On-Site Tests and Structural Assessment of a 1950s Pavilion of General Markets Complex in Florence

The “Local wholesalers and mushroom control” pavilion of the general markets complex (named Mercafir Center) is an interesting example of modern architecture for warehouse and commercial use, built in Florence in 1958. Its structure is composed by reinforced concrete (RC) portals made of precast RC beams prestressed by means of Morandi’s patented technology. The building is classified as strategic place for the local Civil Protection in environmental and social emergency conditions. In view of this, the Municipality of Florence, owner of the pavilion, recently commissioned a static and seismic assessment study to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Florence, aimed at evaluating the state of conservation and the structural performance of the building over than sixty years after its construction. An extensive on-site experimental campaign was carried out within this research agreement to estimate the mechanical properties of the materials and the structural members in current state, consisting in: pacometer tests; concrete cover demolitions with geometrical checks of the underlying reinforcing bar diameters, and visual checks on the cables of the prestressed beams; measurement of compression in concrete due to prestressing by extraction of an instrumented concrete prism; SonReb tests; core drillings; extractions of reinforcing bars; and Vickers durometer tests on exposed bars. The paper offers a detailed structural and architectural description of the building and its original design, and reports a synthesis of the results of the experimental campaign and the performance assessment study.