Gli Elementi Prefabbricati in Cemento Armato dell’ex Sede SGES di Palermo

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to analyse the decay of the precast concrete elements which characterize the building envelope of the Enel-SGES Building, designed by Giuseppe Samonà in 1959 and built after two years in Palermo. Thanks to the original technical documents, saved in the IUAV archive in Venice and in the Samonà's archive of Parma, and according to contemporary evidence the building history has been defined in detail. Moreover we have studied in deep particular elements of the building envelope made of concrete like the windowsills that have different shape in relation to their position on the different building façades. The analysis of these elements, which represent the first example of precast concrete elements assembled on site in Palermo, allowed us to classify 17 type of windowsills that are different in shape and in relation to the water downflow. We have also determined the different mechanisms of decay pathologies and, at the end we have defined three different solutions in order to recover the windowsills based on the different entity of the decay.