Building Exoskeletons for the Integrated Retrofit of Social Housing
Abstract: In Europe, most of
the social housing heritage, built before the 1980s, suffers of architectural
and functional obsolescence and seismic vulnerability, raising questions about
the future of the cities and their inhabitants. In an era of environmental emergency
and lack of resources demolition and reconstruction is not a sustainable
alternative. A multi-purpose campaign of architectural, functional and
structural retrofit is fundamental but the complex information and requirements
to handle require integrated and innovative solutions. The bio-mimicry design
approach led to the definition of the “building exoskeleton”: an external steel
frame, two or three-dimensional, encapsulating the existing building and
provided of shape memory alloys-based devices for passive seismic dissipation.
The simplicity of the structure gives high flexibility in the definition of the
new architectural features and functional performances, adapting to the
changing necessities on both space and time scales. The energy performances result
also radically improved. The efficiency of this scheme to improve the seismic
response of the constructions is verified for a real case study – a concrete
frame with brick infill – through static and dynamic nonlinear analyses with
the software SAP2000. Finally, the economic and technical feasibility of the
proposal is discussed together with the implications of the project and the
possible developments.
Keywords: Adaptive Design;
Integrate Retrofit; Biomimicry; Shape Memory Alloys; Seismic Engineering;
Social Housing
Author: Giuliana Scuderi
Journal Code: jptsipilgg160038
