I wrote this book for my 70th birthday. This book is a retrospective of my work since 1993 on creation, development, and application of seismic isolation systems in construction of different types of new 1-20 story buildings, as well as strengthening and retrofitting of existing 3-9 story buildings.
Due to these works, my country – Armenia is currently at the top level in the field of seismic isolation and being small and developing country Armenia stands side by side with powerful and advanced countries. I am proud of that! By the number of already constructed and retrofitted seismic isolated buildings per capita Armenia is second in the world after Japan. This fact is widely recognized by the international professional community. At the 15th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering in 2012 Prof. Martelli, Dr. Forni, and Dr. Clemente (Italy) have stated: “It is worthwhile stressing that Armenia remains second, at worldwide level, and has the largest number of building applications of seismic isolation per number of residents, in spite of the fact that it is a still developing country”.
What is the most important in this successful story of my country on application of seismic isolation technologies is that they bring to significant reduction of the cost of construction of new or retrofitting of existing buildings. The book provides a clear picture on how and why the created/invented by me seismic isolation technologies make Armenia, the developing and once a low-income country, the world leader in the application of low-cost seismic isolation.
