From survey to HBIM for documentation, dissemination and management of built heritage. The case study of St.Maria in Scaria d Intelvi

Abstract

The research presented here is the result of two related theses, carried out in collaboration between PoliMi, (Italy) and NTUA, (Greece). Part of it is carried out within the INTERREG EU project framework, which aims to the valuation and dissemination of the role of the Church of S. Maria di Scaria (Vall' Intelvi) in the international European exchange of skills in the past centuries. It mainly focuses on the Carloni's intervention (XVIII century), a local family of craftsmen, famous across many European cities and regions for the construction of monuments with rich decorations. In this way they managed to send holy gifts and money, but also offered their skills in order to enrich the church of Scaria as a symbol of their success. The laser scanning and photogrammetric surveys have been carried out with the on-site stratigraphic analysis and with the quest for the scarcely available historical documents, in an attempt to study the reconstruction and the main transformations and chronological phases, from the Romanic to the Baroque interventions and to the more recent ones: An integrated BIM approach has been chosen as an experimental way of transmitting a piece of the history of the church life to the local people and also for touristic purposes. In order to disseminate the information on the transformations of the building and on the various decorations in a way that would facilitate the readability and interpretation of the monument by the visitors, a little local museum, co-funded by the EU Interreg programme, is planned to be realized mainly containing the exhibition of the collections of the sacred vessels and furnishings donated to the church in the past. To enhance this aim a 3D object modeling will also be exposed in the multimedia section of the museum. A Heritage Building Information Modeling (HBIM) has been developed, while investigating the potential of an object library specially generated to illustrate the various structural elements, the multiple c- nstruction technologies for the walls, the vault system, the roof etc., and the decorative layers (frescos, stuccos and frames), along with the critical aspects faced by standard BIM in a complex geometry shift from Surface approach to Object modeling. The research contributes to the explanation of the sequence and construction technologies adopted for the vault system, the first two vaults of the nave (their interesting texturing and the particular geometry registered by laser scanning related to the hypothesized centering), with respect to the vault covering the altar and the apse. The HBIM approach development is analyzed to help the generation of a vocabulary and an abacus of elements to be geographically referenced across Europe to disseminate typical construction elements and skills.