Читать книгу Monument Future - Siegfried Siegesmund - Страница 106

The study was carried out on the stone materials used within the masonry of the ACAIT (Azienda Cooperativa Agricola Industriale del Capo di Leuca) industrial building (Fig. 1). The building was a factory for the processing of the tobacco, in the province of Lecce (Southern Italy). It was built in the early 1900 and dismissed at the end of the 1980s. The factory is a remarkable example of the industrial archaeological heritage relating to the tobacco manufacturing, a flourishing activity in which Puglia region had a leading role on a national basis in the past century.

The original building developed on the ground floor only and it has undergone several enlargements over the years. Like all industrial buildings, it has a simple and modular layout, composed of large rooms with corner-vaulted (“volta a spigolo”) roof, typical of the local tradition, load-bearing pillars and masonry walls with regular local limestone ashlars.

Figure 1: The building of the tobacco factory ACAIT affected by a partial collapse.

Figure 2: Detail of the stone from the collapsed vaults, which shows a yellow-beige-color (Y) passing to a reddish one (R) across the thickness of the masonry unit.

In 2018, after a strong rainstorm, part of the structure collapsed (Fig. 2), involving in a first time one vault and part of the two adjacent ones and in a second time (about 7 days later) the remaining part (five vaults) of the room. The collapse evidenced the inner structure of the vaults and external walls. The latter were two leafs walls without horizontal connections, filled with incoherent material (pieces of rocks and debris).

The vault collapse revealed traces of an historic fire, which were hidden by the presence of plasters, in the form of fumes and a diffuse reddish color across the thickness of the masonry units up to some centimeters from the surface (Fig. 2).

In the framework of a diagnostic activity supporting a restoration project in view of a building reuse, the study of the fire damage on the stone was undertaken.