Martina Attenni

From Worksite Tracing Drawings to Integrated Digital Models for Reconstructing and Preserving Cultural Heritage

The method of incising in stone the working drawing of structural and decorative elements at the real scale (Αναγραϕeυζ, Anagrapheus) goes back to ancient times. This technic was applied to conceive, represent and control the execution and the assembly of architectonic elements. In more recent literature on the subject focus of attention has shifted from the purely archaeological point of view to that of architectonic representation. The new approach is based on reading guidelines, geometries, traces of assembly and workmanship, wear surfaces—all employed in constructing architecture. Worksite tracing are executive drawings of the design that the architect realized to convey his design idea at a detailed scale. This operative methodology was used in ancient times in Greece and in Imperial Rome and it survived into later periods: romanesque, gothic and renaissance as evidenced by numerous cathedrals in France, England, Spain and Italy. The present research examines drawings found in the cathedral of Terni. Through a careful historical analysis and an integrated survey of the incisions characterized by massive acquisition supplemented with traditional methodologies, digital models have been constructed providing an important contribution to their cognition and preservation.

The past is never dead. It's not even past. 3D models for the knowledge of cultural heritage

The research aims to define the operative procedure for constructing digital archives based on three-dimensional models generated by massive and fast acquisition of data regarding objects of architecture. Today digital objects have become a tradition in the cultural production and a business cycle with the objective to disseminate and communicate cultural data. The problem centers on a definition of data necessary for setting up digital archives. These data will be extracted from material obtained from surveys as well as from informative documentation and need to be chosen and structured. Hence the research aims at identifying the kind of information, tangible and intangible, principal and essential of the Architectural object and classifying them into distinctive and characteristic categories which make it possible to cognize the given object.

Digital Documentation: Villa Borghese

The knowledge of historical and architectural heritage is today reinforced by the growing use of digital instruments serving the purpose of documenting and disseminating data. The development techniques to build 3D models made them pivotal elements in popularizing information on objects on the scale of architectonic structures. Digital archives supplement 3D models with heterogeneous data (2D models, images, texts, video materials, bibliographical documents) with the purpose to preserve, evaluate and popularize cultural heritage (CH) by devising an open system of knowledge. This study puts forward a critical operative method and some guidelines to record, construct, manage, visualize and navigate 3D models with a view to achieving a full comprehension of the architecture in their own context, permitting to discover their inter-relationships through a digital archive.