Restoration of Architectural Ornament for Historic Buildings

Abstract

Many geographic areas within cities and towns across the world display historic buildings with stylised architectural elements displaying the influences of periods and cultures throughout their history. Ornamental mouldings are architectural elements which are commonly found both in façades and the indoors of historic buildings. These mouldings support the embellishment of a building; however, its proper maintenance can be expensive. This is because, until now, the restoration and conservation of ornamental mouldings has been mainly a manual artisan activity. This research explores the introduction of digital fabrication technologies into this process. Digital Fabrication technologies, including graphic algorithms and additive manufacturing technologies, enable the design and fabrication of customisable ornamental mouldings. Hence, this paper proposes the definition and testing of a graphical workflow for the fabrication of ornamental mouldings. The restoration and conservation of historic buildings is a major economic sector in Europe. Hence, this paper contributes towards lowering their maintenance cost and making more accessible the ornamentation of new buildings.