Survey, Assessment and Conservation of Post-industrial Cultural Heritage: The Case of the Thin Concrete Vault in Casale, Italy

The “Paraboloide” of Casale (Italy) was built around 1926 to be a clinker warehouse, and nowadays is a relevant example of the Italian concrete industrial heritage. The thin parabolic vault and the construction methodology are as innovative as other much better-known realizations of the dawn of the reinforced concrete era. Thanks to the adoption of LiDAR (Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging) technology, a detailed three-dimensional survey of the structure geometry has been carried out, including not only the emerging parabolic vault, but also the complex and very interesting underground structure. Homogeneous level of precision and continuous metric information of each, straight and curved, structural elements turned out to be crucial to the correct identification of design principles and construction solutions adopted at the time of the construction, which is mandatory for the correct refurbishment of the “Paraboloide”. The decay analysis of the most difficult regions to reach was carried out combining the laser survey information with a series of terrestrial photogrammetric pictures. A finite element analysis of the structure, accounting for the presence of reinforcements, was carried out in order to assess the initial and the present structural safety. In addition, the principal intervention criteria, both related to structural safety requirements and conservation prescriptions, are briefly summarized.