REDUCTION OF RURAL HOUSE’S SEISMIC VULNERABILITY FOR SELFCONSTRUCTION (1)

Reduction of house’s seismic vulnerability from popular sectors, supposes generally an economic investment not always contemplated by short and medium term policies from governmental managements of developing countries. The lack of resources seems to influence in such a way, that in the searching for immediate solutions of the most pressing problems, decisions relative to a problematic of potential character are delayed. As turn out to be the derived from a seismic event of destructive type, whose occurrence usually is not assumed like imminent. San Juan constitutes one of the 24 districts in which the national territory of Argentine Republic is divided and it is characterized like the region of greater seismic danger of this country. Its surface is placed in zones defined as 3 and 4, in an increasing scale that range from 0 to 4, according to the INPRES (2) classification. Like another regions, the force of some circumstances has done that, through the time social sectors of greater socioeconomic vulnerability have solved the construction of their own habitat in a spontaneous way, with greater or smaller success as far as aspects relative to conditions of habitability but with serious deficiencies related to their earthquake resistant qualities. The current paper display the search for technological solutions apt for the construction of houses destined to social sectors with unfulfilled basic necessities in a rural area. Their objectives consist of making contributions in the reduction of seismic vulnerability for houses of denizen nonincluded in housing government plans. Contributions from technological field toward the resolution of a complex problematic cannot exclude, from our point of view, an analysis of conditions as socio-cultural, economic, environmental and political implicancies, and even policies that adoption of determined constructive solutions entail and that really will determine their sustainable attributes.The proposed constructive solutions suppose recuperation of incorporated techniques from the villagers’ culture, apt for selfconstruction and incorporation of maximum mineral and vegetal materials available on site. This work exposes the search of technological alternatives for application to selfconstruction rural houses, which include the use of compressed cementedsoil masonry and house-parts, susceptible it to be made in situ, diminishing the use of nonavailable materials in the immediate surroundings. Tests of alternative masonry laboratory are exposed, workshop activities in which houses-parts are made, and fieldwork in which aptitudes of systems are verified and researching activities that include designs of houses and habitability theoretical-practices verifications.