for postdoctoral collaborators (4-5 years) on Masonry Structures, Earthquake Engineering and Seismology to join an European Research Council Advanced Grant recently awarded.
If you are interested in any of these positions and have excellent academic / scientific qualifications, please send your résumé to Prof. Paulo B. Lourenço (pbl@civil.uminho.pt) until June 14.
The positions will address: (1) Study of the seismic action (signal); (2) Shaking table testing of masonry specimens; (3) Numerical and analytical approaches for out-of-plane masonry behaviour.