Abstract
Abstract. Indoor environment in heritage buildings can be cause of damage for architecture and artefacts which depend on several physical and chemical parameters: air temperature, relative humidity, volatile organic compounds, etc. How is it possible to evaluate their damage, or the risk of damages? How “aggressive” is indoor microclimate? The scientific literature proposes several different criteria for the evaluation of the risk of damages, especially in the field of museums, while there are few studies which take into consideration historic buildings. In this paper we propose an index – the Heritage indoor Microclimate Risk (HMR) – that allows to define the risk concerning the whole environment and not only the artefacts. Moreover, we propose its application to a real case study of a UNESCO Heritage World Site, obtained through indoor microclimate on-site monitoring and building simulation. The case study reported is Villa Barbaro, built in Maser (1554–1560) by the architect Andrea Palladio and registered in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list since 1996, as Palladian Villa of Veneto. The research is structured as follows: monitoring campaign of the microclimatic parameters; virtual modelling of Villa Barbaro and its validation (by comparing the simulated data and the monitored ones); construction of scenarios which can aid to guarantee the historic building’s conservation and the occupants’ comfort; definition of HMR. The innovative aspect of the proposed methodology is the use of a virtual building model of heritage buildings, to determine, through a single index, the degree of risk and the level of indoor microclimate aggression.
Highlights
The cultural heritage sector represents a field of research in which we can find two different approaches: on one hand the humanistic side, aimed at discovering the history of artefacts; on the other hand, the scientific attitude, concerned with finding the evaluation modalities for the preventive conservation
Indoor microclimate is a fundamental aspect for Cultural Heritage, even more so if the artefacts are susceptible to thermal oscillations
The deformations caused by specific Relative Humidity (RH) and T levels, which accelerate the deterioration process of artefacts, tend to be reversible in modern materials, such as plastic; but they are irreversible in ancient materials
Summary
The cultural heritage sector represents a field of research in which we can find two different approaches: on one hand the humanistic side, aimed at discovering the history of artefacts; on the other hand, the scientific attitude, concerned with finding the evaluation modalities for the preventive conservation. Heritage Science studies the building and the single artefacts kept inside it, both when the building studied is a historic one and when we are talking about a modern building, especially if this is a museum In the latter example the aim of the design of the building must be to preserve good indoor microclimatic conditions: attention must be always paid to guarantee that the conservation’s ranges are respected, to assure an optimal preservation (and the availability) of the goods exposed. Once a sound knowledge of the indoor microclimate is acquired, it is possible to verify and to simulate the state of conservation of the objects and the occupants’ comfort We believe this is the most interesting aspect of the proposed methodology presented below: the virtual building simulation allows to formulate hypothetical present, past or future scenarios of management (access, collections, maintenance management tasks, etc.). Understanding the indoor microclimate conditions permits to make considered choices in order to achieve the preventive
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