1.

TIME LINE STUDY ON METHOD OF CONSTRUCTION AND MATERIALS OF

CONSTRUCTION.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is perhaps the most well-known architectural oddity in
the world. The construction of the tower occurred in three phases over 199 years,
spanning nearly two centuries, as war and social unrest mired the construction. On 5
January 1172, Donna Berta di Bernardo, a widow and resident of the house of
dell'Opera di Santa Maria, bequeathed sixty soldi to the Opera Campanilis petrarum
Sancte Marie. The sum was then used toward the purchase of a few stones which still
form the base of the bell tower.  The evident tilt of the tower was first noticed during the
initial phase of construction which began in August 1173 under supervision of architect
Bonanno Pisano.   Work on the ground floor of the white marble campanile began on 14
August of the same year during a period of military success and prosperity. This ground
floor is a blind arcade articulated by engaged columns with classical Corinthian capitals.
Engineers tried to compensate for the tilt by making the columns and arches of the third
story slightly taller on the sinking side; however, political unrest halted construction
before they could continue to the fourth story. The tower began to sink after construction
had progressed to the second floor in 1178. This was due to a mere three-metre
foundation, set in weak, unstable subsoil, a design that was flawed from the beginning.
Construction was subsequently halted for almost a century, as the Republic of Pisa was
almost continually engaged in battles with Genoa, Lucca, and Florence. This allowed
time for the underlying soil to settle. Otherwise, the tower would almost certainly have
toppled. In 1272, construction resumed under Di Simone. In an effort to compensate for
the tilt, the engineers built upper floors with one side taller than the other. Because of
this, the tower is curved. Construction was halted again in 1284 when the Pisans were
defeated by the Genoans in the Battle of Meloria. The seventh floor was completed in
1319. Additional adjustments were attempted on the fifth and sixth stories, but
construction was once again halted before they could continue to the seventh. Nearing
the completion of the tower in 1372, the builders made a final attempt to compensate for
the lean by angling the eighth (top) story bell chamber.  Regardless of these attempts to
correct for the lean, the tilt continued to worsen throughout the centuries. It was built
by Tommaso di Andrea Pisano, who succeeded in harmonizing the Gothic elements of
the belfry with the Romanesque style of the tower. Careful monitoring, however, didn’t
begin until 1911, when measurements revealed that the top of the tower was actually
moving at a rate of around 0.05 inch a year.  While the periods of unrest were no doubt
a bane to the tower builders, it is very likely that had these construction respites not
occurred and allowed time for the underlying soils to settle, the tower would have
toppled well before completion. The construction of it is the form of a hollow cylinder
surrounded by colonnades. The inner and outer surfaces of the cylinder are faced with
tightly jointed marble but the material between these facings consists of mortar and
stones in which extensive voids have been found. A spiral stairway winds up within the
walls of the Tower. The stability of the masonry at second-storey level on the south side
has been a matter of major concern. The Leaning Tower of Pisa has undergone many
repairs and renovations designed to keep it standing despite the obvious tilt.  The first
modern attempt at stabilization of the tower occurred in 1935, when engineers
attempted to seal the base of the tower by drilling a network of holes into the foundation
and then filling them with a cement grout mixture.  However, this only worsened the
problem by slightly increasing the lean.  The failed stabilization did result in more
cautious approaches by future preservation teams. In 1990, the tower was closed to the
public and apartments and houses in the path of the tower were vacated for safety.  
This was partially spurred by the abrupt collapse of another Italian tower (Civic Tower of
Pavia) due to masonry degradation.  City officials were concerned that if the Tower of
Pavia could collapse simply due to masonry degradation, then collapse of the Tower of
Pisa, with its more than 5° tilt, must have been eminent.  In 1991, an international team
of geotechnical engineers, structural engineers, and historians were gathered in an
attempt to save the famous landmark.  Still, denizens of the city considered it very
important to retain the tilt of the tower, due to the role that this element played in
promoting the tourism industry of Pisa.  The preservation team (led by John Burland)
finally took action in 1992 when the first story was braced with steel tendons, to relieve
the strain on the vulnerable masonry; and in 1993 when 600 tons of lead ingots were
stacked around the base of the north side of the tower to counterweight the lean.   While
the preservation team assured city officials that these were only temporary measures
until a permanent solution could be found, the moves infuriated the general public of
Pisa who viewed the measures as eyesores that would be another blow to the tourism
industry, which had already declined by about 45 percent since the tower had been
closed to the public.  In response, in 1995, the team opted for 10 underground steel
anchors, to invisibly yank the tower northwards.  However, this only served to bring the
tower closer to collapse than ever before.  The anchors were to be installed, 40 meters
deep, from tensioned cables connected to the tower’s base.  In view of Pisa’s high
water-table, the team froze the underlying ground with liquid nitrogen before any
anchors were installed, to protect their excavations from flooding.  However, it was not
taken into account that water expands when it freezes.  The groundwater pushed up
beneath the tower and, once the freezing had ceased, created gaps for further
settlement of the tower.  On the night of September 7, 1995, the tower lurched
southwards by more than it had done in the entire previous year.  The team was
summoned for an emergency meeting and the anchor plan was immediately abandoned
and another 300 tons of lead ingots were added in a desperate attempt to prevent the
loss of the tower. Consensus within the preservation team did not come easy, but all
eventually agreed that soil extraction was the only viable solution that would be
acceptable to all concerned parties, as it had the advantage of not touching the tower
itself, thereby placating the art historians.  The process involved the installation of
helical drills surrounded by hollow steel casings to remove soil from below the high
north side of the tower.  This would create a condition of controlled, localized,
subsidence; and allow gravity to coax the structure back upright.  Work began in 1999
and halted in 2001 after approximately 77 tons of soil had been removed and the tower
had been straightened by 44 centimeters, returning to its 1838 inclination.  While more
soil could have been removed, the soil extraction program reduced the stress on the
vulnerable first story enough to be safe, yet also maintained the distinctive lean of the
landmark.  The team estimated that it would take approximately 200 years for the tower
to return to its pre-stabilization inclination, and the tower was reopened to the public in
December 2001. In 2003, Mr. Burland introduced a new drainage system beneath the
piazza’s north side; upon discovering that the root cause of the lean was a perched
water table upon the upper silt layer below the north side of the tower, which fluctuated
during the rainy season, sometimes coming within 12 inches of the surface.  The new
drainage system addressed this condition, and is hoped to permanently alleviate
additional movement.  The inclination continues to be monitored daily and revealed that
the tower did not move at all between 2003 and 2009.  This is the first time in its history
that movement of the tower has completely ceased.  Thus, the tower has been deemed
safer than ever, likely to the chagrin of tourists’ hopeful to have been present when the
tower finally took the plunge. The tower currently stands at a height of 55.86 m (183.27
ft) on the low (south) side and 56.7 m (186.02 ft) on the high (north) side.  The weight of
the tower is estimated to be 16,000 tons.  The tower currently leans at an angle of
3.97°, but leaned at an angle of 5.5° prior to the stabilization efforts in the late 20th to
early 21st centuries.

2. PROBLEM ENCOUNTERED (FROM DESIGN TO CONSTRUCTION, TO LIFE

CYCLE AND PRESENT, ACTORS INVOLVED)
It took two centuries to build it. Construction on a campanile, or bell tower, to
accompany the public cathedral in the Italian riverside city of Pisa broke ground in
August 1173. By 1178, workers had made it to the third story of the structure, which was
already tilting slightly to the north. Military conflicts with other Italian states would soon
halt progress on the tower, which would not resume until 1272. This time, construction
only remained underway for 12 years before another war again stopped the work. A
final wave of construction picked up again in the early 14th century, concluding with the
installation of a bell chamber in 1372. The exact cause of the tilt was not fully
understood until 2001, when a serious stabilization effort (which began in the 1990’s)
was completed. Some architectural follies are the product of unforeseeable bouts of bad
luck, the Leaning Tower of Pisa’s signature tilt could have been avoided with better
planning.  It was known prior to the start of this stabilization effort that the tower had
been built atop an inadequate foundation (which was only 3 meters thick); The
foundation constructed mainly of marble and lime; the tower was built in a circular ditch,
about five feet deep, over ground consisting of clay, fine sand, and shells . The cause of
the lean is due to a reaction of the composite of clay, fine sand, and shells that the
tower is built on, from the Tuscan rivers Arno and Serchio, were too unstable to support
the building even in the early stages of its construction. There had been the only factors
at work uniform settlement of the tower could have been expected, and the city of Pisa
would play host to a significantly less famous (albeit more vertical) tower.  Also tilting
was also due to the fluctuations of the water levels. This caused the tower to keeping
shifting, as well rotate later discovered by scientists that the tower’s position in relation
to the ground water level. Amazingly, the builders noticed this error early in the two-
century construction project—after the addition of a second story to the tower, the
ground began to give, prompting that infamous slant. When construction resumed in
1272, the additional developments did not exactly help the tower’s posture. The
stacking of additional stories atop the existing three jostled the building’s center of
gravity, causing a reversal in the direction of its tilt. As the tower accrued its fourth, fifth,
sixth, and seventh stories, the once northward-leaning structure began to tip further and
further south. As time passed, the ground only further weakened beneath the tower’s
heft. An early 0.2-degree tilt increased gradually over the subsequent centuries, maxing
out at 5.5 degrees—or with the top 15 feet south of the bottom—by 1990. Over the next
decade, a team of engineers leveled the soil beneath the tower and introduced
anchoring mechanisms in an effort to rectify the landmark’s nearly catastrophic lean.
The project allotted the tower a more secure stance, but it did not prevent continued
tipping. By 2008, however, a second go at balancing the foundational soil halted the
tower’s continued slouching for the first time ever. In 1934, Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini declared the crooked attraction was a pockmark on his nation’s reputation
and allocated resources for straightening the building. Mussolini’s men drilled hundreds
of holes into the tower’s foundation and pumped in tons of grout in a misguided effort to
rectify its tilt. Instead, the heavy cement caused the base of the tower to sink deeper
into the soil, resulting in an even more severe lean. 

3. PRESENT CONDITION
On November 22, 2018 was published by Elisabetta Povoleda, in the article of
“The New York Times, “Leaning Tower of Pisa now tilts a little Less. 1.5 Inches Less.”
ROME — Italy’s famously Leaning Tower of Pisa is a little less off-kilter. Nearly two
decades after engineers completed consolidation work to keep the tower from toppling
over, officials monitoring the monument said recently that its famed tilt had been further
reduced by 4 centimeters, or 1.5 inches. In the statement of Nunziante Squeglia, a
engineering professor at the University of Pisa and a consultant to the committee that
monitors the tower, The tower “is continuing to straighten,” The correction is the result of
measures carried out just before the turn of this century to ensure that the tower would
not collapse. Professor Squeglia added “We knew those measures would have
protracted consequences,” but engineering could not predict that the tower would
reverse its tilt, he said. The tower, one of Italy’s most famous monuments, is also one of
its most fragile. It began sinking into the ground five years after construction began in
1173 built as a bell tower for Pisa’s cathedral and baptistery. The pillar took almost 200
years to build, and included various unsuccessful attempts to correct the tilt. At some
point over the centuries, its perilous slant made the tower — listed as 58.36 meters (or
about 190 feet tall) — a must-see attraction for visitors to Italy. According to Gianluca
De Felice, general secretary of the Opera Primaziale Pisana “Locals used to think of it
as an architectural failure, then it was seen as a boon for the city,” the nonprofit
organization responsible for the monuments in Pisa’s so-called square of miracles,
where the tower is located. In January 1990, the tower was closed to visitors — around
800,000 a year — when officials became concerned about its long-term stability. It
reopened 11 years later, after various methods to counteract the tilt managed to reduce
it by 15.95 inches. “We rejuvenated the tower by around 200 years,” bringing the incline
to where it was around 1820, said Salvatore Settis, one of the members of the
committee that oversaw the consolidation of the monument. “The good news is that the
tower continues to straighten — if slightly,” he said.Today, Professor Settis leads a
committee of three in charge of monitoring the Tower Pisa and reporting on its “state of
health,” which is currently “very good,” he said in a telephone interview. The tower, he
added, was “the most monitored monument in the world,” with more than 100 sensors
giving hourly readings on a host of elements, from the external and internal
temperatures to wind velocity to micro fissures in the materials to soil movement.
Officials in Pisa have also halved the number of visitors allowed to clamber to the top of
the tower for a sweeping view of the Tuscan surroundings.