ABSTRACT

A clear separation between ‘structure’ and ‘architecture’ is an utopia generally difficult to pursue but, in particular, it cannot be applied in the field of historic architecture, which has been built with materials and techniques that make it impractical to distinguish the one from the other. Nevertheless, in practice a clear distinction between the two approaches is often made, as though the structural behaviour of a historical architecture can be understood separately from a general knowledge of the building, related historical episodes and construction history.