The city of falling buildings: why in Brazil's Santos houses resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa

In Brazil, an unusual city is located on the Atlantic coast. Santos has a number of multi-story residential buildings, which, as if dancing, are tilted to each other. But the most amazing thing is that people live in all these "leaning towers", and they do not seem to care about this state of affairs. How did it happen that Santos acquired the title of "city of falling buildings"?

Residential buildings are located right on the waterfront, and their strange location is visible to the naked eye. It seems that they are about to begin to fall further and their walls will close. But they have been standing like this for more than a dozen years, and local authorities believe that living in such buildings is quite safe.

It turns out that most of these high-rise buildings were built in the last century according to old town-planning standards. According to current standards, for such high-rise buildings, a foundation of about 5 meters deep was sufficient. But it is under the houses of this quarter of Santos, starting from a depth of 7 meters and up to about 30 meters, an insidious layer of clay deposits is located. Plastic clay, coming after dense deposits of sand, was precisely the reason for the appearance of falling buildings.

This part of the city, due to its prestigious location on the picturesque promenade, has a very dense development of high-rise residential buildings. The problem did not arise immediately, but several years later, when the load on the soil exceeded the limit indicators and apartment buildings literally swam, leaning in different directions. Due to an engineering miscalculation, several dozen high-rise buildings of Santos were literally in disrepair. Despite this, they still live in people who have come to terms with the specificity of their apartments, where all the furniture and appliances are at an angle.

Correcting other people's mistakes, as always, was harder than building a new building. The leadership of the municipality made an attempt to correct the situation and bring one building to an upright position. This project was successful, but very costly. For this reason, it was decided to leave the rest of the buildings in an inclined position, and they became one of the tourist attractions of this beautiful Brazilian city.