Abstract:

Our work aims to present a methodological approach for the analysis of historical architecture. This work was carried out in Italy. The context is very important. When planning any intervention work on historical architecture, ideological/historical/social/legislative aspects of the context need to come under review. Operating on historical architecture, for example, requires to refer firstly to a precise ideological conception underling the terms conservation and preservation. In this case “conservation” is strictly intended both as material and conceptual preservation of historical testimonies. Object of an international two-century-long debate, such conception is supported by historical examples that the first part of our work tries to analyse and interpret. Moreover, working on existing architecture needs to follow the legislation in force. As regards Italy, existing laws have been recently updated and integrated with the consequence that so far some new parts have not been defined by technical norms and/or procedures already in use. The second part of our work is therefore focused on Italian legislative provisions to point out restrictions or indications to follow for the definition of a suited methodological approach of intervention on existing architecture. The final part of the work shows how the outcome of the enquiry on the ideological and legislative domains is then applied within a research work: a conservation project on the church of St. Maria della Consolazione in Milan with the focus on the works being carrying out on the façade sculptures. The structural analysis of the facade sculptures, demanded by the superintendence, was not an ordinary procedure and the only work useful as point of reference was the research work carried out on Michelangelo’s David in Florence: a project lasted two years, that had made use of all technologies available. Its results were valid but the methods were too long and expensive, especially in case of application to minor projects. Starting from the analysis of the work on the David, our first goal was to find out a right survey method suited to the sculptures under review and achieve an effective procedure, applicable to any similar intervention work. Resorting to contributions from structural engineering and computer technologies sciences, a virtual model for sculptures and a mathematic model for their analysis were achieved. Other disciplines were therefore implicated. Multidisciplinary approach is, in conclusion, the keyword of the whole work, since even an apparently small work calls for a multiple-angle methodological approach and only the merging of contributions from different sciences can lead to an appropriate comprehension of problems and to their resolution.
The Research Group is composed of: Eugenio Boidi, Elisabetta Ciocchini, Stefania Lupi, Fabio Maroldi and Fabio Zangheri.