Conservation guidelines for brickwork during the `Nawabi` period of Bhopal

Abstract

Brick is construction material. It is manufactured by molding the plastic clay into a rectangular prism. It has not only been used in India but also in other countries. In India, it has been used since ancient times. Its use is still ongoing because it is economical and is easy to handle. It is easily available and has property of being expressive in the required shape and size. There are many structures in India which are quite old and they have used the thin bricks for their construction. These bricks which have been used for the structures vary in their sizes and also have various names changing from place to place but are commonly known as ‘Lakhori’ bricks. So it is very difficult to restore these many varied bricks with the authentic precision. Many works have been done to conserve the brick structures but there are no such principles for the protection of the basic brickwork of the structure or the structural units like bricks. No such work has been done yet on this topic so far. There are guidelines for the structural use of reinforced masonry, study for structural use of unreinforced masonry with cement mortar in standard size of brick and also some study for the behaviour of standard size brick masonry in earthquake, but all of these are developed for modern day construction type. There are no guidelines prepared for the specification and use of bricks in heritage structures. There are some countries those who have tried to prepare some guidelines for the repair of historic brickwork or developed conservation management plan for historic brickworks. Hence, the main aim of doing this thesis is to give emphasis on the brickwork and to prepare some policy for them which would help in their proper conservation. In order to achieve the goal, the objectives that have been studied include the study of bricks as a material, identifying the problems faced by the bricks etc. So various steps that have been adopted for study includes the study from primary and secondary sources such as gazetteer, archival documents, books on bricks, books on construction materials, publications, history of the region, life accounts, journals, research papers, online documents, site visits and surveys. Then the extraction of relevant information followed by the analysis of construction techniques, material decay and defects is carried out which would lead to analysis followed by proposals.