In Europe, energy and climate policies started to take shape from the 1990s onwards culminating with the ambitious 20-20-20 climate goals and the Low Carbon Europe roadmap 2050. The European Commission empower the importance of achieving the objective of the recast Directive on energy performance of buildings (EPBD) that new buildings built from 2021 onwards will have to be nearly zero-energy buildings. The general belief is that the energy performance optimization of buildings requires an integrated design approach and crossdisciplinary teamwork to optimise the building's energy use and quality of indoor environment while satisfying the occupants' needs. In this context, there is a substantial need for professionals such as architects and engineers specifically trained and educated in integrated design approach and trained to work in crossdisciplinary teams. To be able to push forward the development, it is essential that educational institutions foster professionals with such knowledge, skills and competences. An initiative towards this direction is the EU project of IDES EDU: "Master and Post Graduate education and training in multidisciplinary teams". The paper describe the necessity of more integrated and cross-disciplinary approaches to building design through state-of-the-art of the building sector and educational initiatives in the participating countries in the project, and through theory of design processes. The paper also communicates the results of newly developed cross-disciplinary education established by fifteen different educational institutions in Europe. Finally, the paper explains and discusses the challenges encountered during development and implementation of the education across different professions and countries.
Historical museums and depositories contain collections with a number of lead objects or historical documents with lead seals. Lead is a metal which has good corrosion resistance under atmospheric conditions. On the other hand, lead corrodes in an activity in an environment which contains volatile organic compounds (mainly acetic acid and formic acid). In a depository environment, sources of volatile compounds can be the historical documents themselves, wood, plastics (those made from cellulose acetate), polyvinyl acetate adhesives, varnishes, oil or emulsion paints, etc. The aim of this work was to compare the efficiency of commercial adsorbents (activated carbon, activated alumina, zeolite, and bentonite) in the acetic acid vapours. The lead corrosion rates were determined by using lead resistometric probes. Activated alumina and activated carbon were found to be the most effective adsorbents of acetic acid vapours. On the other hand, the available zeolite had the worst sorption ability compared with the other tested substances.
A series of scientific methods (X-ray analyses, optical and electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and thermal analyses) was used to research the ceramic bodies and glazes of forty vessels from Renaissance Prague. The set of Early Modern Age archaeological glazed ceramics contained tableware, kitchenware and technical ceramics. The main aim was to characterise ceramic materials and glazes used over two centuries. Attention was also paid to the identification of defects and corrosion products of the glazes. The research was conducted with an emphasis on the context of the original use of the ceramic artefacts and the environment of the waste pits from which they were excavated. The archaeological finds include three technical ceramic vessels (a rectifier, a bowl and a jar), which together could have formed a distillation apparatus. Since these vessels represent a rare finding, they were subjected to a detailed investigation. Based on the similarity of ceramic bodies and glazes, it was proved that the three technical ceramic vessels were made in the same workshop and were parts of one distillation apparatus. The results of the performed analyses determined that the studied vessels were manufactured from raw materials with a high content of a plastic component and that the raw materials did not change significantly during the period from the 15th to 18th centuries. The firing temperature of most of the vessels did not exceed 1000 °C. It was proved that all the glazes were mediumor high-lead content glazes and were coloured with ionic pigments.
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