Giorgio Croatto

Criteria and guidelines about structural reversibility for reinforced concrete historical buildings refurbishment. The Excelsior Cinema in Milan (1926–30)

ABSTRACT The refurbishment of twentieth-century buildings has given rise to lively discussions both at a national and international level over the past 20 years. Such discussions have suggested the opportunity of working on the aforesaid buildings, enhancing what they could afford from a cultural, economic and environmental point of view. Furthermore, underlining how the scope of viable restoration projects is getting wider and wider when compared with the ones targeting pre-industrial buildings. Restoring and refurbishment reinforced-concrete buildings require a different approach from brickwork ones, in order to take into account their different building features and structural behaviour. This has led to setting down specific working guidelines that anyway need to be supported by more adaptable project-related solutions allowing their refurbishment, even as regards their structural reversibility. The refurbishment of the former Excelsior Cinema (1926–30) in Milan presents the features of an operational experiment concerning finding project-related and technical solutions allowing a correct interface between new spaces and existing volumes, even as far as relevant refurbishment of the buildings is concerned. This has made a thorough analysis of the building even more necessary. Furthermore, an experiment has been made regarding a weight-bearing capital enabling the new structures to work together with the existing ones.

From the text to the practice. Insulation materials, building techniques and constructive practices in Udine and Verona refrigeration plants

The techniques regarding the preservation of perishable foodstuffs have been improving greatly since the early twentieth century, as shown in the textbooks of those times; however, the earliest buildings devoted to refrigeration and to the production of ice date back to the nineteenth century. The Centrale Frigorifera Specializzata in Verona and Stazione Frigorifera of Udine slaughterhouse can be taken as two meaningful study cases with a view to analysing the strict links between construction-related issues and the materials employed in order to achieve the insulating performances recommended by the textbooks. The Verona and Udine refrigeration plants possessed the features of ice producing and storing facilities that have turned them into pilot projects, thus underlining the transition – as far as insulating materials are concerned – between traditional techniques and the new solutions proposed by industry.