Background 

The sustainability of old and modern buildings is a multifaceted issue, involvingscientific, technical, economic, political, cultural and environmental factors. Materials are reactive substrates that can behave as pollution wells or sources and their ageing has a direct impact on the lifespan of a building.The protection and restoration of buildings need to start with a scientific diagnosis of the causes of deterioration as the basis for a strategy of continuous maintenance and preventive conservation to protect the built environment..

Objectives

The objective of the specialist programme in “Materials of the Built Fabric in the Environment” is to train specialists on the problems caused by the degradation of the materials that make up the built and cultural fabric in an outdoor (natural or man-made) or indoor (museum, library, archives…) environment.This expertise, standing at the interface between the material and the environmental, is based on the diagnosis of deterioration, scientific methods for studying degraded materials, identification of the causes of damage, knowledge of the mechanisms of damage, predictive modelling of the behaviour of materials, knowledge of preventive measures, assessment of the risk and costs of maintaining and repairing/restoring materials, a material life-cycle analysis.

Openings 

The target career areas are in environmental research and environmental management, with a specific expertise in tackling problems relating to the deterioration, protection and sustainability of materials.

After acquiring the Masters degree, the student can prepare a doctoral thesis, which may be funded from the Ministry’s research budget (MENESR) or by research contracts (national or European), by allocations from research bodies such as CNRS, Ademe, Andra, CEA… and public or private research labs (CIFRE grant) such as EDF, Saint Gobain, Italcementi, Lafarge, the federal Ecoles Polytechniques...

This degree can also lead to direct openings in companies or research agencies specialising in the protection and restoration of heritage materials (CEBTP, Concrete SARL, LERM, CRITT Matériaux…) and in local authorities (departmental architecture and heritage services), or else in the private research departments of large corporations (Renault, PSA, Bouygues Construction…).