Le Vele: a story of abuses and redevelopments
The Vele were a residential complex of seven buildings built between the 60s and 70sdesigned by architect Franz Di Salvo, with the aim of social and urban redevelopment of the area. The project it was not completely completed regarding common gathering spaces, and soon the area suffered the social decay that we all know. Since the Irpinia earthquake, many of the Vele housing units have been inhabited illegally. The journalistic website Open reports as «when one of these is cleared the squatters they build homemade walkways and tear down the wall».
Recently the neighbourhood has been the subject of building and social redevelopment interventions in the area, which have foreseen and carried out the demolition of the remaining Vele, replacing them with new residential buildings, except the Celestial one which will be left in memory and on which the project foresees the retraining for public use.
As always, it will be the investigations and technical assessments to establish the causes and responsibilities of the structural collapse. The collapse occurred on the only building to be preserved and on which the first works of retraining for the disposal of asbestoswhich, from what can be learned from the press, the structural parts were not of interestalthough they will still be subject to evaluation by the investigators.
Why did the balcony collapse in Scampia?
Can we invoke the fatality for this collapse? No. Because, beyond the delicate social context of the area, an expert report drawn up by technicians eight years ago, on the occasion of the drafting of the aforementioned urban redevelopment project, highlighted strong critical issues regarding the static safety of the landings so long as «this structure is in a state of decay due to severe corrosion phenomena due to poor maintenance. In many places, the walkways themselves have been detached, posing serious danger to residents” (Open news site). At the moment there is no news of work undertaken after the results of this assessment, which also revealed other critical issues such as elevator failures or the expulsion of concrete cover from the pillars.
No maintenance, probable abusive interventions, no preliminary assessment of residual safety of the structures after many years of operation. An explosive mix, which sooner or later favors the structural crisis of some element. Probably there was a overcrowding of peoplefifteen of which were involved in the collapse?
It is difficult to give a certain answer now, it could be a hypothesis that the experts will work on by verifying the design calculations of the balcony, what overload it could originally support and what was allowed in the current state compatible with its degradation. In any case, we are talking about structures designed to receive a certain crowding during the passage of people.
On this occasion, one can invoke the justification social degradation of the area? Perhaps in part. But poor maintenance combined with illegal works and the absence of safety assessments and checks of the actual state after years of operation is a mix that can be found elsewhere and that unfortunately characterizes a certain building and maintenance culture in our country.
The culture of prevention
We have already written on other occasions about the lack of a culture of preventionin a country with a very high level of building antiquity that would deserve resources for investigation plans and structural checks, to be given priority over other restructuring requests. Sometimes become aware of the level of risk It can already represent the first step towards a awareness-raising process and investment priority choices for safetywhich certainly requires a time frame that is not immediate and to be carried out in stages, but to be undertaken.
Home should be the safest place to live. The building we live in is not always recently built, therefore it deserves periodical in-depth analyses and scheduled maintenance in the same way as what is required by our body in the phase of life, especially when it is no longer young. Performing scheduled maintenance on the structures in which we live should have the same frequency with which we go to the doctor to understand the causes and remedies in the face of an illness, or to do simple check-ups. They are both ways to preserve our life..
