ZAMORA-MESTRE, JOAN-LLUIS1

1) Laboratory of Innovation and Technology in Architecture (LITA), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), joan.lluis.zamora@upc.edu

In recent years, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) research group “Laboratory of Innovation and Technology in Architecture” (LiTA) has conducted many studies on residential buildings with defects in interior partition walls. A private statistical analysis revealed that the defects occurred in specific aspects. Subsequent on-site visits were made to building works to test the technical procedures used in the real construction processes. Shortcomings were found in the techniques used to build the partition walls, which were a likely cause of the defects. Consequently, a process of innovation was undertaken to address the shortcomings, which led to the development of various proposals for improvements, which are presented here and will now be applied.

Keywords: building innovations, partition walls, masonry products