In developing countries of seismic region, many people have to live in traditional masonry houses of stones, bricks and concrete blocks. Though collapse of these houses is one of the most tragic losses of human lives, shift of the houses to construction of modern engineering is difficult by socio-economic reasons. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new base isolation system suitable for masonry houses, which enables improvement of seismic performance of the houses by inclusion of complementary structural members. The proposed system is composed of rocking pillars and lead dampers. The effect of the system is verified by free vibration and shaking table tests of 1/4 scale test specimen. Vibration characteristics of the houses built on the base isolation system are made clear by theory and experiments.
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