Concrete Long-Span Buildings’ Adaptive Reuse: Sustainable Rethinking of Public Architecture and Industrial Heritage

Twentieth-century large-scale public and industrial buildings are scattered worldwide fostering a wide debate in the fields of reuse, transformation, sustainable construction processes, and the ensuing balanced development of the involved urban areas. Redesigning a new life cycle for those buildings and their contexts that have lost function, use and significance provides a unique opportunity to contribute to making human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable (UN2030 Agenda, Goal 11). Among the buildings at risk, a prominent role is played by those in reinforced concrete in which well-known architects and engineers, set free from traditional structural requirements, introduced unprecedented, innovative solutions. In this realm, long-span buildings of the second post-war, such as sports and social facilities, warehouses, pavilions, hangars, markets, movie theatres, and auditoriums arouse considerable interest for their intertwined urban, architectural, and engineering significance. The awareness of their historical, cultural, and social values, combined with the serious and growing problems of structural safety, fuels today a greater sensitivity to this heritage. It is, therefore, worthy to protect and reuse these buildings as tangible evidence of a particular historical moment, rich in discoveries, novel construction techniques, and experiments on new materials. The issues of aging, poor energy, structural performance, change of function, use, and social role are amplified in this modern heritage, prompting the need for careful analysis and making its sustainable rehabilitation and reuse a demanding technical and economic challenge.