RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

Mediterranean Spaces and Cultures. Measurement, Analysis, Comprehension, Evaluation and History for the Knowledge and Monitoring of Transformative Processes in the Mediterranean Area.

University Co-ordinator

Politecnico di BARI - SCIENZE DELL'INGEGNERIA CIVILE E DELL'ARCHITETTURA - BARI(BA)

Research Unit Leader

Angelo AMBROSI

Description

Our research unit intends to contribute to the general research design by means of the following tasks:
1) for Mediterranean area: survey and iconographical cards on some dome buildings similar to Apulian those for period and typology. These buildings have to be located in Mediterranean area through bibliographical searches and inspections;
2) for Apulian area: accurate verification, updating and completion of the vast but disorganized collection of existing surveys in order to provide documentation of the present status and historical consistency of the single buildings;
3) for both the contexts: study of the most characteristic elements of these architectural styles, the covering and, in particular, the domes. Highly accurate detailed representations will be made aiming to gain a wide knowledge of the morphology and building techniques;
4) creation of an organic, organized corpus of designs for presentation of the overall and individual architectural styles examined, thanks to graphic studies on paper or digital support.
For the first and the second aim the following operations are forseen:
a) recognition of the whole group of buildings with acquisition of the relative iconographic sources, considering as documents serving for this analysis the land registry charts, views of the cities, repertory and historical photos, as well as previous surveys, designs, restoration reports, etc.;
b) the results of a new photographic campaign together with an image bank;
c) a new survey campaign of dome buildings in Mediterranean area that can offer a general summary of this and other kind of buildings;
d) the construction of virtual models of the individual buildings.

This will be achieved by means of direct and instrumental surveying techniques using fully automatic stations, hand-held laser meter, laser levels, etc. Photogrammetric techniques will also be used to survey the wall elevation surfaces and wall devices and laser scanners for detailed surveys. The results will be displayed both in Mongian projections on paper and digital support at suitable scales and in the form of virtual models.
To achieve the third aim, the research design requires high definition surveys to point out the morphological and construction characteristics of the covering solutions, on both the intrados and the extrados sides. These surveys will aim to collect data to be represented as:
1) accurate structural profiles according to longitudinal, transverse and diagonal section planes,
2) level curves of the surfaces,
3) the connotative signs of the stone slab surfaces determined by the device, the intersection lines and their interposition with the wall structures, any superficial decorative features.
Comparative tables will be drawn up at the end of this phase.
The fourth task will involve georeferencing of the Apulian artifacts surveyed on the basis of aerial photogrammetry to relate them to the road network and territorial status, both past and present.
Searching equipe will issue the results of the survey campaign conducted on this homogeneous group of buildings, and intends to adopt an editorial format similar to atlases devoted to Italian monuments issued by the "Accademia dei Lincei".