Safeguarding Historic Buildings While Mitigating an Ongoing Climate Emergency
Conserving the past is in the human DNA. Attributing significance to places and things and saving them to pass on specific ideas is an inherent part of the human condition. Significant places remind us of important events, people, and families in our communities and bind us together with past, present, and future generations. These places are tangible examples of education, memory, and history. Does our need for the conservation of heritage buildings conflict with our need to mitigate the effects of climate change?
The application of digital techniques for recording, visualization, and fabrication of cultural heritage resources is a powerful tool. However, appropriate applications of these techniques should address the conflicts and compromises involved in ensuring that they deliver adequate and reliable heritage information to support the conservation of these places while also committing to addressing climate change.
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Presenter:
George Torok, B.Tech., (Arch. Sci.), C.E.T., BSSO
George brings a unique breadth and depth of experience to every project, with over 30 years of experience in building enclosure design, construction, performance assessment, failure investigation and rehabilitation for public and private sector buildings of all types across North America. George is a member of MH’s Façade Engineering Team, working with building owners and design teams to achieve balanced, practical and innovative solutions, and providing peer support and mentoring within MH. His focus is fenestration technology, including low-rise residential windows, doors and skylights, high-rise residential window wall, commercial curtain wall and custom, one-of-a-kind glazed architectural structures.
Mario Santana-Quintero
Mario is a professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Carleton University) in Ottawa, Canada. He is also the Director of the NSERC Create program Heritage Engineering and faculty member of the Carleton immersive Media Studio Lab (CIMS). Besides his academic work in Canada, he is a guest professor at the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (University of Leuven). Along with his academic activities, he serves as Secretary General of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and he is the past president of the ICOMOS Scientific Committee on Heritage Documentation (CIPA). Furthermore, he has been a Getty Conservation Institute scholar and he has collaborated in several international projects in the field of heritage documentation for The Getty Conservation Institute, UNESCO, Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, ICCROM, World Monuments Fund, UNDP, Welfare Association, and the Department of Culture and Tourism of Abu Dhabi.