CAAD in the preservation of historic buildings

Abstract

In this paper we will discuss the possible contributions of CAAD -Computer Aided Architectural Design- to sustain the efforts of specialists involved in the preservation of historic buildings and monuments. The preservation of the historic and artistic patrimony is nowadays a prior interest at international level. CAAD provides a rich set of different tools and methods with which historians, architects and engineers can analyze, develop and test their interventions on the monument, discuss the consequences of their actions and visualize the effects, enhancing different aspects. Computer-based reconstruction and visualization of the monument of interest can yield important insights before any modification has taken place. Taking advantage of the possibilities offered by the world wide web (www), experts can discuss their results with other experts with textual descriptions, pictorial information as well as complete computer models of varying level of abstraction. Based on the reconstruction proposal of an existing monument, we will discuss different aspects of the tools mentioned herein. We will present a tool (Sculptor), with which we reconstructed various typological models of the monument. Based on this analysis we modeled the modified monument with commercial CAD programs.