1 First European Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (a joint event of the 13 th ECEE & 30 th General Assembly of the ESC) Geneva, Switzerland, 3-8 September 2006 Keynote 9 MASONRY BUILDING DESIGN IN SEISMIC AREAS: RECENT EXPERIENCES AND PROSPECTS FROM A EUROPEAN STANDPOINT Guido MAGENES 1 SUMMARY The recent development of a new Italian seismic code, conceived as a transition towards the final adoption of Eurocodes, has been an occasion to reconsider thoroughly the current criteria for seismic design of masonry buildings, their experimental and theoretical basis, their consequences on practice. Drawing from this experience, a critical discussion of design criteria is presented, with specific attention to the definition of behaviour factors to be used in elastic analysis and more generally on methods and models for the seismic performance verification of masonry buildings. Necessary and possible developments of design/assessment procedures and code provisions are presented, and research needs are outlined. 1. INTRODUCTION Research on the seismic behaviour of masonry structures is nowadays almost entirely dedicated to existing buildings and to the issues related to assessment and reduction of their seismic vulnerability. For countries with a long story of civilization, the seismic protection of masonry buildings involves also the issue of protecting the cultural heritage of the country. There is also a rather generalized negative attitude towards the use of structural masonry for new buildings in seismic areas, since most collapses and deaths in recent earthquakes are due to inadequate performance of unreinforced masonry buildings (usually non-engineered, low-quality, old dwellings). This explains why the large majority of the current scientific and technical literature on seismic behaviour of masonry is dedicated to the study of existing structures and very seldom is masonry being nowadays considered as a choice for the design of new structures. In design of new buildings the structural behaviour of masonry elements is of concern mostly in the case of infilled frames, in which however the masonry panels are not meant to serve as primary resisting elements. Considering the European situation, it is at the same time striking and meaningful that in the last two European Conferences on Earthquake Engineering (Paris, 1998, and London, 2002), out of roughly 600 papers per conference only respectively 4 (Paris) and 2 (London) papers were dedicated to masonry as a construction technique for new buildings in seismic areas, and none of these papers was dedicated to unreinforced masonry. On a broader perspective, the last World Conference on Earthquake Engineering held in Vancouver (2004) shows a rather similar panorama, however with slightly higher percentage of papers dedicated also to the design of new masonry buildings mainly due the contribution of Latin American countries. With such a context, it may look somewhat odd that in this paper relevance will be given to the issues of seismic design of new masonry buildings, including the unreinforced type. However, on one hand, the construction of new masonry buildings in European countries is far from being marginal, even in countries with considerable seismic hazard; on the other hand, several topics that will be discussed for new buildings are of relevance also for the seismic assessment of existing buildings. To appreciate the role of masonry construction in the current European panorama, it can be of interest to give a glance to the present Italian experience in constructions. According to recent data, in 2004 the total yearly investments for residential buildings was shared among new constructions (48.5%) and activities related to 1 Department of Structural Mechanics, Faculty of Engineering, University of Pavia, and ROSE School, IUSS, via Ferrata 1, I-27100 Pavia, Italy. Email : guido.magenes@unipv.it