DOI: 10.5176/2301-394X_ACE13.14
Authors: Dai Shibing, Li Wei, Wu Meng
Abstract:
The Tianjin Five Avenues are located in the city centre of Tianjin, where more than 2000 different styles of historical European-Chinese mixed architecture built in 1920-1930s have been identified and listed as architectural and historical monuments. The most characterized is fair faced brick façade of Arts & Crafts. Almost all kinds of bricks including refractory stones, clinkers imported from Europe, red clay bricks, pimple bricks with melting rough surface and traditional Chinese green-grey clay bricks etc. have been used as decorative finishing. Especially the pimple bricks with melting and very rough surface and dark grey-purple colour have not been found in other regions in China. The masonry mortar is almost unique mixture of lime and clay (earth) with a mix ratio of 20-30{6e6090cdd558c53a8bc18225ef4499fead9160abd3419ad4f137e902b483c465} lime plus 70-80{6e6090cdd558c53a8bc18225ef4499fead9160abd3419ad4f137e902b483c465} earth in weight. The pointing materials are historically cement-based to clinkers but pure lime to clay red-grey brick façade. The pointing of most clinkers has a recessed form up to 5-20 mm, but the traditional Chinese-style bricks have flat or modelled form of lime mortar. One of the most common defects is rising dampness due to failed damp barrier based on bituminous paper. Another defect is leakage and freezing and traw caused by fissures and cracks especially fine cracks between stones and joints, which are more or less related to earthquakes in 1976. Based on the comprehensive architectural and material researches, a system for restoration of the unique brick façade has been developed with affordable budget for riutilisation of those heritage buildings. This is called function-oritierted concept which includes installation of rising dampness barrier through chemical injection, structural strengthening using RFC, brick restoration, repointing using lime-based mortar, water repelling impregnation etc.
Keywords: Five Avenues Tianjin, Historical Architecture, Fair Façade Brick Façade, Rising damp, Repointing
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