Historic load-bearing structures support the architectural sub-units and artistic components of historic buildings. As listed historic buildings, these encompass heritage values that are protected by law. Obviously, the most spectacular heritage values belong to the artistic components (mural paintings, painted wood, carved stone, stuccoes, etc.), but architectural subunits (joineries, floorings, etc.) may also represent such values. Cases when load-bearing structures are considered as lacking in heritage value are frequent, forcing brutal structural alterations with the occasion of interventions, while trying to raise the safety of historic buildings to the levels of current norms demanded from contemporary buildings. It is thus understood that in the practice of designing interventions on historic buildings two fundamental requirements are placed face to face – ensuring performance criteria of mechanical resistance and stability, respectively the protection of heritage values –, and the skill of the specialist engineer is found in his/her attempt to ensure simultaneously the two basic requirements for historic load-bearing structures. 

Keywords: historic load-bearing structure, heritage value, technical regulation

Following a short historical revision, the article presents the current situation regarding the legal regulation of wood preservation, respectively it details the types of wood preservation experts, their education and authorisation, emphasising separately those experts, who operate in the field of historic building conservation. In addition, it deals with the legal regulation of wood reservation specialty studies and wood preservatives in Hungary, as well as in the European Union. 

Keywords: wood preservation, wood preservation expert, wood/timber assessment, wood preservative, historic building, legislation

Romanian built heritage comprises a general group of historic constructions and a particular set of listed historic buildings. The technical legislation and valid standards and norms apply thus to this latter category of buildings as well. Nevertheless, there is a major difference between applying certain prescriptions as guiding or open to interpretation, and applying them on a literal basis. Scientific studies are of great help in identifying the limits to the possible uses of various sets of standards when evaluating, designing, and implementing interventions on historic buildings. The article discusses the utility of various sets of prescriptions from those pertaining to loads to those referring to technological details. The discussion departs from experience accumulated during two case studies, the rehabilitation of the Sic Calvinist Church and that of the Calvinist Church in Kogălniceanu Street, Cluj-Napoca, both having reached reception phase at the end of the working process in the summer of 2015. The last chapter contains some references to the dangers of applying certain prescriptions to historical buildings without adapting or interpreting them and to the dangers of not applying them at all. 

Keywords: rehabilitation, historic load-bearing structures, verification, dimensioning, historic roof structures, net vaults, star rib vaults, interventions, structural calculation

This question arose in connection with the conservation of an old manor house in ruins: should we take the new Eurocodes, the rules for the assessment and consolidation of existing structures into consideration at all or should we look for the old standards. In the building’s survey and the research of its history, we received assistance from the Esztergom Castle Museum, the Esztergom-Komárom County Archives, and from two people, who worked in the manor house before World War II. 

Keywords: tower with pentagonal ground floor and first floor, octagonal plan in the attic, brick filling on shoe tile, slab of distanced timber beams, roof structure on tie-beams with queen posts

The consolidation of heritage buildings involves primarily the implementation of structural interventions, without alterations that may affect the load-bearing structure units, sub-units or elements subjected to the intervention. Starting with the 1950s, a series of methods for the consolidation of historic load-bearing structures, through a technology with micropiles, were implemented and developed over time. Starting from the practical applicability of the method in historic building consolidation, the foundation and underpinning techniques using micropiles have known a rapid international ascension, both in the area of deep foundations for new buildings and as a method for the improvement and stabilisation of the terrain in the transportation infrastructure. A series of technical specifications were developed as a result of research in the field, as guidelines for establishing aspects of micropile calculations. On a national level, the methods of consolidation using micropiles represents a narrower field, and an exhaustive debate on the applicability of technical regulations could be held when the technical specifications for calculations in the field have been updated and completed. This paper aims for a short presentation of the method’s advantages, especially in the field of historic building conservation, through a bibliographic overview from the professional literature, but also from the author’s experience through participation in the finalising of such a project, and will mainly stress the need for an update and completion of the technical regulations in force in the studied field. 

Keywords: micropiles, consolidation, historic buildings

Continuation from issue no. 3/2015 of the Transsylvania Nostra Journal. The article presents several landmarks in the history of the construction and landscape design of the Naláczi-Fáy manor house park in Nălaţvad (Hunedoara County). Created in the 19^th century along with the entire ensemble, the manor house park, listed in the 2004, respectively 2010 Historic Buildings Lists, presents the traces of a former landscaped style design, but at present has gone extremely wild. The article describes the main built and landscaped elements, the relationships between them, as well as their relationship with the settlement and surrounding landscape, as they were observed by the author in the summer of 2010, in an attempt to sketch a brief inventory of the landscape design at present. 

Keywords: residential historical garden, landscape garden style, 19^th century