Wooden framed structures for masonry buildings retrofitting. A pilot project in Caporciano

The paper deals with the use of wooden framed structures for the retrofitting and rebuilding of partially destroyed masonry buildings. When the damages are not so large to require a complete demolition but they are also not so localized to permit simple reparations, there is always the problem: how much to rebuild without to obtain an historic fake? The philosophy at the base of the Rehabilitation Plan for Caporciano (a municipality in the L’Aquila earthquake area) follows two different ways: a) the demolition, when the ruins envelop is less than the 30% of the original building volume and/or the masonry is too much damaged to be consolidated; b) the consolidation of the masonry and their stabilization through the collaboration with new wooden structures built inside the free spaces leaved by the collapsed roofs and floors. The choice to recover, in such a way, the survived existing structures, descend from the aim to conserve the historical heritage without rebuilding historic fake but integrating the “memory” with the “new” in an harmonic collaboration, testimonial of the necessary technological evolution for the life and environment contemporary needs satisfaction. The project deals with a new structure inside the ruined walls with two goals: the consolidation and the stabilization of the survived walls and the building of new and efficient wooden volumes, with wooden fibres thermal insulation, inside the perimeters of the masonry walls.