**6. Proposal for structural stabilization**

*"utilitas, venustas e firmitas",* Vitrúvius (1st century BC): Its standards of proportions and its conceptual principles - utility, beauty and solidity.

Since antiquity, although restricted to a limited territory from Roman times, there are registers of regulatory norms on heritage protection: Decree of about the year 44 AD, discovered in the historic city of Herculano, Italy - forcing anyone to demolish a building for speculative purposes to pay the authorities twice the purchase price. During the period of the Roman empire, an Edict dated 17 July of the year 389 appears - *"It is forbidden to disfigure the exterior ornaments of private buildings with modern additions and damage the historic buildings of an important city for reasons of greed, for the sake of profit".*

Pope Gregory I (590–604) proposes and practices a policy of reusing the immense Roman legacy abandoned after fall of the western Roman Empire. The great patrician domus are turned into monasteries, their halls of reception in churches. He warns his missionaries not to destroy the pagan temples and buildings, but rather by the otherwise they must be preserved and prepared and properly adapted - placing their altars and their relics, for Christian worship [8].

Eurocode EC 8, part 3 - *"Assessment and rehabilitation of buildings",* establishes the criteria for assessing the seismic performance of existing buildings, describing the approach regarding the corrective measures to be taken. It also establishes criteria for measures to repair and / or reinforce structural elements in the design

*Structural Consolidation of Architectural Heritage DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99602*

and final dimensioning of the new elements to be introduced and their necessary connections to the original structural system.

The structural elements in wood, together with the masonry, are of equal importance for the stability of the building. Due to its great vulnerability to deterioration agents and in view of the need to adapt the construction to the new uses and safety criteria currently required, it is absolutely necessary to provide for an adequate intervention, aiming at increasing the resistance of the deteriorated element, either through its reinforcement using new materials and / or by reconstructing the section with anomalies, using the same material - with or without connecting elements [9].

Using a basic model that intends to represent the genesis of structures designed by man, an attempt was made to conceive an Archetype, which in a simple and schematic way summarizes the structure of the study.

Prostheses introduction - shown in black in the photograph, for the damaged sections of the element: Type A repair: in its lower support (**Figure 15**); Type B repair: on its upper support (**Figure 16**); Type C repair: wherever there is an anomaly (**Figure 17**); Type D repair: integral replacement of the element (**Figure 18**).

**Figure 15.** *Prosthesis on the lower support.*

**Figure 16.** *Prosthesis on the upper support.*

**Figure 17.** *Prosthesis with variable location.*

**Figure 18.** *New replacement element.*
