COTAC News

CyArk is a non profit organization founded in 2003 to digitally record, archive and share the world’s most significant cultural heritage and ensure that these places continue to inspire wonder and curiosity for decades to come.

Find the tour here.

MSc Timber Building Conservation, delivered by the Weald & Downland Living Museum and validated by the University of York.

This course enables practicing building conservators to improve their competence, and can open new doors to other building professionals wanting to specialise further or change career direction.

Applications for this course close on 31 January 2021. The course starts in May 2021.

Applications close for our MSc in Timber Building Conservation on 31 January 2021. Interested, but need financial support? Then enquire about a bursary to help subsidise the cost!

Applicants who are offered a place on this course will have a chance to apply for a bursary to subsidise their fees with a minimum value of £1000 up to a maximum of £3,300 for each year of study. For more information email MScprogrammes@wealddown.co.uk

Find inspiration in RESTORE publications and articles here.  Some highlights include:

Architectural design can no longer be only concerned with developing artefacts that produce reduced environmental impacts within a certain threshold of emissions. Conversely, buildings today must be developed to reverse the effects of climate change, enhance natural systems, the built environment and inhabitants’ life.

“Regenerative Design in the Digital Practice” explores how the regenerative concept is now being applied to the regenerative design of cities and buildings. A series of digital design approaches are exemplified via a series of examples drawn from leading international practitioners and researchers.

Our RESTORE Cost Action publication that records the outputs of the sustainability working group (1). This publication, with contributions from over 20 EU countries is an exploration in progressing a paradigm shift in built environment thinking, from sustainability to restorative sustainability and on to regenerative sustainability. It presents a reference document for future work of the RESTORE Action, for other Cost Actions and for built environment academia and industry organisations.

We are pleased to announce that on 1^st December 2020 we will officially open the Life Beyond Tourism-Travel to Dialogue InfoDays Campaign, that is a series of virtual conferences organised with our Partners in the world for disseminating the methodology and implementing the best practices of Life Beyond Tourism-Travel to Dialogue on site. In that occasion, the two recent initiatives will be presented: the exhibition Florence in the World, the World, in Florence and the Project Back to Life: Revitalization of Places Post Covid-19.

The first Partners are:

• The Ivanovo State University,Opening Conference on 1^st December 2020, h. 10.00 CEST
• The Riga Technical University, Faculty of Architecture, Opening Conference on 1^stDecember 2020, h. 13.30 CEST

Both the conferences are open to everybody and will be available in streaming on:

https://www.lifebeyondtourism.org/live-lbt-info-day/

Besides, the records will be permanently available on the Life Beyond Tourism Portal.

You all are invited to attend, also to consider the possibility to realise one of the coming Life Beyond Tourism-Travel to Dialogue InfoDays with your organisation, on behalf of your students, affiliates or members.

This Tailored Review has provided a valuable opportunity to examine and consult widely on Historic England’s role in protecting and promoting England’s heritage. I am pleased to see such positive feedback from so many heritage stakeholders, and the report’s recommendations will help Historic England strengthen its performance as a significant leader in the heritage sector.

Read the review here.

ICOMOS four international scientific committees on Vernacular Architecture, Earthen Architectural Heritage, Wood Architecture Heritage and Energy, Sustainability and Climate change are jointly organizing the international conference on ‘Earthen and wood vernacular heritage and climate change’ under the patronage of ICOMOS Sweden. The conference welcome practitioners, scholars, educators and students in the fields of vernacular architecture, wooden and earthen buildings, culture heritage, building conservation and restoration, energy and sustainability, climate change to submit their proposal and join the conference different activities. Full papers will be double blind reviewed and published with ISBN number in the conference proceedings. The conference will be both physical and digital. The conference might be shifted totally online due to the uncertainty of the pandemic situation. More will be posted regarding this matter when we come closer to the conference date.

Conference themes

• Vulnerability of vernacular buildings to climate change
• Effects of energy regulations on vernacular heritage buildings
• Natural materials and building conservation (techniques and methods)
• Education in sustainable development for vernacular heritage buildings
• Vernacular built heritage in post COVID-19 world.

Organizers

• ICOMOS Sweden
• ICOMOS International Scientific committee on Vernacular Architecture
• ICOMOS International Scientific committee on Earthen Architectural Heritage
• ICOMOS International Scientific committee on Wood Architecture Heritage
• ICOMOS International Scientific committee on Energy, Sustainability and Climate change

Host

Malmo University and Kulturen Museum

Key dates:

2020

• 15th  December 2020 – Deadline for abstracts

2021

• 1th February – Announcing the selected abstracts
• 1st April – Deadline for full paper submission
• 1st May – Comments back to authors
• 1st June – Deadline for final paper submission
• 15th of June – Deadline for early bird registration
• 28th -30thAugust – Conference days

This online conference is spread across three consecutive evenings. It covers different aspects of conservation that are relevant to professionals working in the built environment.

The conference is organised by members of the Conservation Accreditation Register for Engineers (CARE). CARE is jointly administered by the Institution of Civil Engineers and IStructE.

Four guest speakers and two CARE registrants will cover popular aspects of conservation. They will share their knowledge of techniques used on heritage projects.

Over the three evenings, delegates can share their knowledge and discuss various aspects of related planning regulation.

An EU funded initiative has taken an unwanted by-product of the power industry to provide a valuable alternative for an imported overexploited resource.

An ever-growing population and a continuing trend towards urbanisation mean that around 40 billion tonnes of sand are mined each year to meet the world’s increasing demand for construction materials. Because sand from the desert is unsuitable as a building material, it must be mined or dredged from rivers, deltas, and coastal and marine ecosystems, resulting in environmental damage. One solution is to use ash, a by-product of coal-fired power stations and waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration plants. Although the sustainable disposal of fly ash can prove challenging due to the metals it contains, the material also possesses valuable properties that make further processing worthwhile. The EU-funded SMARTSAND project developed Lypors™, an advanced engineered, artificial sand material manufactured from fly ash for use in the construction industry. “It is a superior and cost-effective alternative to natural sand, crushed stones and lightweight fine aggregates, for use in the manufacture of advanced building material derivatives such as concrete, mortars, roof tiles, tile adhesives, façade etc. It can also be used in certain niche applications like horticulture and hydroponics,” states Abbas Khan, founder and managing director at ZaaK Technologies, an innovation and technology development start-up focused on recycling industrial wastes into high-value products.