Protection of Buildings with Historic, Architectural & Cultural Values: The Case of Royal Museum of Seri Menanti

The Royal Museum of Seri Menanti in Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia, is a cultural treasure showcasing the Malay woodworking craft. It is the masterpiece of traditional Negeri Sembilan Malay architecture. Despite previous conservation works, the condition of this beautiful structure needs to be examined. Thus, a visual condition survey was undertaken to determine the physical condition of the building, ascertain the building defects, determine the defects’ severity extent as well as prioritizing the building elements for possible intervention works. By using prioritized ranking criteria, the visual condition survey showed that the condition of the building is ‘fair’ though it needs urgent repairs. Although the condition of the building is still fair and is safe for occupancy; the building needs serious and urgent intervention works. The roof leakage has the highest severity index, which confirms and justifies the ranking of the roof element as the most serious defective element requiring top priority. Most of the defects spotted in the visual investigation were neglected to reach the stage they have reached now, which is largely attributed to ineffective practices adopted by the custodians of the buildings in managing the maintenance of the buildings. Findings of this study have indicated that the non-implementation of maintenance management best practices by the custodians might have influenced the poor maintenance of the buildings, which consequently influenced the physical conditions of the buildings.