The Ministry of Antiquities and the Athar Lina initiative are organizing a daily conservation school for the period of six weeks. It specializes in studying groundwater and salt damage to search for solutions for groundwater problems in historic contexts. The school is funded by the American Research Center in Egypt with additional funding from the American Embassy in Cairo.
The following themes will be explored:
1. Principles and theories of conservation, methodologies of inspection of historic sites, conditional survey and damage documentation
2. Groundwater, subsurface water and salt damage – damage observation, analysis and diagnosis.
3. Groundwater and salts problems treatment, which includes:
a. on the material conservation level: treatment of architectural and decorative elements.
b. on the architectural level: ventilation and insulation and desalting.
c. on the urban level: dewatering and infrastructure repair.
d. integrated solutions for water extraction, treatment and reuse.
Professors from the universities of Oregon, Cornell (USA), TU Delft (Netherlands), Helwan and Cairo will be tutoring the training course, in addition to Takween Integrated Community Development and a group of experts and professionals in the field.
The school is divided into seven modules as follows:
1. Introduction and basics (13-16 November):
Conservation theory for historic buildings – introduction about building and conservation materials – introduction about structural systems of historic buildings.
2. Project 1: Site investigation and conditional survey (17-23 November):
Conditional survey and damage documentation for historic and heritage buildings.
3. Material Conservation (24 -29 November):
Principles of treating water and salts problems on organic materials (stone, masonry, mortar and plaster).
4. Architectural Conservation (30 November -5 December):
Architectural solutions for water and salts problems (Insulation, ventilation and structural support).
5. Project 2: Conservation Proposal (6-11 December):
How to write a conservation project proposal with application on Ashraf Khalil and Fatima Khatun Domes as cases in Al-Khalifa area.
6. Urban Solutions (12-15 December):
Dewatering, extraction, treatment and looking into ways of reusing water and how to apply it in Al-Khalifa area.
7. Project 3: Integrated Solutions (18-25 December):
Proposals for pilot projects for water extraction and reuse within historic context.
The school is considered the first phase of the project, which will continue with a transition phase from early January to early April. This phase will develop the observations and recommendations reached by the participants of the conservation cycle. The following phase is an international workshop for integrated solutions for groundwater problems from early April to mid-April. The cycle of research and training ends with the final phase; the pilot projects phase from May to July 2017 in which one or more solutions are implemented.
This workshop primary target government employees. Limited places available for students and young professionals to audit certain modules.
Each participant is allowed to participate in two modules only of the modules mentioned above:
• module#1 Introduction and basics + module#2 Site investigation
• module#3 material conservation + module#4 architectural conservation
• module#6 urban solutions + module#7 project 3: integrated solutions
Note: The training course days are from Sunday to Thursday each week from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm
Deadline for registeration: 7th of November
Participation is free of charge but competitive for a limited number.
For registration, kindly fill in the following form and you will be contacted if you are chosen:
https://goo.gl/forms/4FK2fP4vfjVD9JCF3
