Microenvironments and preventive conservation in indoor areas: the case of the non-climatised indoor area of Casa de Dona Yayá in São Paulo (Brazil)

Abstract

This paper makes a critical assessment of the historical consolidation process of the notion of preventive conservation of tangible cultural heritage based on environmental control. Within this aim, a summary of the state-of-the-art of the knowledge on the role of environmental factors in the physical, chemical and biological degradation of the materials that typically compose such artefacts is also presented. The discussion, focused on the perspective of indoor areas of institutions concerned with cultural preservation, encompassed a number of considerations on the concept of microenvironment and microclimate and on the adequacy of their assertion in the approach to the problem. The topics were contextualised through the specific case-study of the indoor areas of the historical building Casa da Dona Yayá (Sao Paulo, Brazil), in which some of the characterisation possibilities, their potentials and limitations, were highlighted and debated.