The morphometric 3D survey of the architectural work of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)

To work out a survey campaign of a large number of buildings done by Leon Battista Alberti within limited time sounds like an ambitious challenge. To complete such campaign adopting uniform innovative technological solutions to accomplish the goal of producing a 3D web based data storage might sound even more ambitious.
Based on the know-how acquired during previous experimental suvery campaigns, held in cooperation with Francesco Ceccarelli on the bell tower of the Cathedral of Ferrara, the DIAPReM research laboratory and the Consorzio Ferrara Ricerche (CFR) managed to develop a significant and productive cooperation with the Foundation Leon Battista Alberti at Mantua.
The activities were set up in order to evidence the great technological progress in 3D automatic surveying procedures developed in recent years. More particularly, significant attention was devoted to enhance the potential of 3D laser scanner survey for the elaboration of 3D querying databases, in order to provide end users with geometric historical archives of architecture.
 
DIAPReM believes that in the future such archives will be of fundamental support for restoration activities on monuments.
The research project started at the beginning of 2005 with the laser scanner surveys of the following Albertian architectures:
•Cathedral Sant’Andrea at Mantua (both internal and external data acquisition);
•Cathedral Santissima Annunziata at Florence (both internal and external data acquisition);
•Church San Martin in Gangalandi at Lastra a Signa, near Florence (both internal and external data acquisition);
•Bell tower of the Cathedral of Ferrara (both internal and external data acquisition);
•Malatestian Temple at Rimini (both internal and external data acquisition);
•Cathedral Santa Maria Novella at Florence (main facade and back-facade data acquisition);
•Palazzo Rucellai at Florence (facade data acquisition);
•Tempietto del Santo Sepolcro in the Rucellai Chapel at Florence (internal data acquisition).

The final goal of the research is to provide the Foundation Leon Battista Alberti with a fully queryable and updatable 3D geometric archieve of the mentioned architectures.