A Methodological Proposal for Building Conservation

Guimarães is a Portuguese medieval town classified as a world heritage site. The historical city center of Guimarães has been shaping and its heritage shows the passage of time. The main goals are to analyze the organic and dynamic passage of time, and prepare a micro study and an historic analysis of a structure and the surrounding urban area. The authors intend to capture the time passage in the perspective of a city as a construction of an aggregation of elements and multiple layers. It is questioned what changes occurred from the generational passage in the building, considered here as a case study, and what implications for the structure of the urban mesh. Historical documental sources were analyzed and a structural examination by photography design was carried out from an analysis of the constructive, artistic, and the architectural structure of this house. The documental references from the beginning of the 16th century to the 19th century were revised. They were the support of the operational analysis that permits crossing data from the end of the Middle Ages until our days.