On The Durability of Reinforced and Prestressed Contrete Structures

Abstract

Vitruvio, in Treatise on Architecture, indicated as requisites for buildings: firmitas, utilitas and venustas. Safety (firmitas)therefore always had to accompany functionality (utilitas)and the rules of appearance (venustas). It may be assumed, in a more general acceptance, that firmitas also contains the concept of continuation in time. In that sense, however, a new requisite, vetustas, must be explicitly added. In fact, when referring to natural stones, he recommended extraction of samples from the quarry and leaving them exposed to the weather for two years, checking their condition before, and the Istituto Universitario di Architettura of Venice has adopted these so much so as to insert them in its own coat of arms (fig. 1).

«In infrastructures, which more and more need to be designed as national European systems, a uniform functionality in the territory must be sought overriding the lack of coordination in investment and maintenance activity.»

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi Governor of the Banca d’Italia Final comments May 1990