RESTORATION AND CONSOLIDATION OF ARCHITECTURE

1. BASIC CONCEPTS: restoration, conservation, strengthening
2. THE NORMATIVE SYSTEM: Heritage Conservation Act, Guidelines for heritage preservation from seismic risks, Technical laws for existing buildings, historical manuals.
3. THE KNOWLEDGE PATH: Historical measuring units, proportions and original geometry, historical inspections (archives documents, building manuals, historical "reading" of the building); the survey of geometry, architecture, structure, materials, disorders, decay phenomena, crack pattern; experimental tests, structural monitoring.
4. ART AND SCIENCE OF BUILDING: some concepts of building science and technique, equilibrium, graphic statics, stress-strain relations, strength, no-tension materials; hyper-static structures; ultimate state assessment on empirical basis.
5. TIMBER STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS: Materials characteristics, decay phenomena, structural problems, timber floors and roofs, post trusses.
6. MASONRY STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS: Materials characteristics, mechanical behaviour, pillars and columns, walls, seismic behavior of traditional masonry buildings.
7. ARCHES, VAULTS AND DOMES: building typologies, static behaviour, disorders and crack pattern, collapse mechanisms, graphical methods for the limit state analysis, finite element analysis, strengthening techniques.
8. STRENGTHENING METHODS: traditional and innovative techniques and materials for the structural and seismic strengthening of historical buildings; the difficult equilibrium between safety and conservation; theoretical, aesthetical and functional issues in the structural restoration.
9. BUILDING'S HVAC SYSTEM: HVAC adaptation, with specific reference to the compatibility problems
10. EXAMPLES OF RESTORATION AND STRENGTHENING: design and project references, in the frame of the complex cultural debate ongoing in this field.