Project Details
Projekt
Coordination Funds
Applicant
Professor Dr.-Ing. Werner Lorenz
Subject Area
Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
Term
since 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442249935
In many respects, the buildings of the high modern era (around 1880 to 1970) escape classical approaches to monument preservation. Not infrequently, their construction is the actual cultural heritage, because the load-bearing structure or the manufacturing process define the heritage value. However, a lack of fundamentals in construction history, monument theory and engineering science has severely hindered the development of adequate strategies and methods for the evaluation and preservation of this cultural heritage. This is where the priority program "Construction as Cultural Heritage" comes into play. Across disciplines, it operates in three thematic areas: 1. Refinement of construction history's coordinate system of the high modern era as an indispensable basis for a sound positioning and assessment of the cultural heritage construction (thematic area "surveying and classifying"). 2. Elaboration of new methods for an integral evaluation of the broad spectrum of different buildings and complex structures (thematic area "identification and evaluation"). 3. Development of networked strategies for the preservation and further development of this heritage (thematic area "Preservation and Development"). The priority program's coordination project promotes interdisciplinary and cross-location cooperation through the use of appropriate tools, ensures constant knowledge transfer and provides impulses for a cross-disciplinary development of the project work. In this way, the competences of the disciplines of historical sciences, monument preservation and civil engineering, which previously acted largely independently of each other, were bundled for the first time in the first phase of this priority program to form a unique interdisciplinary research network. This interconnection of disciplines opens numerous new perspectives on high modern building constructions as well as on better procedures for dealing adequately with this complex heritage. This path will be continued and further expanded in the program's second stage. To this end, the coordination project is complementing already established actions with new impulses such as increased attention to ecological factors or the inclusion of international perspectives. In this final program phase, particular attention will be given to sustainably consolidating the work field "engineering-based and networked heritage conservation", which is currently being established through the SPP. In the interest of immediate theory-practice transfer, specific conclusions will be disseminated to the respective specialist communities and decision-makers by means of recommendations and guidelines. Above all, however, a summarizing final volume of the SPP's publication series will present a concise overview of the historical development of high-modern building constructions and the manifold potentials for their valorization and further development.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
