Ricerc@Sapienza

In its current form, the Franciscan convent in the town of Castelli, in Italy’s Teramo province, dates back to the second half of the 17th century. It presents an evenly distributed layout arrayed around a richly frescoed cloister.
The structure underwent a major restoration in 1926-27, and additional work was done more recently (1980), in order to prepare the spaces to house a school of art and a museum. This resulted in partial demolitions, as well as the rearrangement of the layouts of certain spaces, work that undoubtedly modified, at least in part, the structural equilibrium of the seventeenth-century construction.
In 2016 new studies of the convent complex were undertaken, in order to draw up plans for a project meant to remedy instances of structural damage, some caused by recent seismic events.
The project was designed to identify, within the original structural lexicon (involving the study of prior restoration efforts as well), a series of measures meant to ‘improve’ the capacity of the monumental structure to withstand seismic events.
In terms of recommendations for the project, this improvement can be achieved through ‘minimal’ intervention aimed at achieving a precise result of structural reinforcement by taking advantage of the interaction between the various parts of the structure, so as to evaluate or restore the effectiveness of their connections installing modest ties or binding elements. All these operations to be carried out in full respect of the historical role of a type of structure and construction which represents an undeniably significant link to the past. In other words, the planned effort of static reinforcement is not meant to stand as a separate, distinct operation of architectonic restoration.