The Maraini Sugar Factory: A Big “Meccano” of Iron Components.

In Rieti, a town of Latium, they coexist a well established rural tradition and some examples of industrial architecture dating back to the beginning of the entrepreneurship Italian story. There we can highlight at least three of the principal evolution phases in construction for industries. Principally we note the Maraini Sugar Factory, 1873, built in traditional masonry and iron carpentry, the Supertessile, 1926, which disclaims the potential of original reinforced-concrete patents in theguise of a cultivated historicism, and, finally, the Montecatini, 1937, where they emerge important elements of construction and building sites rationalization in modern architecture style. In former sugar factory it is to point out the essential role to be assigned to the metal components indefining the identity and the architectural values. They emerged clearly from the research and ofarchitectural and constructive survey. In a hundred years, at each major restructuring of production, the technicians of the factory havecataloged and re-used all metal components at their disposal implementing them with newcomponents, where the pieces of this extraordinary "meccano" were not sufficient to complete the expansion or renovation. The research suggests to consider these components as guide elements for further project development. In the old building there are testified many constructive solutions in iron. There are, for example, those for roofs that seem to summarize the entire evolution of the iron techniques. We find: bolted beams, trusses, English truss lattice, Polonceau trusses, trusses with irregular bridles, arched trusses with variables section. Thus the survey highlighted a character typical of metal construction: its intrinsic availability to reuse within the life cycle of the building. If this is a typical feature of the dry assembled system, it is also a confirmation that the evolution of the metal structure allows to find a coherence of design principles declined each time with components related to the contemporary.