The Bank Job

One of the hardest projects I ever faced. A listed 78 year old structure, classical sample of pre WWII fascist architecture that needed a serious makeover....

This project was implemented in collaboration with Elin Technical, a construction company from Athens that is responsible for the maintenance of all Piraeus Bank branches. 
My duties in this case were to license and supervise the entire project in all of its aspects and restore the exterior (nearly 1100 sq. m. of stone facade) to its original state.
To start, Irini did some research and found an Italian paper relevant to the life of the architect Armando Bernabiti that left a huge heritage in Rhodes Island. Bernabiti designed and supervised many of the landmarks of Rhodes City some times going against the instructions of his commanders in order to protect his creations. According to this paper, the building was used to house the INFAIL, an insurance institution against construction accidents. The top floor had residential use. That until the liberation of the Dodecanese, it has been used as a bank ever since.

After researching thoroughly the background of the architect and the building it self, she went on mapping and detailing every single part of the structure leaving some very detailed drawings behind that will be used for future references.

After a long and demanding licencing period of around 8 months we finally got the "green light" from the bank to proceed with the overhaul of this 78 year old building, classical example of pre WWII fascist architecture.

Nothing on this building was done in a "normal" way...

The load bearing system is a combination of concrete columns and load bearing walls that transfer the load to the foundations. The slabs have ribs in order to reduce the dead loads and the gaps between the ribs have been filled with light bricks ("capizanas" as they are called by local builders). 

The exterior walls have been covered by local limestone blocks giving the illusion of a stone built structure to the bystander. Some of the stone blocks are fixed on the stone walls with metal supports and ensure that they will stay in place during lateral (seismic) loads.

Now to the fun part...

1. The stone walls were painted with acrylic color in an attempt to insulate the structure (whatever...)
2. Mortar between stone blocks was in many places long gone and had to be re applied.
3. Some of the blocks showed signs of lateral movement and had to be replaced
4. Wooden windows were not the original and had to be replaced. They were also not energy efficient as they had single glass panels.
5. The roof insulation was in a very poor state resulting in increased humidity inside the building and many places where the plaster had failed.
6. No drawings or relevant documents were found even in the Italian archives.

All of the above were prerequisites set by the local architectural council in order to allow any renovation process of the interior....

And not only that, I had to face a couple of past renovation attempts that left more problems than the ones that they fixed. But I will get to that later on...

After the necessary bidding, sampling and negotiating, we took over the "purification" of the exterior along with the general supervision of the project. The rest were done by Elin Technical that has a long term partnership with the bank.

Here is a video of the sampling process indicative of the paint removal approach that was followed:

This specialized diamond tool has shocks that don't allow the tool to "eat away" the stone, removing the paint and leaving its surface relatively flat.

Some remarks regarding the chosen method:

1. Water blast left marks. It was tried as a sample by another contractor and it was so bad that I had to replace the blocks.
2. Paint removal products deteriorated the blocks. The stone is very sensitive to withstand such an aggressive corrosion
3. Soda blasting was tried but wasn't very effective and it was time consuming and expensive enough for the bank to reject it.

We then proceeded with the removal of the old mortar and replacement with new. Color match is achieved in a very complex way that is a trade secret...

So having found the right method we only had to do all 1100 sq. meters of it....

This needed some serious scaffolding....all 1100 sq. meters of it...

When I signed to deliver in 60 days all my friends said I was paranoid....

We delivered in 45 leaving only a few things to be done because HVAC systems had to be installed first. 

In total 4 workers were scraping and two workers re-mortaring

At the same time my good friend Mike was taking care of the windows...

The windows were copied from an adjacent building of the same period, designed by the same architect (A. Bernabiti). They were sealed, primed and painted by products of the same paint series in order to ensure durability of the coating as the building is located next to the sea.

A total of 43 windows were replaced, 4 were built from scratch in order to conceal the HVAC air vents. The council didn't allow any other holes in the facades  other than opening the round decorative windows on the sides of the building and only under the condition that the vents were going to be concealed.

At the same time work was being done on the interior....

Back to the exterior...

In order to ensure that no more humidity will infiltrate again, we sprayed the whole thing with a nano technology based material that allows transpiration of trapped humidity from the inside but at the same time it does not allow rainwater infiltrate the pores of the stone. This is very important because of the adjacency of the building with the sea. Without this material, salt will enter the pores and will crystallize as soon as the sun dries the water. The volume expansion that takes place during crystallization will result in minimal damage to the surface of the stone. When added up, you have a serious problem in 10 - 15 years but its not going to happen on my watch!

The following video shows the material in action....

and another video from the application....

The interior overhaul will be covered in another post....

The details for the exterior are enough to cover pages and pages. I have tried to showcase some of the most important. However, if you have a similar project and need an opinion I'll be more than happy to help!
Finally, I would like to thank all the people from Elin Technical for this superb collaboration and I'm looking forward in doing this again!

As for the rest, we have been "rocking" the neighborhood ever-since with the reveal of this beautiful building... We're now working on the lights...!!!!