A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Analysis of the Traditional Lefkada Houses

Abstract

In the pre-modern age, the concept of preservation was mainly related to the possibility of achieving profits; the decision about restoring derived from the willing of people to keep living their houses and any configuration change was done only if unavoidable. In addition, within a context marked by strong and frequent destructive events, it is interesting to note how conservation may give the way to empirical attempts to improve the construction system. In the present work, the problem is discussed with reference to the particular case of the Lefkada Greek island which, being characterized by a high seismic hazard with a short return period in the context of a poor economy, has experienced a number of different foreign governments in history. Despite a long sequence of critical events, inhabitants decided to stay, developing an empirical resilient structural system able to control simultaneously several criticalities. The main purpose of this paper is to characterize, through a multidisciplinary analysis, this traditional construction system, the only one still surviving in the Ionian Islands. The preservation of this particular situation is a difficult issue, which can not be planned without the assumption of the transformation process which unavoidably affects both things and local people.