TEMA

Tag: Construction History

  • Afterword: matter of fact and open issues on the industrialised buildings heritage

    Within the postwar building stock, prefabricated buildings represent a significant subset in both terms of the quantity and the urgency of its safeguard, which is increasingly needed by their ongoing and extended deterioration phenomena. According to “The Twentieth-Century Historic Thematic Framework”, published in 2021 by Getty Conservation Institute, the heritage of prefabricated buildings is outlined in Theme 2, “Accelerated scientific and technological development”, enclosing the product of the large-scale pervasive effects of the technological progress of the 20th century. Nevertheless, at the time of this writing, the post-war industrialised buildings are still generally neglected and rarely protected: supported by the generalised public negative image of the prefabricated buildings – which have aged poorly – demolitions and the canceling of memories are broadly the case worldwide. In this text, some matters of fact and open issues functional to the reframing of industrialised buildings within the 20th-century architectural and technological heritage are outlined and discussed.

  • Compressed-air foundations in Italy: HBIM-aided study of the Tiber River embankments (1876-1900)

    The paper focuses on using compressed-air foundations technology in Italy in the last three decades of the 19th century. The case study of the Tiber River embankments in Rome (1876-1900) reveals the significant application of the technique to construct retaining walls, exploiting iron caissons as excavation chambers. Furthermore, the case study discloses the transfer of knowledge in Italy and the innovative contribution of Italian construction companies and engineers to the international development of the technique. In this framework, applying the so-called ‘demountable caissons’ marked a significant step in perfecting the attempts conducted since the late 1850s to recover the iron used for constructing the caissons for future use. The study exploits the original design documents of the foundations of the Tiber retaining wall, conserved in the Archive of the Genio Civile of Rome, and an HBIM, functioning as an investigation tool and digital archive for educational purposes.

  • Carbonia 1937- 41. The Worksite of Autarchic Architecture

    Abstract

    Carbonia is one of the examples of Italian autarchy before the beginning of World War II. Some of the main national construction companies and high-level designers, of which came from the previous experiences of Fascist foundation towns, focused on the new capital of the coal district. Carbonia is the last phase of this experiment, the most important in terms of size and strategic relevance.
    Carbonia’s urban scene is clearly characterized by two dominant approaches: Pulitzer’s central European modernism, which features the “First Carbonia”, and Montuori’s Mediterranean rationalism, which features the next phase of the “Great Carbonia”. Peripherality and lack of infrastructure, lack of supplies and delays in procurement, unavailability of manpower, and technical adjustments due to unforeseen events constant afflict the emergency autarchy construction site.
    And while the Great Serbariu mine concentrates cutting-edge technologies at an international level, the company town continues to be built in conditions of extreme cost containment. The two parallel construction sites express technological osmosis and the driving role of innovation that the mine yard exercises over that of the city. Our long-term work commitment to reconstructing the history of the autarchic building sites through archival and field research, also documents the refined strategies of some of the most important designers of that period. They adapted their working methods to lead the process towards a unitary and high-quality outcome.

  • ‘STRUCTURAL FANTASIES’ IN 20TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE: THE FORGOTTEN WORKS OF ENRICO CASTIGLIONI

    Abstract

    During the 1950s, the large ‘made in Italy’ reinforced concrete structure established itself around the world. As a consequence, fascinating Italian architects turned structural- and construction-based research into novel figurative conceptions. Enrico Castiglioni (1914–2000) was a distinctive interpreter of this collective phenomenon, but, although his work was significantly discussed in the literature of the 1950s and 1960s, it is today completely neglected. This paper presents construction-history surveys, providing a historical and technical narrative of Castiglioni’s built work.

  • The refurbishment of of prefabricated residential buildings in socialist countries (1954-1970): methodological criteria and social perspectives

    Abstract

     

    Prefabrication was the instrument by which European countries, both the Eastern and the Western countries, sought to cope with the growing demand for housing after the Second World War. In the Soviet Union and the socialist countries, this choice is closely linked to the construction of the communist society.
    The paper analyzes the housing and construction models developed in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and subsequently exported to Eastern Bloc countries, focusing on the Albanian case study. The survey aims to define the main characteristics of the buildings with these systems, in terms of seismic resistance and energy performance.

  • “Reconstructive re-drawings” and “reconstructive models” for history of construction. The experience of SIXXI research

    Abstract

     

    During the SIXXI research (“XX Century Structural Engineering: the Italian Contribution”, ERC Adv Grant, PI: Sergio Poretti, Tullia Iori) special study tools supported historical surveys on works. The experimentation on tools became an autonomous research topic, developing itself from the “reconstructive re-drawing”, pioneered by Poretti in the mid 1980s, up to 3D modelling and 3D printing. This paper resumes briefly its starting and illustrates most recent outcomes, as a board field of research in Construction and Structural engineering History.

  • The “Mandolesi Pavilion”: an information model for a process of integrating multidisciplinary knowledge

    Abstract

     

    The Mining Engineering Pavilion was designed by Enrico Mandolesi in 1962. It represents an icon heralding the transition from masonry to reinforced concrete and the use of “new” materials. Its recovery may become an important starting point for integrating all scientific levels, from the construction history, which reconstructs the history of the project and that of the building site, up to the most sophisticated energy diagnoses that include the definition of an integrated information system on the building, to be used in cutting-edge style with the BIM approach or even with experimentation in a first-step evolution towards a cognitive building.

  • The Dopolavoro building in Carbonia. Conservation, renovation, reuse

    Abstract

     

    The Dopolavoro for the employees was designed in 1973 by G. Pulitzer Finali and it represents the most authentic modern building in the central square of Carbonia. It is an autarchic work where the wall structure supports prefabricated slender reinforced concrete trusses, adapted from mine industrial buildings. The renovation, started in 2001 by the local municipality with the consultancy provided by the DICAAR, has responded through diversified approaches on the issues arising from new usage needs, deterioration and modification to discrepancies with the original project, the implementation, and following improper intervention works.

  • “The design of a system”. Industrialized schools in Italy (1960-1975)

    Abstract

     

    The historical reconstruction shows how the industrialization of the schools building sector, was developed in Italy far from the corresponding European experiences. In fact, although the school building sector represented in Italy the most actual tender to stage a general process of industrialization of the construction process (for temporal extension and scale of production), the fragmentation of the planning horizon forces the outcomes on a small-scale production. The industrialization of building systems was, thus, deeply related to the single realization (or a small group of buildings). Today, this fact underlines the need to deal “case by case” (through the knowledge of facts and buildings) the actions due to preserve the buildings heritage.

  • Project and prototype: industrialized and prefabricated construction in Italy (1945-1980)

    Abstract

     

    Based on archival survey, the study sheds the lights on a neglected story. The research track a line between the post war debate, the traditionalist turn of the INA Casa plan, to the main actions of the public planning for housing and schools. However them were false starts. The process, reduced to anachronistic use of foreign building techniques, will last only few years, dilated over time by constant discussion about the results. Once were given up expectations of an overall reconversion of the building sector, prototypes, remain, presently, witnesses of the foresight that Italian experience demonstrated on the small scale industrial production.