Maintenance as a Tool to Avoid Building Pathology—The Oporto Building Example

Many problems related to building’s service behaviour are due to unintentional options during the design process. The building maintenance issue is a relevant aspect to be considered, because it contributes to the memory preservation as it allows continuing using solutions with heritage values. The importance of preserving our historical legacy in the cities, as a mark of our identity, and the need to preserve and protect those venues from increased aging and its subsequent degradation, leads to a discussion of the preservation and maintenance of the built heritage. When constructive solutions do not correspond to the necessary requirements to ensure their performance, the quality and nature of the intervention may be affected, and so, it is important to understand how to maintain this performance during the service life. In fact, the buildings service behaviour is deeply conditioned by the decisions made during the architectural design process which the issue of maintenance has been absent. The present work focused on research aiming to point out the importance of the inclusion of maintenance since the preliminary stages of the project, giving as an example a case study validated in the context of bourgeois house of Oporto, not only because of the importance of the issue, but also, by the evident characteristics of the generality of buildings belonging to the late 19th century which today represent an excellence legacy heritage. The results allowed us to clarify the importance of the role played by maintenance in preliminary design stages and its later consequences and also, on the other hand, to create a decision support system—DSS to be used by project author(s) still in the architectural design stage. This system represents an auxiliary instrument for the entire process, allowing defining, as a guidance tool, relevant aspects based on maintenance procedures that can contribute to avoid building pathology.