The 2010-2011 Canterbury (New Zealand) earthquake sequence has highlighted the severe mismatch between societal expectations over the reality of seismic performance of modern buildings.

Life Safety is not enough for modern societies; a paradigm shift in performance-based design criteria and objective towards Damage Control, or Low-Damage, design philosophy and technologies is urgently required.

The increased awareness by the general public/tenants, building owners, territorial authorities as well as insurers/reinsurers, of the severe economic impacts of moderate-strong earthquakes in terms of damage/dollars/downtime has indeed stimulated and facilitated the wider acceptance and implementation of cost-efficient damage-control, or low-damage, technologies.

Building safer and more resilient communities is in fact being recognized as the overarching goal of risk reduction policies and practices. A damage-resistant or impact-resilient built environment, including structures and infrastructures, would represent a key step towards this goal.

The ‘bar’ has been raised significantly with the request to fast track the development of what the general public would refer to as the “ultimate” earthquake resisting (towards an earthquake proof?) building system, capable of sustaining the shaking of a severe earthquake basically unscathed.

This presentation will provide an overview of recent advances through extensive research, development and implementation, carried out in the past thirty years, of an integrated low-damage building system based on precast concrete technology including the skeleton of the superstructure and the non-structural components.

Examples of real on site-applications of such technology in New Zealand and worldwide, using precast concrete dry jointed ductile connections, based on unbonded post-tensioning technique and featuring some of the latest innovative technical solutions developed in the laboratory, will be presented as comforting example of successful transfer of performance-based seismic design approach and advanced technology from theory to practice in line with the broader objective of Building Resilience.

Cost-benefit/performance evaluations will also be presented together with considerations on opportunities and perspectives for the development and wider implementation of the next generation of precast concrete constructions in the Mediterranean Regions.