Building pathologies in social housing: the portuguese state of the art

Abstract

During the XX century, a great intensity of new buildings construction was occurred, representing these buildings an enormous patrimonial valour, which require a permanent investment in management, maintenance, repair and rehabilitation. To provide adequate qualitative and quantitative levels of housing, great economic investments have been made in social housing, what implies the necessity of realise a study on the physical conditions of the built public housing park, with the aim of knowing about the necessity and viability of rehabilitation interventions in order to achieve quality and durability. Rehabilitation investment in the built environmental, beyond contributing for the preservation of the existing patrimony, contributes for the implementation of construction sustainable politics, through the reduction of the consumption of natural resources and energy, of the reduction of residues proceeding from the construction activity and for one better management of ground occupation. In opposition to this, has been registered a quality and durability decrease of the public and private built environmental through its precocious degradation. The aim of this paper is to identify the principal anomalies which appear in portuguese social housing buildings, based on a bibliographical research. This work aim to find design and construction solutions with a minor durability, to be eliminated in future projects.