Survey and documentation of built heritage

Survey and documentation of built heritage

David Lo Buglio (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

The architectural survey corresponds to an action by which certain perceptible attributes of an object are studied and represented. Whether it is the measurement of elements, the acquisition of surface data on materials, the observation of compositional principles, the general proportions of volumes or its alterations, architectural surveying can be considered as a work of data collection. If the act often refers to the techniques and instruments, it is reductive to consider it only by its technical dimension.

Architectural surveying should not be considered exclusively as a process of collecting measurements but as a more complete process involving the acquisition, the process of data and their representation relating to the built environment.
This implies a cognitive and sensitive act requiring interpretation, synthesis and analysis of the object studied. It is in this sense that we give it an analytical dimension⁽¹⁾.

Leaving aside certain singular postures, the survey of a space or an architectural object presupposes a passage through these stages:

• Identification of the general scale of the building, its orientation, its location and the landscape context;
• Identification of the programme, spaces and singular volumes;
• Identification of the architectural logic by examining the structure and its relationship to the spaces and the building envelope;
• The identification of formal and compositional logic by highlighting the dominant axes, rhythms and repetitions in plan, facades and even in sections;
• The schematic transcription of the observations;
• Taking reference measurements and recording all the spaces and volumes in three dimensions;
• The examination of ornamentation elements and their three-dimensional recording;
• The identification and location of alterations and/or deformation.

The requirements of architectural surveying lie partly in the 'nature' of the information collected⁽²⁾. Whether in architecture, archaeology, art history, restoration or heritage mediation, the practice of surveying is a means of consolidating knowledge through the collection and organization of information around a given object.

At the level of the built heritage documentation, digital phenomenon has integrated the discipline for nearly thirty years now. In this context many tools and methods were revisited with a benefit for the acquisition, visualization and analysis technic.
The democratization of lasergrammetry, photogrammetry and other acquisition techniques permits to create digitization composed of several millions of data having a great visual and metrical coherence with the observed artefact.⁽³⁾
Whether in the context of archaeology, history of art or architecture, digital documentation is becoming a major challenge for the preservation, the monitoring and digital archiving of built heritage.⁽⁴⁾