Repair of face brick facades in two ovoid-shaped residential buildings in Granollers (Barcelona)

Abstract

In buildings with face brick facades, the inadequacies of stability and the subsequent risk of detachment of ceramic material are a very common damage when the outer brick sheet is continuous or partially continuous in front of the slabs. When the building takes a curved shape, the problem increases as an uncompensated thrust outwards the facade appears. However, this thrust is nonexistent when facades are flat. In the present case, the brick facades of two ovoid–shaped ten-storey residential buildings required a singular action of reparation. The buildings had experienced strong horizontal movements and buckling in the thinnest sections of the walls. This situation was causing an actual risk of detachment and falling pieces of the façade and even entire sections of it. The repair consisted in the elimination of the vertical continuity of the walls, the stabilizing of the facade at each floor level as well as the ledges, the replacing of the unstable sections of wall that were located above the lintels with pieces of polymer concrete and the division of all facades with new vertical expansion joints located approximately every 8 meters. The objectives of these operations were aimed at minimizing the overall vertical and horizontal stresses in the façade walls, stabilizing the movement generated by its ovoid shape and removing of the damaged areas of the masonry.