An open project, initially designed for students on the "Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art on Paper, Archival and Library Materials" programme at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.

The large unit is a VC 0020 climate chamber from Vötsch Industrietechnik. Materials are placed or hung in it and tested for their durability under extreme conditions - high and sometimes rapidly changing temperatures and humidity - with the door firmly closed. The aim is to accelerate the ageing process that materials undergo very slowly under natural conditions and therefore hardly noticeably during a human lifetime. This provides a rough approximation of the expected natural ageing processes that many things undergo. In industry, many new products are artificially aged according to standards in order to test important properties. The climate chamber is also used to analyse paper in restoration work if you want to know which components of a paper contribute to its ageing or if you want to check whether a restoration treatment is effective for the future preservation of the paper.

Prof. Dr Irene Brückle, Head of the programme