The conservation project of historical architectural heritage involves a broad, interdisciplinary and well organized base of knowledge. More specifically the availability of in-depth architectural knowledge in all its aspects (historical, formal, figurative, symbolic, structural, functional .. .) as well as its contextual, urban and environmental reality, can orient and guide the operational choices. Ability and capacity in managing in a visual dynamic and way, relationships and dynamics, are consequently needed. Indeed this is a very huge amount of informations highly heterogeneous in characteristics and sizes.
The research program aims to provide an innovative contribution in defining the organizational and procedural ways targeted to integrated databases construction. In preserving, sustaining and enhancing the architectural and urban heritage it can be very usefull in the documentation and protection processes, performed by local governments as well as technical and professional workers. Working in the field of cultural knowledge making use of very different representation scales from
the territorial to the artchitectural field suggested the use of geographic information systems (GIS). The informations systems really has reached since now a wide dissemination in the professional sphere. Both cultural and geographical fields are now the subject of special interest and many initiatives. The “contextualization” of the heritage made by geographical information make explicit qualitative and quantitative net that each building define with the territory, converging towards the same cultural identity. In this perspective, geographical information systems for considering the cultural heritage in its entirety, giving the territory and the natural landscape and man’s role of cultural systemic expression of the entire system of relations between individuals and among these goods and context itself. Despite the unprecedented evolution, the innovative technologies use in performing cultural heritage and notably architectural and urban reality analysis and documentation, is neither immediate nor directly consequential to the availability of hardware and software. In the same way, in the field of architectural survey, the opportunity to adapt laser scanner technology, was started up for completely different application areas (i.e. industrial and military). In the same way cannot be granted the GIS use in the architectural field and its interoperability with 3D models. Indeed, if it ‘s true that in recent years GIS technologies have experienced widespread application at regional scale, it is an invaluable professional investigative tool for making planning tools, it’s also true that applications developed since now on the architectural heritage preservation and restoration is still not ripe like certain applications such as the assessing strategic risk evaluation. In this case, however, we are referring to GIS use in developing the information systems oriented to documentation, protection, preservation and enhancement of urban and architectural heritage. Clearly appears in this context the chances connected to 3D model availability and integrability’ in the
GIS system, a condition that is not at all guaranteed a priori, but has to meet specific requirements properly identified and defined in the information system design phase. 3D modeling is a process which, transferring the metric and geometric informations from the real to the virtual world, can overcome the bidimensionality constraints, imposed by projective methods, operating directly and immediately in the 3D space. If we look for similarities with architectural representation traditional methods, for sure it can be easily found in the physical models like the large “habitable” ones made by old cabinet makers in the long tradition protracted since Renaissance to Neoclassicism. However, substantial differences in wealth, size, manageability, disarticulability and transformability of the model can be found in the digital models very easy to be handled and transformed. Insofar as capable of being immediately in tune with the thought on architecture and its spatial substance 3D modeling impose itself as essential tool in developing and processing the project. Attributes such as constructability, and de-constructability, modifiability and fluidity in the architectural design, elements addition or integration, together with an total freedom in geometric primitives choice and use, became an habit once and for all acquired.In the meantime, taking advantage from the experiences so far accomplished, it’s sure that knowledge’s
further advancement in terms of modern technologies application to the study of architecture, passes through the resolution of some issues or specific goals:
- different survey methods integration;
- integration between data acquired by means of digital and traditional technologies;
- 3D representative models construction methods and characteristics;
- 3D models and GIS information systems interoperability;
- protocols and operating procedures unification in the domain of data acquisition, organization, implementation,
management;
- open source systems and open formats checking and testing.