Construction site description

The project involves the recovery and redevelopment of a building in the historic center of Pietrasanta – Tuscany, Italy (located in Piazza Crispi), consisting of three floors, into a tourist-receptive structure with restaurant and hotel functions.

The interventions concern the interior spaces with a systematic set of works aimed on one hand to eliminate extraneous organisms and some superfetations added over time and on the other hand to renew some structural elements of the building, to recover the link with the city walls, an integral part of the building and the back garden.

Moreover Fundamental is also to adapt the structure to the needs of use from the point of view of current regulations.

Respecting the original conformation of the structure, basically without altering the external appearance of the building.

The building had a strong presence of both rising damp in the historic masonry on the ground floor and water leakage from the floor, especially in the area of the historic walls. At the same time a complete absence of waterproofing and crawl space in the current composition of the counter-floor slab were issues to be solved.

It was necessary to identify a system that would restore such masonry and stop both capillary rise and infiltrations of water from below without going to the use of plaster or other covering materials because the project plans were to leave the masonry face of the historic walls completely exposed.

Intervention techniques used

A “re-lining” was option chosen.

A waterproof basin to zero elevation was made along with a chemical barrier masonry remediation, all with the aim of allowing the design to be able to maintain the defined architectural aspects.

Adopted solutions

For the horizontals surfaces:

a self-repairing and self-bonding membrane was chosen to be used to the concrete suitably ballasted by a reinforced concrete structure suitable to ensure resistance to the negative hydrostatic pressure.

For the verticals walls:

a waterproof plaster covered with a waterproof and flexible coating was implemented.

This was connected to the horizontally laid membrane by hydro-swelladle joints.

Just above ground, confined by the waterproof plaster to avoid bypass, the chemical barrier was made by injections of hydrophobized and non-toxic emulsion.