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Introdution - The creation of the post-graduation in “Advanced Studies on Conservation of Rural Architectural Heritage” is justified, on a level with the national sector of building construction and public works on the existing buildings. Doing an appreciation of the subject, seen by the building construction agencies, the conservation and rehabilitation interventions on the existing buildings involve a high specifcness and complexity, which stands above the corrent building construction.
The strategy of conservation and rehabilitation of architectural heritage of the region where is inserted the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro presents several components, politics, environmental, social-economics, financial, cultural and architectural ones. The conservation and rehabilitation of architectural heritage of this region represent an attitude which, together with other spheres of action, can oppose the processes in course of desertification of cities and villages and of progressive ruin of their architectural heritage.
The conservation and rehabilitation of the cultural heritage impose itself according two view points: the sustainability and the safeguard of the collective memory and of cultural identity of the communities. The sustainability of the conservation and rehabilitation represents lesser consumption of materials and energy, by the exclusion, in great part, of demolition and transport of materials. The conservation and rehabilitation of architectural heritage can’t turn away from two powerfull realities in confrontation: the pre-existent ones, like the way of traditional life and historic roots, which manifest themselves in the organization of the space, in the acclimatization, in the integration in the geographic environment, in the application for the local materials, building techniques and craftsmen skill; and the necessities of life which the evolution of societies imposes. The conservation and rehabilitation of ancient buildings implicate actions of different amplitude, from the mere maintenance till the deeper interventions, functional and structural or not-structural ones. The strategies of sustainable rehabilitation have, as purpose, to improve the structural and energetic behavior of the buildings, and the rearrangement of functional and special conditions, fitted to the actual demands of habitableness.