The Inspection and Rehabilittaion Process for Historic Building

The Inspection and Rehabilitation Process for Historic Building

Historic buildings provide a sense of direction about our place in time , a bond to our past , an essential component in the stream of our ethnicity through time . These old structures remind us of the achievement of our ancestors through physical materials , ideas , skills and creative solutions they applied in the past

A building is historic ' when it possessed some significant factors like age , rarity , uniqueness , outstanding of its type , and historical link to a famous person or event . The age of a building

along with a variety of significance will help to identify if the building can be judge as historic or with historical value . We should look for these signs before any attempt to modify , destroy , or change a reasonably old building in any way

Preservation is an act or process of applying measures essential to maintain the existing form , integrity , and materials of an historic property (HBIA n .d ,

.1 . Aside from maintaining its form , and probably the first consideration , is to protect and stabilize the property . The work should not result in extensive replacement or adding new exterior materials but repairs of existing materials and features only Replacements or upgrading is generally applicable to electrical plumbing , and mechanical systems of the property to be functional and adaptable to modern systems

Following the standard set by the Historic Building Inspection Association to implement properly the process of preservation , each building subject to preservation must be organize by its intended use . A property that will be use as is it where use originally in the past must be preserving retaining all its distinctive materials , features spaces , and spatial relationships (HBIA n .d ,

.1 . The first initiative should focus on stabilizing the building before any treatment is undertaken . Replacement or alteration of repairable or restorable historic materials should be avoided to protect and preserve the building 's historic character . The historic character ' mentioned here are the visual and tangible aspects of the building

INSPECTION - THE BUILDING 'S HISTORIC CHARACTER

According to Nelson 1998 ,

.1 , there are three steps in identifying the visual character of a historic building . First is looking at its overall ' visual character . This means like looking at a distance on something without going to its details . The main contributors to a building 's overall character according to him , is the shape , the roof features , various projections of the building , the voids or openings and the various exterior materials used in the building . Walking around the building and looking at all sides is an effective approach to have a better understanding of its overall characters . Regardless of complexity or relative plain , these broad categories are helpful in determining the real overall character of the building , he added

Next step is looking at the building at close range or arm 's length Closely examining the surface qualities of the materials , color and texture (Nelson 1998 ,

.1 ) reveals proof of age or superiority . It is important to...