Investigating modern concrete buildings by the work of Gino Zani: The case of Messina and Reggio Calabria

摘要

The well-known Earthquake of Messina (1908), which struck both the city of Reggio Calabria and Messina, has been studied for decades. However, it is still not fully understood how the designers reconstructed these cities after the event. Filling this information gap is considered as crucial for a realistic assessment of the safety levels of these cities to earthquakes. Therefore, the presented paper investigates the reconstruction of these urban areas by emphasizing solutions found by engineers in Modern times. The cities were entirely rebuilt in early reinforced concrete - with some exceptions - and are commonly recognized as the first major example of the use of early reinforced concrete in Italy, along with pioneering building methods for seismic-resistant housing-systems. The particular methodology described in this paper is a system which implements permanent formwork to erect inexpensive and robust buildings. This system was developed by the Sammarinese Gino Zani (1925) by complying with standards given by the Italian State after the earthquake. This construction method primarily aims at correcting for factors that affect the durability of early concrete and it reduces fixed costs and lead times for construction by avoiding the use of both provisional formwork and specialized workers.