RESEARCH

2022-2024: Documenting the Heritage Churches of Chiloé: THE Record as a knowledge transfer for conservation

This project aims to document a the Churches of Chiloé, Chile, some of which were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000 as a unique example of religious architecture in Latin America, representing an architectural tradition begun by the Jesuit itinerant preachers in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Project team:

Dr Bernadette Devilat (PI) and Dr Felipe Lanuza (RF), University of Nottingham; Dr Umberto Bonomo and Santiago Bernales, Centro del Patrimonio Cultural, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (CENPUC); Natalia Cruz from Fundación Iglesias de Chiloé and Dr Lorenzo Berg, from Universidad de Chile.

Supported by: Gamal Abdelmonem from CAUGH NTU.

Funder: EWAP, Oxford Brookes, Arcadia, NTU.

2022-2023: Sustainable approaches for the conservation of built heritage at risk based on advanced recording technologies

This project consists in disseminating the advances for cases in Chile and India, including a novel approach using advanced recording technologies to document heritage and its socio-cultural dimension, named re-construction. The main output is a single-authored monograph: ‘Digital Records, Heritage Conservation and Post-earthquake Re-construction in Chile’, to be published by Routledge. This will cover the theoretical, methodological and wider analysis of three heritage villages in Chile affected by recent earthquakes.

Project lead: Dr Bernadette Devilat, Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Global Heritage (CAUGH), NTU. Funder: Nottingham Trent University (NTU)

2023-2024: Applicability and scalability of a sustainable re-construction framework for seismic-prone heritage areas of Gujarat, India

This follow-on project aims to actively engage with authorities and local stakeholders by exploring ways to implement the framework proposed in the previous research, to increase the impact of its outcomes and to test its wider applicability and regional application.

Project team: Dr Bernadette Devilat (PI) and Dr Felipe Lanuza (Co-I) from the University of Nottingham; Prof Gamal Abdelmonem (Co-I) from CAUGH NTU; Dr Jigna Desai (Co-I), Mrudula Mane and Nigar Shaikh (Research Associates) and Saatvika Pancholi (Research Assistant) from the Center for Heritage Conservation CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CHC CRDF). As Project Partners: Aditya Singh from the Hunnarshala Foundation and Shubham Daberao from GIDM.

Funder: AHRC/DCMS

2020-2022: A sustainable re-construction method for seismic-prone heritage areas of India based on advanced recording technologies

The project used advanced recording technologies and social surveys to develop a sustainable re-construction method for seismic-prone heritage settlements of the Kutch region in Gujarat, India. It is a fast, affordable and scalable methodology to break the unsustainable cycle of buildings’ replacement and subsequent heritage loss.

Project team: Dr Bernadette Devilat (PI), Prof Gamal Abdelmonem (Co-I) and Dr Felipe Lanuza, (Research Felllow) from CAUGH NTU; Dr Jigna Desai (Co-I), Mrudula Mane (Research Associate) and Zeus Pithawalla (Research Assistant) from the Center for Heritage Conservation CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CHC CRDF); Dr Rohit Jigyasu (Co-I) and Sukrit Sen (Research Associate) from ICCROM; and the Hunnarshala Foundation and GIDM as Project Partners.

Funder: AHRC/DCMS

2022-2023: Landscapes of the Absent City 

This project uses Dr Lanuza’s previous research on absence across the fields of architecture, landscape and urbanism as a framework to explore environmental aspects and the ecological potential of urban leftovers - a form of absence in modern cities, of which terrains vagues, as characterised by Ignasi de Sola-Morales (1995, 1996), are prominent examples. Discourses and notions of heritage will help framing their value as cultural and natural assets embedded in our cities as by-products of a modern progress that needs to be deeply reformed in the face of the current environmental crisis. The main outputs are a monograph proposal and a grant application.

Project lead: Dr Felipe Lanuza, Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Global Heritage, NTU.

Funder: NTU

2020-2021: SURVEYING HERITAGE BUILDINGS IN AHMEDABAD, INDIA: EMPOWERING LOCAL ACTION AND SKILLS FOR HERITAGE CONSERVATION

It aimed to install local capacities for recording and surveying heritage buildings; a knowledge transfer to improve maintenance and tackle deterioration. This was done through a series of training activities done by Dr Devilat from NTU for students and staff of CEPT University and the Center for Heritage Conservation (CHC) CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) in Ahmedabad.

Project team: Dr Bernadette Devilat (PI), Prof Gamal Abdelmonem (Co-I) from CAUGH NTU; Dr Jigna Desai (Co-I) and Mrudula Mane (Research Associate) from CHC CRDF.

Funder: NTU