Monumentos da cidade de São Paulo: formas de alteração e conservação

Abstract

Historic monuments are part of the cultural heritage of a people or a nation, linking the present to the past. They should be preserved in a way that people can make good use of them and preserve them for the future generations. The most effective form of conservation of the cultural heritage is the patrimonial education, through which the population acquires awareness of their own role as guardian of their antiquities. The weathering of the rocks in historic monuments is a natural process. However, its velocity has increases substantially due to the increase of the urban atmospheric pollution, that facilitates the degradation of stones and rocks of the monuments. The present research focused the identification of the forms of alteration, degradation and intervention that have already been done in monuments in São Paulo. The analysis of the conditions of the monuments was based in field work which resulted in a catalogue of the alteration morphologies, which were characterized both macro and microscopically. For this, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X- ray diffraction (XRD) and petrography microscopy techniques were used. During the field work it was observed the existence of distinctive forms of degradation and weathering characteristics that were analyzed and catalogued.