Seismic strength of Napier’s Deco buildings more robust!

The Art Deco Trust is hosting a seminar in Napier on Thursday evening to reveal new information and encouraging evidence highlighting the seismic strength of Napier’s post 1931 buildings being considerably more robust that initially thought.

Sally Jackson, General Manager of the Art Deco Trust, reported that the organisation has been actively working with the University of Auckland and their Faculty of Engineering on a report focused on the earthquake strength of Napier’s heritage buildings.

She added “the report findings are exciting and will be extremely crucial to ensuring the preservation of heritage buildings into the future”.

The Trust has invited one of the report’s authors, Jason Ingham, to present on the findings. Ingham is a Professor at the University of Auckland and has been involved in executive positions with New Zealand’s Society for Engineering, The Earthquake Commission Research Foundation, New Zealand Concrete Society and the Structural Engineering Society of New Zealand. Earlier this year he travelled to Nepal to assist with the recovery efforts after their recent and devastating earthquake.

Ingham stated that the report, which was completed over a significant period of time and researched a large number of Napier’s reinforced concrete Art Deco buildings, concludes that the seismic capacity of these buildings is generally underrated in simple force-based assessments. He added “In layman’s terms, this basically means that Napier’s post 1931 buildings are strong and that they can be expected to behave far differently from unreinforced masonry buildings of a similar age”.

Jackson stated that based on the report findings, immediate changes should occur to the methods applied by engineers to perform seismic assessments of Art Deco reinforced concrete buildings, taking into account the report conclusions. She added “Strong consideration should be given to the evidence supporting the historic success of these types of buildings when interpreting the seismic assessment results”.

The seminar hosted by the Art Deco Trust is set for Thursday 26 November at the Century Theatre in Napier starting at 5.30pm. Other guest speakers include William Horvath, a senior associate of Marsh Insurance, and Fleur Lincoln, the Napier City Council Heritage Planner.

ENDS

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