Press Releases

Passing: GHF Advisory Board Member Martin Weaver

July 28, 2004

 

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Passing: GHF Advisory Board Member Martin Weaver

GHF is very saddened to announce the recent death at the age of 66 of Martin Weaver, a leading international figure in the scientific conservation of buildings and their constituent materials.

From 1991 until last year, when illness made him reduce his extraordinary level of activity, he was Director of the Center for Preservation Research and a professor of historic preservation at Columbia University, New York. Simultaneously, he ran an international conservation consultancy practice based in Ottawa, Canada. Both as teacher and as consultant, he had a remarkable international experience of conservation and an unusual breadth of interest and expertise, from timber and stone deterioration through industrial locomotives and installations to Danish and Spanish fortifications in the Caribbean.

Originally from London, where he received in 1961 the Diploma of the Architectural Association, he had his first field experiences as a site architect on British excavation projects in the UK and Middle East. His interest in methods of site preservation was pioneering at that period. Moving to Canada to work on the preservation of an Arctic explorer’s hut, he remained resident there while lecturing and consulting internationally for UNESCO and numerous government organizations, institutes and universities.

He contributed to ICCROM’s work as a participant in the Seminar on the Safeguard of the Rock-Hewn Gvreme Valley Churches in Turkey in 1993, and as a lecturer on the 2002 International Course on the Technology of Wood Conservation, co-organized with the cultural heritage authorities of Norway. His deep knowledge of the deterioration and conservation of timber will remain one of Martin’s enduring contributions to conservation, as will his standard text Conserving Buildings: A Guide to Techniques and Materials” (Wiley, 1992; 2nd ed., 1997). He was a former President of the Association for Preservation Technology and a member of both US/ICOMOS and ICOMOS Canada.

To all those who studied or worked with him, Martin Weaver will be remembered for the infectious enthusiasm and energy which he brought to his work, the generosity with which he gave advice and help, and the extraordinarily broad range of his interests in conservation. His contribution to the field will be long-lasting. [ICCROM]