The role of Geotechnical
Engineers in saving
monuments and historic sites.
THE TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS OF GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING
The possibilities offered in this field by technological progress in Geotechnical Engineering in recent
years have stimulated these activities all over the world, as is shown by the reports published in journals
and in conference proceedings.
The new technologies opens up fascinating prospects in this sector; suffice it to think of the
possibilities of introducing structural elements of any size into the soil or of mixing the soil with
cement to turn it into a new coherent material that is very similar to concrete, or of injecting
hardening materials that replace pore pressure fluids in predetermined points of the subsoil, using
probes of all lengths that can travel in any direction, even along predetermined and controlled,
curved lines.
New intervention arose also from the progress achieved in the last decades in the knowledge of the
behaviour of unsaturated soils and in the measurement of soil suction.
A MORE RESPECTFUL APPROACH: PRESERVING THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAST
The role of Geotechnical Engineers in the conservation of historic towns and monuments could be much
broader and multifaceted and even more attractive in cultural terms than what is generally believed.
Until the early 1990s, the concept that the conservation of a monument involves also saving its
construction components, even those that are not visible had not yet gained ground; the idea that the
Tower of Pisa, once it were to be transferred onto a new foundation built using the technologies of the
20th century, would become a fake, only a pure icon of the monument, was not understood
The new way of thinking made its way gradually and radically changed the cultural approach to the
consolidation of ancient buildings, and in the case of the Tower of Pisa, it led to the solution that was
finally and happily adopted for its stabilization
THE NEED OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Theprotectionofahistoricandmonumentalbuildinghasthe aim of maintaining and spreading the
knowledge of past eras and civilizations, then the study of the interaction between buildings and the
environment, and in particular their foundation soils, brings a substantial contribution to it
ll this helps deepen our knowledge of remote times. In this setting the contribution offered by
Geotechnics, alongside that offered by structural engineers, geologists, seismologists, architects, art
historians and construction historians may play an extremely important role. The examples of activities
carried out with this spirit are now a great many and have been quite successful with at times
unexpected and surprising results.