A Diagnostic Plan Supporting Conservation Work on Timber-Frame Houses

Abstract

To preserve and/or restore buildings of historic and architectural value, it is crucial to use methodological procedures and specific tools that allow the rational and targeted management of the large amount of information provided by sectorial and specialized research. This work proposes a diagnostic plan characterized by innovative elements and by the logic of the digital record and is aimed at describing the constituent materials and the structural elements of timber-framed houses by taking into account their environmental context, case history, and pathologies. The methodological procedure is divided into three main steps--prediagnosis, diagnosis, and postdiagnosis--and is applied to a representative timber-framed building chosen among the various examples still existing in Reggio di Calabria (Italy). The investigation allows description of the building in detail, thus defining its state of conservation and leading to the creation of user-friendly digital repositories thanks to the implementation of the digital record. Certainly, this will have an impact on the definition of an intervention proposal. It will also be possible to perform compatibility tests based on the comparison of various knowledge about the constituent and original materials, which were identified by means of studies of origin. This will further qualify the intervention proposal even in light of the latest cultural debates.