Tonietti, Ugo

The Church and Convent of San Francisco in Santiago, Chile. Analysis of 400 Years of Earthquake-Resistance Behaviour.

Abstract eng:
A research collaboration between the Department of Architecture of the Universidad de Chile and the Department of Architecture of University of Florence (Italy) was carried out on the Church of San Francisco in Santiago, Chile, the oldest building in the city. This research is included in the research project 'Rediscovering Vernacular Earthquake-resistant Knowledge: Identification and analysis of build best practice in Chilean masonry architectural heritage' (2013-2016), funded by the Chilean National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, FONDECYT. The Church of San Francisco, located in the historic centre of Santiago, is an architectural heritage and urban symbol of the city. This is the reason why it is recognized as a Historic Monument, protected by the Chilean Law of Monuments since 1951, and is also included in the ‘tentative list’ to be presented to the UNESCO because of its Outstanding Universal Value. Another important value, which has not been recognized yet is the earthquake-resistant behavior of the building, considering that it was built in 1586 with fragile building techniques (stone, brick and adobe masonry) and that it has had many constructive transformations throughout its 400 years. In fact, the church of San Francisco was the only surviving building in Santiago from the 1647 earthquake -the most destructive of the Colonial period- and after that, it has faced many earthquakes, exhibiting only local structural damages. Thus, the hypothesis of the research is that San Francisco has some constructive and structural ‘secrets’ resulting from a long experimentation after earthquakes, which explain the significant structural resilience of the building and which had not been fully investigated before. To this purpose, this research has used a multi-level approach that comprises historical research, in situ surveys, crack pattern analysis and local and global structural analysis, all which is presented in this paper, in order to discover the characteristics that are the basis of good mechanical behavior of the church in such a seismic context as Chile.

Contributors:

Jorquera, Natalia

Conference Title:

Proceedings of the 16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Conference Title:

16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Conference Venue:

Santiago (CL)

Conference Dates:

2017-01-09 / 2017-01-13

Rights:

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