The integrated digital survey of the Florence Air Warfare School. HBIM-based protocols for documentation and information management

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a long-term research project focused on the documentation and digitization of the Florence Air Warfare School, a 1938 important Italian Rationalism architectural complex designed by Raffaello Fagnoni.
The study highlights the methodological protocols employed in the project and presents the several activities carried out for documenting the complex and developing specific digital elaborations.
The research project involved first the study of archival documents related to the original executive project, and historical-multimedia materials, such as newspaper, magazines, site photos and audiovisual newsreels.
In order to obtain a reliable description from the metric-morphological point of view of its current state, integrated reality-based surveying techniques, such as TLS and SfM photogrammetry, were used to acquire and process data.
The data results from these surveys, a global point cloud and high-poly 3D models, were thus integrated and optimized, thus making them a morphologically and metrically reliable support for the development of a graphical atlas of 2D digital drawings descriptive of the elevations of each building and the general plan layout of the architectural complex.
On the basis of the digital survey outputs, a specific coded and semantic classification of the elements in the complex was finally studied through a functional subdivision of it.
These analyses allowed the development of a multiscalar digital repository that, thanks to an appropriate naming-convention, could become a semantic support for HBIM-based and VR systems on which enhancing the management of Florence Air Warfare School Heritage and guide its re-discovery.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.30.2023.11