The second phase of restoration work on the Doge’s Palace in Venice has begun. The work concerns the facades of the south-west corner towards St. Mark’s Basin and the Marciana Library. Thanks to Pilosio, the facades of the Doge’s Palace in Venice remain in view.
Pilosio has already erected the MP suspension scaffold and the MP service ladder twice. Two ESI single-column and two double-column electric masts, a transport platform for people and materials (hoist) and the new Secur-Blind construction site fence.
Instead of the usual facade scaffolding, a truly ‘innovative’ solution was proposed and chosen, integrating several Pilosio systems, with the aim of not obscuring the facades and at the same time ensuring that restorers and masons can move vertically to where they need to be on a wide and easy working platform.
Result: the façades remain visible and operators with their equipment effortlessly ascend and descend by operating a simple joystick on the on-board control panel, exploiting the vertical movement provided by the rack and pinion coupling driven by electric gear motors.
Pilosio’s solutions in detail:
- A multidirectional MP scaffold suspended from the top of the palace for the restoration of the battlements and spires with a large 115 cm working platform. A solution with special stainless steel plugs and chemical resin was chosen for the anchorages to allow them to be reused for future maintenance.
- A 24-metre high MP tower ladder with 66 cm aluminium ramps combined with an ESC 1000 model hoist/transport platform to bring people and materials to height quickly and safely, thus increasing overall site productivity;
- An ESI two-column electric scaffold alongside an ESI single-column for each façade to work on a large portion of the façade in a perfectly ergonomic manner given the ease of handling and the possibility of adjusting the working height to the centimetre;
- A construction site fence that does not look like a construction site fence, aesthetically pleasing, modular and quick to assemble and dismantle. Equipped with both a single door pedestrian gate and a double door carriage gate.
The integration of these different pieces of equipment has resulted in a significant and overall reduction in material transport in Venice by boat and on foot, as well as less occupation of public land.
The work on the Palace
The restoration of the Doge’s Palace includes the consolidation of the battlements and towers on the top and the connection of these elements to the Palace, the sealing of the joints of the external stone cladding, known as the “mattonellato”, over a total surface area of approximately 1,800 square metres, the restoration of the guttering/rainwater drainage systems for 200 linear metres of cornices and 22 gargoyles, and finally the restoration of five mullioned windows on the internal façade facing Piazzetta San Marco.
The total duration of the restoration work by the Veneto-based company Lares Restauri is approximately two years divided into four successive phases.