Restoration Through a Traditional Intervention of a Historic Unreinforced Masonry Building "Palazzo Scarpa" in Naples

In this paper, a challenging retrofit intervention on an existing traditional un-reinforced masonry building is illustrated. The building showed an advanced state of degradation of front walls, with detachment of plaster and possible fall of ornamentations. The diagnosis phase has also shown that: the floor structures were not fixed to the masonry walls and, in many cases, the steel beams were oxidized; the intersecting walls were not well connected; the safety factor of the structure under the vertical loads revealed an unacceptable low value. Due to this condition, and considering the necessity of not evacuate the 36 families that lived in the building during the work, after some analyses, were decided: to substitute the external walls at 1st and 2nd levels; to strengthening the other walls; to connect the intersecting walls and to reinforce the depredated floor structures. All the applied mechanical interventions can be set in the framework of traditional strategies and have been selected due to their effectiveness that have shown in several applications as well as to their perfectly adherence to the idea of a conservation restoration work. In 2007 the interventions illustrated in the paper won the award “Sisto Mastrodicasa” on restoration and strengthening of buildings.