Name: Luciana da Silva Florenzano
Type: MSc dissertation
Publication date: 24/05/2016
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| Renata Hermanny de Almeida | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| Geilma Lima Vieira | External Examiner * |
| Renata Hermanny de Almeida | Advisor * |
| Thais Alessandra Bastos Caminha Sanjad | External Examiner * |
Summary: Primitive Middle East farming communities introduce the use of clay to enable
shelter, building their cities initially with raw clay bricks dried in the sun and then
burning them in kilns, turning raw clay into ceramic material. Therefore, the ceramic
bricks have been around for many centuries and, from the most ancient civilizations,
man uses the burnt brick to raise walls and materialize the architecture; the
manufacturing technique and the construction method remaining with little change
over time. In Brazil, the ceramic brick is used since the first century of occupation,
especially in capital cities such as Salvador and Recife, becoming potentially
employed on a large scale after 1850, especially due to the mass production derived
from the Industrial Revolution. In the Brazilian socioeconomic context, from the
1840s, the following political action of the Second Empire stands out: the imperial
government, aware of the impact of the abolition of slavery on the national labor,
prepares government programs to encourage non Lusitanian European immigration.
Thus, the state of Espírito Santo was inhabited, beyond the coast, by non lusitanians
European immigrants, responsible for the flourishing of rural areas of the state. In this
context, the city of Santa Leopoldina is one of the first urban centers placed at the
mountainous region, occupied initially by Swiss immigrants and then by germanic
settlers. Santa Leopoldina has a significant architectural heritage, with buildings
erected in structural masonry, sustained mainly by massive ceramic bricks. Even with
historical and artistic value and protected by the Conselho Estadual de Cultura do
Espírito Santo (1983), many of those remainings are at the mercy of collapse
because, situated on the banks of the Santa Maria da Vitoria river, the historic site is
impacted by recurring floods, responsible for flooding the buildings in the citys
historic corridor. Thus, this research addresses the importance of this issue,
establishing historical and technological references to the conservation and
restoration of historic structures in ceramic brick. The aim of this study is, therefore,
to establish references for restorative actions to historic masonry of ceramic bricks
and rescue the memory of the know-how of European immigrants and settlers from
the interior of the Espírito Santo state. For this, this study covers two research fronts,
the first, of historical nature, on the use and production of ceramic brick in the State
of Espírito Santo and the second, of a technological nature, with physical and
mineralogical characterization of ceramic bricks by laboratory testing and
identification of pathological manifestations present in the masonry. Then the results
are related to climatic parameters in the region and, finally, it is proposed orientations
for the conservation of ceramic brick masonry of the historic site of Santa Leopoldina.
Keywords: historic buildings, ceramic brick, conservation, restoration, Santa
Leopoldina.
