CONSERVATION OF HISTORIC MASONRY: THE SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL PARAMETERS.

This study analyzes the methods how to retard, inhibit or correct the ineluctable degradation of the materials of which our buildings are constructed. All physical materials, including the nominally obdurate stones which we employ in architecture, are subject to this degradation. Under the law of entropy as we now understand it, there is no such thing as a 'permanent' or 'everlasting' material, though each undergoes change at a different rate. The process begins the day the building is completed. It cannot be prevented; its rate can only be slowed down. Contemporary scientific knowledge and modern technology permit a range of interventions whereby the entropic process can be controlled.