Highlights of Villa Savoye
The Villa Savoye is designed by Le Corbusier in 1927, it is an iconic building and it was defined as a historical monument. It signifies the five points of a new architecture. When constructing the roof garden, horizontal windows and free design of the facade, the reinforced concreted was applied in the design of the Villa Savoye. Therefore, it is studied in this project to learn about its possible design approaches under earthquake conditions. The building originally is built in an earthquake benign place, however, this case study aims to rebuild the Villa in semisc active regions such as Japan to seek for possible changes by changing the structural layout and material properties. …show more content…
When rebuilding the Villa, the out of -plane inertia forces should be the focus to be prevented and separated. Also, the beams are assumed to function as members of moment frames because of the size constraint of columns, which is relatively small compared to most common cases in buildings.
It is an important step to access the diaphragm adequacy when designing the rebuilt Villa. The roof diaphragm is shown in the figure below. There are two sections, namely A and B. The rear shear wall on the right-hand side can sustain half of the inertia forces transferred from area B to the area of the diaphragm. Also, a similar shear wall is needed for the left-hand side of the building. For the area A, it should be connected to the right-hand side as well with the help of tie member or collectors. Another important issue in the design of section B is the in-plan bending moment generated when the inertia forces act in the x direction. Since the connection area ( strips of the diaphragm) can provide weak resistance, the y direction ties function as a complement in this case. The buckling may exist when the design compression forces cannot be fully sustained by the ties. Especially the tie on the right-hand side is mainly responsible for the compression …show more content…
The difficulty to keep interior spaces or the architectural form. When adding shear walls in the x direction, the original design is bounded to be changed. Hence, the four one-bay moment frames are proposed as the solution to the problem, also it is designed to fit into the existing planning.
4. The difficulty of assessing diaphragm adequacy. On the first floor, it is possible to transfer the inertia forces to the moment frames and shear walls. However, in some parts of the building’s shear forces cannot be effectively channelled into the shear wall. For example, the shear wall which is near the rear of the building cannot work efficiently in the proposed design.
Summary
In summary, the Villa Savoye can be relocated in a seismically active region after rearranging the structural layout. However, the seismic resisting structure is likely to be incompatible with the existing interior structure layout. This case study points out the importance of engaging with seismic design at the beginning of the construction project. The consequence might be severe if the architect and civil engineer do not consider it comprehensive at the early