Conflitti e crolli: il caso del Teatro Sociale di Como

Conflicts and collapses. The case of the Teatro Sociale of Como A frequent limit faced by those who deal with structural collapses during construction from a “construction history” perspective is the availability of a limited number of documentary sources often manipulated or opaque in content. The contribution reconstructs the background to the two collapses of vaulted systems in the Teatro Sociale of Como in 1812 and 1813, causing victims among the workers. The patrons, the people involved in the project or the building site, and the institutional apparatus all had different interests and seemed to be conditioned by conflicting relationships due to overlapping and competing roles. Acknowledging this condition can provide an alternative to the trivialization of facts and help recognize the non-linear and non-transparent processes that sustain the consensus on the program, fuel the long gestation of the theater project, and condition the economic management, the outcome of the construction. For ephemeral convenience, public safety becomes a negotiable value, but this choice implies the renunciation of the technical qualification of the building product and the exception to the "rule of art".