RENOVATION OF THE EX TOBACCO MANUFACTURING CONVERTED TO A NEW JUDICIAL OFFICE IN VENICE

The intervention concerns the construction of the new civil court of Venice. The intervention concerns 5 buildings named 9, 10, 11, 14 and 15, for which functional improvements are planned to the complex to adapt the design solution to the institutional needs of a court. Building 9 will be used as a Bar / Restaurant while the other buildings to be recovered will house the judicial offices according to a prevalently “horizontal” distribution of the different functions of the court, which therefore sees each sector developing on a single floor, transversely along the three buildings 10-11-14. This is how the chancelleries on the first floor are organized on the ground floor, the administrative services, the judicial voluntariness and other chancelleries on the first floor, the magistrates on the 2nd floor, while further technological spaces are obtained on the 3rd. There are rooms to be used for Archives with compactable cabinets. Since this is a building originally for industrial use, the floors present in the Tobacco factory are mostly adequately sized and sturdy to support the vertical loads required by current regulations and therefore can be largely maintained. Some elements, in particular the secondary floor beams and some concrete frames in building 10, were greatly damaged due to the long period of inactivity of the buildings. These elements were removed and replaced with portions of the floor in a light but rigid structure, or steel integrated with a lightweight concrete slab. The main problems encountered are instead related to vertical elements and seismic stresses. All buildings have perimeter walls in solid brick masonry with variable thickness from six to two heads. Internally, there are slender cast iron columns or, concrete pillars. The analysis carried out, albeit in the plastic field, highlighted evident deficiencies in the resistance of almost all the vertical elements. The rationale for the intervention therefore was to achieve a seismic adaptation, but at the same time not to intervene in an invasive or irreversible way on the existing load-bearing elements, in particular the solid brick walls and above all the cast iron columns, which fact represent the structural element most characterizing from the aesthetic point of view of the structure. It was therefore opted for the insertion of new earthquake resistant elements, consisting of internal metal frames and concrete cores, which allow to “relieve” the existing walls and columns.