The earthen Church of Kuñotambo in Peru, built in 1681
J. Paul Getty Trust
The Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) has announced the completion of a 10-year project to preserve the 17th-century Church of Kuñotambo in Peru and make it more resistant to the earthquakes that have historically plagued the region.
The project, carried out in partnership with the Dirección Desconcentrada de Cultura de Cusco (DDC-C), which reports to Perus Culture Ministry, is cast by the Getty as a case study that will be applied to the conservation of earthen buildings across Latin America. Earthen construction can be particularly vulnerable to earthquakes, especially if the building involved has been poorly maintained.
Located in a remote village of 500 people about 35 miles southeast of the city of Cusco, the one-storey 1681 church was built with thick mud brick walls and buttresses atop a rubble masonry base and was topped by a wood-frame gable roof. It boasts rich wall paintings of saints and of other figurative and geometric motifs and has been in continuous use as a Roman Catholic church since it was first constructed.
Working with the Peruvian Culture Ministry and engineers from the University of Minho in Portugal starting in 2009, the GCI mapped out the myriad problems threatening the churchs stability. Using software that indicates how different elements of a building behave during seismic upheaval, the engineers determined that the walls were no longer connected by wooden bonding in the corners, resulting in visible cracks, says Claudia Cancino, a senior project specialist with the GCI. Settlement of the foundation had also caused the walls to lean, and the original roof had collapsed and been replaced with a 20th-century version that was leaking, she adds. And several exterior buttresses that had supported the building had been lost.
Work began in 2011, with conservators zeroing in first on the churchs prized wall paintings, Cancino said. (Some had become detached from the walls, prompting the conservators to stablise them before further work got underway.) Then the workers, who included masons dispatched by the Ministry of Culture, began underpinning the foundation. Walls were reconnected with wooden cornices and original tie beams were attached to the adobe walls to provide stability. The workers also rebuilt the earthen buttresses that had supported the walls and connected them to the walls with wooden supports. The team then recreated the churchs wooden truss roof.
Interior view of the wall paintings and statue of Saint Santiago, patron saint of the Church of Kuñotambo
Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust
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