The conceptual project of Performance Center Alexanderhoehe is developed by experts from the US architectural studio «B+U Architecture» for Iserlohn (Germany). The new futuristic architectural art structure should become ultra-modern continuation of an existing building of Parktheater theater.
Art Modern Architecture
The conceptual center combined with an art architecture will construct on a North side of the city special for view of the new visual reference point.
The Art of Architecture
Orientation of a new building will promote creation of a uniform point of access for visitors of Parktheater and the new cultural center. To avoid block of Parktheater by walls of new art building and to reach extremely effective visually-spatial communications have been created generous multilevel foyers with glass facades from which the kind on Parktheater and a city landscape opens. The modern art scene in new futuristic structure is located so that to create effect of soaring.
The Architectural Combinations, 7 out of 10 [based on 678 votes]
The extravagant Night Club «MUSEE» located in Madrid (Spain), is creative symbiosis of gallery of the modern art and the fashionable center of night life of a megacity.
The visual concept of club is concentrated round black color, glasses and mirrors which are a fine collective background for expressive design furniture, the three-meter light-emitting diode screen, pictures of known modern artists, and also various products of video arts and other objects which are of interest, from the point of view of art and creative style of club atmosphere.
The apartments interior of the night club does not carry constant character. Now institution walls decorate works of German photographer Robert Bartholot, the Madrid pictorialist Paco Peregrin and the illustrator from New York Glenn Hilario.
Modern Art Club
The visual holiday is accompanied by musical mixes from hot Madrid DJs, and the unique conceptual status gives to an institution the exclusively elite status.
In the modern world you are surprised — as architects of the past could build approximately in one style, according to the general mood of an epoch, and consider it as art?
The original architectural project
In Competition on Originality there was a new applicant. Peking bureau MAD has offered the skyscraper project on which each floor gardens will blossom. The basic feature of a design — not at height, and on horizontal saturation. The tower represents a heap of the floors, one on another where each layer will shift aside, thus creating open space for a patio and gardens. A 385-metre tower name Urban Forest.
Art Architecture in China
By the end of 2009 year architects plan to finish work on the design concept. The tower becomes the third studio in a portfolio. The studio offers new directions for development of city architecture in China. Namely actualization of ecologically steady multiplane structures which would return the nature in cities. The city of Chongking became the fourth on size a city of China in 1997.
Two pavilions which should become a tribute of memory Daniel Burnham which will note 100-year-old anniversary, have opened in Millennium Park (Chicago). Designers — two modern legends: Ben van Berkel and Zaha Hadid. Though, pavilion Zaha Hadid has been left unfinished, but pavilion opening even in a semikind has received the good criticism: “the Aluminium design of pavilion bewitches, to crowd has very much liked”, — has told Sallie Gaines, the press-secretary of action.
Burnham Pavilions by Ben van Berkel & Zaha Hadid
Expecting pavilion Zaha Hadid opening, it is possible to receive now already aesthetic pleasure from the second work, pavilion Ben van Berkel. It consists of two parallel panels, a roof and a floor, connected by three support. The pavilion will be highlighted especially at night.
To receive the maximum impressions, you need to walk very quickly on pavilion.
There's one thing that's pretty consistent across all of the examples featured on this site — they're all as contemporary as it gets. There are no awkward features, everything is smooth, seamless and damn right modern.
Over the years the construction industry has seen technologies come and go, arguably at a faster rate than in other fields. It would be fair to say that one technology which has grabbed building experts by the scruff of the neck is solar. It's something which is being applied in practically every imaginable use and when it comes to contemporary homes it's no surprise why.
Solar is something that removes any aesthetic fears from architects. Once upon a time those famous panels may have been classed as intrusive, but nowadays they can be blended into any modern building. Similarly, smaller solar products (which we'll get into later), just don't hinder a home's appearance in the slightest and this is the reason it's here to say.
Of course, a lot of these products also happen to save a considerable amount of money - something which is surely required when you see some of the extravagant featured properties! Nevertheless, the point we're trying to make is that solar energy is here to stay and this is something that a lot of rival technologies haven't been able to say over the past few years. Here, we highlight how solar is growing, how you can use it on your home - and why it suits the contemporary, dream homes down to a tee.
The old favourite: solar panels
We may as well start with the thing that everyone associates solar technology with; those panels which seem to be affixed to a growing proportion of UK estates. Initially, they were targeted at local authority housing, but private homeowners have now caught on and they are especially popular with modern properties.
The nature of solar panels means that they are never going to be suited to a rustic dwelling. Shiny panels just don’t work on a converted barn, but when they are integrated to a potential Dwell award candidate, things start to change. They can actually look like a positive addition to such properties, while it’s now possible to purchase the panels in varying styles which make them highly compatible with different types of roofs.
Security lighting: no longer a tangle of wires
This is one use of the technology which doesn’t necessarily have to be implemented in a luxury home. The reason it’s been included in this article is because of the simplicity and it doesn’t matter where you live, gone are the days when you have to source an electrician to fit a complicated set of security lights.
Naturally, these lights arrive in various solar contemporary styles, but the big selling point is that they’re plug and play. Some security lights which are solar powered can be installed in a matter of minutes and this means that they’re certainly here to stay, and possibly overtake the standard security fittings that we have come so accustomed to over the last few years.
Water features: same as above
Take a look at the latest featured house on this blog and it will almost certainly be exquisitely landscaped, with a water feature to boot. The introduction of solar technology to these features has transformed the way in which gardens can be put together and again there’s no need to source a qualified electrician – a lot of these features are powered entirely by the sun.
Considering the fact that it’s also possible to obtain solar fairy lights to compliment the landscape, it goes without saying that water features are evolving and have become even more exuberant because of solar.
And finally… for the ultimate solar/contemporary enthusiast
We should probably have added another component to the title of this subheading, “for the ultimate property owner”. We’ll again refer to the houses that are featured across Art Architect and the vast majority have a pool in their back garden.
For a lot of years, the main problem with swimming pools hasn’t been the upfront cost (although these will still set you back tens of thousands of pounds, or more depending on your requirements), but the running costs. Again, solar has come to the rescue and through the use of solar thermal technology, it’s now possible to heat the water through the sun’s rays. Additionally, excess energy can be used for outside towel rails or even the water for showers – again elements that will accompany the contemporary plot down to a tee.
Saving Mes Aynak, which was screened at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina, last month, is the story of an imminent archaeological tragedy in Afghanistan that seems like a fait accompli.The director of Saving Mes Aynak, Brent Huffman, surveying a Buddhist stupa at the archaeological site [Credit: Saving Mes Aynak]
Mes Aynak is a vast site in a mountainous area south of Kabul, near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan and adjacent to Taliban supply routes. The area is roughly the size of the city of Pompeii in Italy. Archaeologists say it is one of the richest sites in the country, with objects dating back 5,000 years. Excavations were conducted recently with the support of the French government and continue with urgency with a skeleton Afghan crew. Yet more than 90% of the site still remains unexamined.
It is almost sure to be under-examined. Mes Aynak is also the site of extensive copper deposits, which explains why it was a trading centre for centuries. The name Mes Anynak means “little source of copper,” although “little” understates the case. Those deposits are now under contract for extraction by China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a state-owned Chinese mining conglomerate that plans to begin mining the site this year. The copper underneath is said to be worth $100 billion, according to the Afghan government. That is an amount that might make the occasional Taliban attack seem tolerable.
The fight over Mes Aynak is the subject of this documentary film by Brent Huffman. The main narrator of the grim tale is the Afghan archaeologist Qadir Temori. With the help of French archaeologists, Temori and his team have unearthed temples, fortifications, objects and stupas (memorials) that reflect the Buddhist and Hellenistic styles common to the region. But China Metallurgical Group Corporation has built an extensive modern camp for workers and is poised to remove the hills and the ancient remains beneath with modern bulldozers.
To call this a David and Goliath story is like saying $100 billion is a modest incentive. The American archaeologist Mark Kenoyer, a specialist in Afghan and Pakistani cultures, compares bulldozing the site to submerging the city of Atlantis. The French archaeologist Philippe Marquis calls it “the tip of the iceberg.”We are told in interviews with Afghan officials that the proposed mine will enrich the country with $7 billion dollars of economic activity.
We are also told by former government employees that the minister responsible for the deal— which involved a Chinese payment of some $3 billion to the minister—is living in a luxurious new house. (That official has since resigned and has accused his successor of corruption, Huffman says.)
International protests have not made much difference. Alarmed archaeologists and Buddhists around the world achieved a brief delay by raising their voices, yet the mining seems set to begin.
Saving Mes Aynak does not fit the usual contours of films about art. There are exquisite objects on screen that came fr om recent excavations, although most of them are too recently unearthed to be conserved and exhibited in a delicately-lit jewel-box museum context. They are hardly the proven treasures that might induce politicians to fight for preservation.
A golden Buddha from Mes Aynak [Credit: Saving Mes Aynak]
A chilling parallel to this film came in another documentary at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Overburden by Chad Stevens examines the practice of mountaintop removal to extract coal quickly and cheaply over a vast area, with a fraction of the workers required in the conventional deep mining process. Citizens in West Virginia who feared the destruction of their homes and water sources locked horns with a huge coal company, Massey Energy (which has since been sold to Alpha Natural Resources), and coalminers who were fighting for their jobs.
Saving Mes Aynak involves a hauntingly similar standoff. Overburden is the mining term that refers to rock and dirt between the surface and mineral deposits. In Mes Aynak, 5,000 years of culture are the overburden.
Huffman shows grim video of the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban in 2002, yet at a time when the destruction of ancient cultures is a stated policy of the Islamic State, Saving Mes Aynak presents us with a different crisis: the horror of business as usual. Under governments wh ere conservation doesn’t count for much, the race for resources runs faster than rescue archaeology.
Author: David D'Arcy | Source: The Art Newspaper [May 30, 2015]
A year ago, when a group of people approached the villagers of Thatchur near Kallakurichi in Villupuram district to construct a temple on an ancient Pallava site, little did they realise that it would be at the cost of some rare 9th century sculptures.Heritage activists say the committee members of the temple shifted all the sculptures without informing the Archeological Survey of India or the state archaeology department [Credit: The Times of India]
Today, the construction of the temple is almost over. But the new structure has taken over the place where the rare sculptures were kept. As a result, a broken shiva linga, a moss-covered Somaskanda panel and many more sculptures are scattered around the temple, covered by grass and almost lost. Heritage activists say the committee members of the temple shifted all the sculptures without informing the Archeological Survey of India or the state archaeology department.
"When I first visited the site six years ago, I could see all sculptures in proper form. But today they have been removed from their original place and lie scattered near the newly constructed temple. They are in ruins," said P Rajasekar, a heritage activist, who recently visited the place and photographed the ruined sculptures.
Aravind Venkatraman, who has so far photographed and documented 200 Chola temples, said the site with ancient Pallava sculptures was discovered in the 1990s. "I have seen the photograph of this ancient Pallava site taken in 2008 at the library of the French Institute of Pondicherry. Some other pictures also show the site with all the sculptures intact," he said.
A committee member of the temple said it was while constructing the temple they removed all the structures and housed them inside a shed. But as the work of the temple progressed, the shed was demolished. Apparently, no one was interested in taking care of the sculptures and they were thrown out. "When we asked the committee members said they would place the sculptures permanently inside a hall adjacent to the temple. But they are not sure when they are going to do this. They are not aware of the heritage value associated with the sculptures," said Venkatraman.
The ruined sculptures, according to Rajasekar, are special in many ways. "There is a beautiful panel of Somaskanda, a form of representation of Shiva with his consort Uma and Skanda on his left. In this panel, you can see Uma and Skanda seated on his right. It's a rare site. There are some inscriptions in 'Vatteluthu'. But the people in the village don't know the value of these sculptures," said Rajasekar.
Apparently, no one has informed the ASI or the state archeological department before shifting these heritage structures. "The sculptures are in bad shape. It's high time either the ASI or the state archaeology department took up the issue. Otherwise, we will lose these ancients pieces of art soon," he said.
Author: M. T. Saju | Source: The Times of India [April 30, 2015]
Queen Elizabeth led celebrations on Monday to mark 800 years since the sealing of the Magna Carta, one of the world's most significant historical documents and credited with paving the way for modern freedoms and human rights.King John of England was forced to affix his Great Seal to Magna Carta at Runnymede 800 years ago this week [Credit: British Library]
On June 15, 1215, in fields by the banks of the River Thames at Runnymede to the west of London, England's King John agreed to the demands of his rebelling barons and accepted the Magna Carta, Latin for "Great Charter", which for the first time placed the monarch under the rule of law.
In the centuries since, it has taken on huge global significance, becoming the basis for the U.S. Bill of Rights, the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Three of its 63 clauses still remain on Britain's statute book.
"What happened in these meadows eight centuries ago is as relevant today as it was then. And that relevance extends far beyond Britain," British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
He said the document had changed the world, inspiring people from the founding fathers of the United States and Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi to Nelson Mandela in South Africa.
"Its remaining copies may be faded, but its principles shine as brightly as ever," Cameron told the ceremony attended by the queen, other royals and global figures including U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Magna Carta came into being during a period of great political upheaval in England with conflict between King John, his nobles and the English church.
It was essentially a peace deal to address the problems of the day and was annulled by the pope shortly afterwards. But updated versions, which included two original clauses regarded as pivotal in establishing the rule of law, were re-released regularly by or on behalf of succeeding monarchs.
The clauses read: "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
"To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice."
Originals Exist
Four original copies of the document, written on a single sheet of parchment about the size of A3 paper, still exist.
At Monday's ceremony, a new art installation was unveiled and the American Bar Association's Magna Carta Memorial, which was erected at the site in 1957, was re-dedicated.
U.S. Attorney General Lynch said the charter was a bedrock to free societies globally, while Cameron also used the anniversary as a political opportunity to underpin his plan to overhaul human rights laws and reduce the influence of Europe.
However, John Dyson, chairman of the Magna Carta Trust, said King John and the barons would have been bemused that the document would garner such interest hundreds of years later.
"They would surely have been astonished that over time Magna Carta came to be regarded as one of the most important constitutional documents in our history," he said.
"They would not have believed that barons' lists of demands would become a symbol of democracy, justice, human rights and perhaps above all, the rule of law for the whole world. But that is exactly what has happened."
Author: Stefan Wermuth | Source: Reuters [June 15, 2015]
The Guggenheim Museum is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain.
It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The Guggenheim is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The museum features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists.
One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something." The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.
The Australian architectural studio «Lyons» has finished building a ultra-modern medical complex «John Curtin School of Medical Research». The unique architectural building expressively reflects progressive methods of work and aspiration to innovative processes.
In the medical center based on base of the Australian National University in Canberra are based: research laboratories, medical clinics, health care offices, hall for teaching lectures and the world seminars.
The Innovative Australian Medical Center
Dynamical architectural forms of a building draw attention of the public and personify development and movement. The translucent structure provide premises with necessary quantity of natural illumination in stylistics of fine style of Art Deco. However especially effectively unusual building to the evening.
The impressing effect amplifies contrast of black elements of a facade and snow-white internal panels, which simultaneously open to a sight at certain points of view of it unique building.
A cluster of buildings, covered with lush green weed, in the Pakistani city of Taxila is the treasure trove of a lost civilisation that once thrived in the country’s north-western region around the 7th century BC.Rapid urbanisation of the area and the plunder of the sites have taken a toll. Taxila is also ignored on the tourist map largely because of the country’s security situation. Seen here is the ancient Dharmarajika stupa [Credit: Nassim Khan]
Flanked by River Haro on the one side and Margalla Hills on the other, Taxila is a vast serial site that includes a Mesolithic cave and the archaeological remains of four early colony sites. “It is one of the most important archaeological sites in Asia,” according to UNESCO.
With so much to show the world, Taxila is ignored on the tourist map largely because of the country’s security situation, lack of tourism promotion, and privation of facilities in the city.
From the famous Grand Trunk (GT) Road, a small and poorly metalled road leads to Taxila Museum and the archaeological sites. The picturesque lush green natural landscape has changed dramatically over the last 25 years.
Unplanned houses, hand carts, shops and vendors’ stalls are the modern hallmarks of the area, instead of its previous relaxing and enjoyable natural beauty. The rapid urbanisation of the area and the plunder of the sites has cost the sites dearly and yet nobody pays attention to it.
The results are obvious. The Global Heritage Fund has identified Taxila as one of 12 sites worldwide that are “On the Verge” of irreparable loss and damage. The fund’s 2010 report attributes this irreparable loss to insufficient management, development pressure, looting, and war and conflict as primary threats.
View of the ancient city of Sirkap, Taxila [Credit: Buddhist Forum]
Moving along the dusty and crowded Grand Trunk (GT) Road from Islamabad to Taxila, the monument of Brigadier general John Nicholson, a famous military figure of the British Empire, greets a visitor. The monument is located on the Margalla Hills — the gateway to Taxila.
The sighting of Nicholson’s monument takes the visitor instantaneously to the days of British Colonial Raj. The time when teams of archaeologists were digging around the town of Taxila in search of the lost civilisations. The finding has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
“It’s the marvel Pakistan got from the British Colonial Raj and yet it has not properly promoted as a tourist destination,” said Javed Iqbal, an archaeologist. Taxila is one of the three top Pakistani archaeology sites including the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro — two of the main cities that comprise the Indus Valley Civilisation, he said.
Sir John Marshall, the director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1902 to 1928, began the excavations at Taxila that continued for the next twenty years. In 1918, Marshall laid the foundation stone of the Taxila Museum to preserve the precious findings.
The museum is built in the middle of the archaeological site and has a rich collection of relics, artefacts, stupas, and stone and stucco sculptures from different Buddhist monasteries, Gandhara Art and the Kushana period. The Kingdom of Gandhara lasted from the Vedic period (1500-500 BC) as a centre of Graeco-Buddhism, Bactrian Zoroastrianism and Animism.
Ahmad Alamgir, another archaeologist and historian, who met me at the museum said that only one significant development had been carried out by the government of Pakistan in almost a century.
Double headed eagle stupa at the ancient city of Sirkap, Taxila [Credit: Omer Khetran/WikiCommons]
“Sir Marshall actually could not complete the original plan of the museum when he had to leave for England. After the creation of Pakistan, the government of Pakistan constructed the northern gallery of the museum in 1998 … and that’s it,” he said.
The museum has a number of galleries in which findings from the surrounding sites have been presented subject wise. There are lines of wall and table showcases in the galleries and a complete stupa, from the Buddhist monastery of Mohra Moradu, stands in the middle of the main hall of the museum.
A vast collection of stucco heads of Buddha showing different faces and styles is the main attraction for tourists. The big Buddha heads are typically Gandharan in style, according to the archaeologists.
City of Cut Stone
The historic town of Taxila, originally Takaśilā in Sanskrit (meaning City of Cut Stone) is located around 35km from Islamabad just off the famous Grand Trunk Road. The city is still famous of its artisans, who keep their ancestors’ profession alive, by making stone sculptures, murals and panels.
They also produce flower pots, planters, fountains, garden ornaments, balusters, pillars and railings, and fire places. Taxila, according to historians, thrived from 518BC to 600AD. In 326BC Alexander the Great and his armies encountered charging elephants in battle against Hindu king Porus.
Before fighting the battle, Alexander marched through the city and was greeted by King Ambhi. In 300BC Taxila was conquered by the Mauryan Empire under Chandragupta Maurya that disintegrated the Bactrian Greeks, the successors of Alexander, in 190BC. Ashoka, the legendary king of India, ruled Taxila as governor under his father Bindusara’s rule. The city, which is a part of Rawalpindi district, is now a main industrial town of Pakistan with heavy machine factories and industrial complex, stoneware and pottery.
A recent international study led by ANSTO instrument scientist Vladimir Luzin is likely to be of interest to conservationists who are trying to preserve important marble sculptures and artefacts, such as Michelangelo's famous sculpture of David.David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by Michelangelo [Credit: ALAMY]
"The fact of the matter is that physical weathering, deterioration and damage to marble and other architectural stones present a serious problem for the preservation of sculptures, monuments and buildings," said Luzin.
David: A sculpture made from Carrara marble
Before its relocation in Galleria dell'Accademia, David, the "Giant", was symbolically displayed in the political heart of Renaissance Florence, the Piazza della Signoria. Over a period of almost three centuries, the statue was exposed to the action of weather, historical events and inappropriate restoration works. These coexisting factors prevented the appropriate preservation of a masterpiece that, already at the time of its creation, was regarded as challenging by many artists—due to the presence of taroli, imperfections of the marble.
Today David is in a highly stable condition but still presents a contemporary scientific challenge from a conservation point of view. Researchers are monitoring marble cracking of the 4.3 metre David with a system of sensors that record vibrations, rotations and environmental conditions. [1] Conservationists monitor the sculpture because it is thought that even small mechanical impacts and small temperature variations are detrimental to marble.
Geologically marble is formed by the alteration (metamorphism) of limestone under high temperature and high pressure. The metamorphic process causes a complete recrystallization of the original rock into an interlocking mosaic of calcite and/or dolomite crystals with very specific mechanical behaviour.
Carrara marble, the stone used by Michaelangelo in sculpting David, was one of the most popular types of marble in the world because of its beauty and high lustre. For centuries it was quarried from the Apuan Alps in Tuscan Italy.
The popularity of Carrara marble was due in part to the wide range of varieties available (statuary, flowered, veined, brecciated, bardiglio, etc.), to the constancy of its quality, scarcity of defects, large size of single blocks that could be extracted, excellent physical and mechanical characteristics, and long-lasting strength and beauty." [2]
The Pantheon in Rome [Credit: ANSTO]
However the suitability of marble from the Carrara area of Italy for buildings and artworks has been questioned because of 'spectacular bowing behaviour' of marble slabs on numerous modern buildings including the Amoco building in Chicago and the Grand Arche de la Defense in Paris.
A study of Carrara marble by a group of investigators led by Luzin have confirmed that microstresses caused by temperature variation and the thermo-mechanical properties of the marble itself help explain the deterioration. Co-investigators are Dimitry Nikolayev of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Moscow and Siegfried Siegesmund of theUniversity of Göttingen in Germany.
The investigators were interested in the different environmental conditions that influence marble deterioration and had to reproduce factors known to be important to the process of deterioration. Temperature effects were among those known to cause mechanical stress.
Luzin and collaborators used non-destructive neutron diffraction to confirm that thermally-induced microstress from a single thermal exposure can cause microcracking in the marble and therefore be responsible for weathering and deterioration of the marble [3].
"Neutron diffraction is a useful tool and a non-destructive method to investigate the texture, phase composition and spatial and orientation dependence of strain in a bulk marble sample," explained Luzin.
Although the commercial use of statue-grade Carrara marble is no longer allowed, an exception is made for restoration works and scientific research. Freshly cut marble from a quarry in Carrara, Italy was used for the testing.
"Although not easy, stress measurements in geological materials, such as marble are feasible and provide valuable characterisation," said Luzin.
He explained that the challenges are related to the need to measure two phases with sufficient accuracy. It is necessary to use a large gauge volume because of the coarse grain microstructure and longer measurement time in order to capture very delicate effects of microstress in calcite and dolomite—which are also very weak neutron scatterers.
The neutron high resolution powder diffractomter, Echidna, determined the amount of each phase in two cube samples of marble. In one sample, the dolomite comprised a volume fraction of 28 per cent and in the other it was 18 per cent, which is not surprising given the highly visible non-uniform distribution of dolomite in the marble.
The Kowari diffractometer was used to produce pole figures, graphical representations that capture the preferred crystallographic orientation (texture) of the calcite and dolomite. "A weak crystallographic texture in both phases was confirmed in the neutron diffraction experiment," said Luzin.
The stress experiments were carried out using the Kowari diffractometer in a specially designed sample environment unit in order to control temperature. "We took measurements of the calcite and dolomite phases at room temperature and at 80° C."
Using a technique to measure the stiffness of an elastic material, the researchers were able to accurately measure the accumulated damage after a thermal exposure that could be unambiguously attributed to microcracking.
"Evidently, a significant change in microstress caused micro-cracking in the marble sample due to temperature changes," said Luzin.
Although exaggerated temperature might not be relevant to real daily and seasonal temperature variation, smaller, more numerous natural temperature variations during long periods of time might result in even greater accumulated damage. There are historical examples of sculpture which deteriorated into a pulverised state after a century of exposure to temperature variation.
"We have a responsibility to try and preserve great works of art and architecture with non-destructive techniques and nuclear technologies give us the means to do this. Hopefully David and other important monuments can be preserved in the centuries to come," said Luzin.
References
[1] Giovanni Pascale, Filippo Bastianini, Roberto Carli, "Monitoring Marble cracking in the David by Michaelangelo Proc. Art'11, 10th Int. Conf. on Non-Destructive Investigations and microanalysis for the diagnostics and conservation of cultural and environmental heritage, Florence, April 13th-15th, 2011, NDT44
[2] Stephano Merlino Paolo Orlandi "Carraraite and zaccagnaite, two new minerals from the Carrara marble quarries: their chemical compositions, physical properties, and structural features" American Mineralogist, Volume 86, pages 1293–1301
[3] 310.4028/www.scientific.net/MSF.777.148. Luzin, V; Nikolayev, D and Siegesmund, S, Temperature Induced Internal Stress in Carrara Marble, Mater. Sci. Forum 777, 148-154 (2014)
Source: Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) [June 22, 2015]
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