Refurbishment of the 80.000 m3 Napoletanagas gasometer

The term gasometer (or gasholder) was coined in the late eighteenth century by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch [1], inventor of gas lighting. Although the term literally means “gas meter” (a meter for measuring the amount of gas), it is commonly used, perhaps improperly, to indicate a structure conceived with the purpose of storing the town or illumination gas. In the past, these tanks were used to accumulate the town or illumination gas, which was produced in principle by the destructive distillation of coal. With the spread of natural gas in the second half of the twentieth century, the use of town gas is disappearing and the gasometers gradually lose their function. Nowadays, the gasometers are, in some cases, constructions of significant historical and cultural interest, belonging to the so-called “industrial archeology” and therefore deserve to be the subject of structural recovers and functional conversions [2]. The paper illustrates the refurbishment design of the 80.000 m3 gasometer, which is part of the Napoletanagas’s settlement of Via Benedetto Brin in Naples.