Abstract
The 500th anniversary of European arrival in Brazil was celebrated in 2000 and highlighted the need to review the condition of the country’s remaining colonial built heritage. This revision is particularly apposite in the adjacent cities of Rio de Janeiro and Niterói, where the heritage that survived twentieth century reconstruction has done so largely because of ownership by the church or military. However, whilst this may have protected buildings from demolition, detailed fabric can be neglected or abused. This paper investigates this possibility through an examination of two forts, built primarily of local augen gneiss, that guard the entrance to Guanabara Bay. Natural outcrops exposed to the same humid sub-tropical maritime environment show that this rock is susceptible to slow disaggregation through salt weathering. Surveys suggest that stonework in the forts that is sheltered from rainwash is heavily loaded with salt and has passed a threshold, wherein stresses accumulated over centuries of apparent stability, combined with the effects of a more recent increase in atmospheric pollution and apparently inappropriate intervention (re-pointing), have triggered rapid breakdown that requires immediate intervention.
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Acknowledgements
Funding for this project was provided through an exchange programme funded by the British Council and CAPES, and a research grant from FAPERJ. The writers are also indebted to Gill Alexander for preparing the diagrams; to Julia Simpson for carrying out the IC analyses; to John Meneely for carrying out and assisting in the interpretation of the XRD analyses; and to the staff of the Electron Microscope unit of Queen’s University.
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Smith, B.J., Baptista-Neto, J.A., Silva, M.A.M. et al. The decay of coastal forts in southeast Brazil and its implications for the conservation of colonial built heritage. Env Geol 46, 493–503 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-004-1051-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00254-004-1051-y