Investigations on the structural criticalities of Pier Luigi Nervi's Hall C in the Turin Exhibition Center

The preservation of 20th century architectural heritage nowadays is increasingly drawing attention from national and international public entities regarding maintenance and structural interventions on present facilities. Several buildings in our national area require structural rehabilitation in order to guarantee the requirements concerning regulations currently in force. Re-using these buildings is challenging, especially for securing extended service life to structures built many decades ago, and faces the need for a thorough static and seismic assessment of these structures in compliance with current standards. This dissertation aims at analysing a particular structure, mainly constructed out of reinforced concrete and prefabricated ferrocement – elements from the 20th century. The structure was designed and built by Pier Luigi Nervi, the inventor and holder of various patents adopted in his constructions with ferrocement and structural prefabrication. The case study is Pavilion C (also known as Hall C) of the Turin Exhibition Centre, inaugurated in 1950, following the Agnelli Hall (a Hall B, 1948), built a few years before by Nervi. The work is organized in four different phases: firstly, the knowledge of the structure and Nervi's construction method through an extended documentation research, then the analysis of the structural conception based on historical calculation reports with the aim of creating a low-fidelity beam model, data processing, and, in conclusion, presentation of the results. This thesis aims to verify the structural criticalities and the behaviour of the structure regarding static and dynamic actions. Parallel to the analyses required by Italian regulations, experimental tests have been carried out to assess the current state of the structure and, therefore, to evaluate its potential structural damage. The totality of the field-research obtained provided the opportunity to assess the major weaknesses of the structure and allowed an understanding of the possible causes of damage according to the analyses conducted on the low fidelity model.