Pathologies of the contemporary constructions. The case study of a school building realized in mixed-traditional technique

Owing to the devastating earthquake of November 23th 1980 in Italian regions of Campania and Basilicata, the construction of some high schools was financed by U.S. AID (Agency for International Development), including the school of Picerno, near Potenza, subject of this investigation. Planned by Italian Architects and Engineers, the building was set up with sovereign contempt for environmental data and is characterized by the brutalism of the reinforced concrete walls without any type of thermal insulation, and by stepped morphology open to the north-west wind and closed to the south. A central atrium, many storey high, not heated and covered by large zenithal skylights deserves corridors to classrooms, which walls are, they too, without any defence of insulation. Because changes occurred between planning and execution, and the wrong conception of the overall design and constructional details, the building is the demonstration how most serious pathologies must often be ascribed to the planning, rather than execution, and how, in these cases, their removal requires radical operations of thermo-hygrometric and constructive re-organization.