Changes in building construction in an earthquake country

This study considers ways of improving the Building Industry and construction methods in Iran, drawing on lessons from traditional construction. It is based upon two observations: 1. the general robustness of the traditional building in earthquake conditions 2. the general failure of modern methods of construction which were introduced into the country to realise the improvements expected of them. In recent decades attempts have been made to improve productivity in the Iranian Building Industry by importing foreign technology and by the industrialisation of building production. It will be shown that these efforts have largely failed. One of the reasons for the failure is the lack of an adequate earthquake resistance of the buildings constructed based on the imported technology. The thesis takes the premise that rather than introducing radically new methods of construction which ignore the existing structure of the Construction Industry and construction skills, improvements may be achieved by building upon this structure and the skills. What are we looking for, as a secondary goal in this study, is a wider improvement of building productivity for the industry. It must be borne in mind that besides socio-cultural conditions, any change must consider: o the present structure of the Construction Industry o the climatic nature such as earthquakes in the country Two assumptions underpin the research. The first is that neither traditional methods of construction nor modern imported technology can meet building construction demands successfully. My contention is that, a blend of the two is necessary. This assumption is supported by the observation that the use of modern building materials, applied by the means of traditional skills, has caused significant problems in earthquake resistance. The second assumption is that many problems of earthquake resistance of buildings in the country are related to the architectural aspects of building construction rather than to those parts which may be subjected to engineering mathematical calculations. This assumption is supported by observation that poor responses to earthquakes are partly attributable to non-structm-al elements of building which have a significant role in earthquake resistant construction. The term 'non- structural aspects' here means those aspects of building design and construction which are related to the architects' responsibilities such as architectural design and the elements which are not designed to be principal loadbearing components. This study considers the nature of 'conventional' building construction methods and its environmental conditions in Iran. It discusses specific problems and their cause and effects, focusing on the problems of earthquake resistance of the methods, as a means to identify the ways to improve building productivity.