Design experimentation and scientific research in the 70s and 80s industrialized construction in Palermo

In the period from the II World War to the mid-1980s, Italy witnessed growing attention towards the industrialization of the construction sector with different territorial specificities. The paper analyses some 70s and 80s public housing districts in Palermo, retracing the history of industrialization in Sicily. The contribution of prof. Benedetto Colajanni and his disciples studying the typological, structural and figurative aspects of these buildings, is highlighted. These are mainly systems for the industrialization of concrete casting with couffrage-tunnels or banches et tables developed in Sicily, thanks to the design contest and the activities carried out by the building cooperatives adhering to the Ravennate Consortium which, at the end of the 1960s, had acquired the patents and machinery for the industrialization of concrete casting of load-bearing structures. The first example of the application of industrialization in Palermo was the Sperone district, a testing ground for both the companies and the design group, headed by Benedetto Colajanni. It was necessary to wait about a decade, with the PEEP districts and the law 25/80, to test the completion on site with modular and standardized elements, both for the closures of the facades and the internal partitions. The paper provides a contribution to the knowledge of a specific construction typology that has characterized a wide range of residential buildings both in Palermo and in the rest of Italy and which requires maintenance and recovery interventions that can guarantee the performance standards required by current regulations, maintaining the original identity.