Management of Urban Areas by Preserving the Historic Roofscapes and Timber Traditional Building Technologies

The urban landscape appears as a synthesis between perspective, recognisable shapes, and repetitive and interpretable details. The connection between urban planning, built heritage, and the preservation of urban landscapes and historical building techniques represents one of the most important components when approaching new urban developments in historic areas and interventions in heritage buildings. Based on this, a study was conducted in Timisoara, Romania, a city with a wide variety of heritage areas. Despite this, there have been a series of difficulties regarding the protection and management of these sites, one of the main causes being aggressive new developments in/close to those sites, leading to the loss of highly valuable buildings, but also complex historic construction techniques. Regardless of these interventions in heritage areas, roof structures in Timisoara tend to be overlooked, leading to intact roofscapes around the city. Therefore, taking into account that the roof, not just as a part of a building but as an element of the urban landscape, the study highlights that all elements are interconnected, and none can be approached without taking the others into consideration when developing proper management plans for heritage buildings and historic urban areas. In addition to this, context-related decisions taken in the past also affect the general layout of the roof structures ultimately influencing the considered joined details.