Stories Of Deterioration and Decay

The essay opens the book and introduces the different issues that it treats. Within the vast range of buildings in concrete, the purpose here is to focus on the architecture itself, to explore the face such works have exposed to the action of time. The aim is to approach the question from the point of view of conservation/preservation, whose ultimate goal is to prolong the working life of such buildings. Some of these buildings have become the monuments of our recent past, but the deterioration of the architectural patrimony of the last hundred years is a very complex question, on a scale that goes way beyond the usual discipline of architectural restoration. However, architecture that is so powerfully representative of the twentieth century is to be saved not simply by being a tourist attraction; its salvation also depends upon recognition that it forms part of the history, culture and historical identity of individual nations. Over the last twenty years, extensive such research has been carried out in the archives. Both chemists and engineers have studied the pathologies to which the material is subject. But it is important to know who was the first talking about the ‘pathologies’ of which reinforced concrete was the victim; when was the moment that scholars and technicians understood the inherent weakness of ‘ordinary’ and reinforced concrete. The essay try to answer these questions, showing that the mixed composition of material, which guarantees its versatility, leads to its intrinsic weakness, and that from the very first uses of reinforced concrete, it caused recognized problems with regard to reliability and durability.