Care needed for heritage sites
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The modern touch is not always good, especially when it is applied to heritage buildings. Not only can it reduce the buildings' aesthetic features, it can lead to a further deterioration of the structure of the buildings, an expert says.
Bruce Pettman, visiting principal heritage architect of the Australian state of New South Wales government called on heritage building managements to take prudent care in their efforts to conserve heritage buildings.
"The managements should first carry out careful analysis on the methods and the materials used in the original construction," Pettman told a seminar titled "Rising Damp in Heritage Buildings" on Saturday, which was attended by the managers of several heritage buildings in Jakarta, representatives of museums, architects and heritage lovers.
Wrong approaches applied in restoration would only weaken or even undermine the structure of older buildings, Pettman said.
"The common use of lime to paint walls as we see in old buildings has helped these walls to 'breathe', while modern kinds of paints using waterproof substances such as plastic and acrylic only make the buildings damp," he said.
Placing layers of sand under the floors of Jakarta's old buildings was another example of an old practice that enabled the buildings 'to breath', he explained. "Covering the ground with concrete will only lead to poor ventilation below floor level."
According to Pettman, making an old building 'able to breath' is of paramount importance in staving off rising damp, meaning the infiltration of ground moisture carrying salts in solution, which poses a serious threat to the fabric of buildings.
Rising damp is normally associated with certain causes, like poor ventilation below floor level, a porous building fabric, a high water table, and poor ground-surface water management.
According to Pettman, heritage building managers should pay much more attention to the problem of rising damp as most older buildings had limited damp-proof courses.
Jakarta, whose official history says the city is more than 450 years old, is home to hundreds of heritage buildings. Unfortunately, many of them are in severe disrepair due to aging, poor maintenance and neglect.
Critics say that the Jakarta administration has paid little attention to heritage buildings in the city.
The Luar Batang Mosque in Penjaringan, North Jakarta, dated 1739, was recently given a face-over and emerged as a modern building. Heritage lovers blasted the so-called "renovation", which changed the original face of the 200-year-old mosque, which originally featured a combination of European and Hindu architectural styles.
Arya Abieta, an architect attending the seminar, deplored the ignorance of heritage building managers as regards the problem of rising damp.
"I notice that the managers of the presidential palaces in Bogor and Jakarta have taken out the sand-filled foundations in the basements and replaced them with marble for kitchen and storage rooms," he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the seminar.
Arya said that the marble had led to rising damp in many parts of the buildings.
"The government should not look at the restoration of old buildings as annual projects that should be done within a year without actually assessing the best way of going about it."