Two Porcheddu’s quakeproof buildings in Messina reconstruction

The huge earthquake of 1908 raised many issues about the Italian aseismic regulations. The subseq...uent State regulations elected any framed building system that can be verified through quick calculations. Steel and concrete were among industry materials those widely available and fully compliant with the mathematic verification. At that time, two building systems were made of steel and concrete: the reinforced concrete and the “ferbeton”. Unpublished drawings and the study of the original files on two housing projects, one in reinforced concrete and the other in ferbeton, sketch out the different performances of the two yards. The Porcheddu Company of Turin (importer in North Italy of the Hennebique building system) was charged of 13 projects in Messi-na, after the 1908 quake: the study of the unpublished material in the Porcheddu archive, hosted at DISEG in the Turin Polytechnic sketches out two construction sites for quake-proof housings, the economical homes for the “Unione Messinese” in the Orto Botanico district, with a reinforced concrete frame and the Homes for the State Employees with pillars made of a prefabricated steel cage and on site poured concrete. The two different construction systems testify the business and law debate on quake-proof buildings.