Innovative survey methods for the digital documentation of vernacular architectural heritage in Syria.

Ref.: 271
Key theme: 03 Visual integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 15/11/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

TUCCI, Grazia * (Italy) - Faculty of Architecture
BONORA, Valentina (Italy) - Faculty of Architecture
NOBILE, Alessia (Italy) - Faculty of Architecture

ABSTRACT

The unfired clay houses studied in rural villages of northern Syria, in the European research project Culture 2007 Coupoles et Habitats. Une tradition constructive entre Orient et Occident: les villages de Syrie du Nord, represent a unique historical and architectural heritage.
The objectives of this project include both the study and the knowledge of the cultural heritage shared between East and West that attention to the issue of conservation and preservation of traditional local construction practices. The "earth material", in the past, is deemed poor and supported by characteristics such as low cost, the availability of material and his natural predisposition to the self- building. Now it is a new resource, especially in "developing countries", with very interesting issues for the sustainable architecture, for the bio-building and, generally, for the creation of a habitat more respectful of the man and of the environment that surrounds him.
The house's unit base is almost made up by a cubic volume with thick walls and variable elevation (from two to three meters) covered by a pseudo-conical corbelling dome, entirely made with unfired clay bricks. This constructive technique, for some centuries, represents a mode of settlement that has demonstrated efficiency and sustainability. The powerful transformations of the territory and the society provoke the possible disappearing of the vernacular architecture.
The domes's articulation is an element of difficulty for the systems of traditional survey considering the continue geometry without sharp corners. The traditional approach initially documents lines of discontinuity and it interpols trends in surfaces between these lines.
Our geomatic unit, to overcome the limits of other techniques, used techniques based on 3D scanning systems; and so to gain as much more information useful to the objectives of the mission and contribute significantly to the investigation of other scientific units. The metric data are a reliable geometric-morphological support it's possible to link: structural documentation (modulation of mechanical behavior, diagnostic criteria and definition of strategies for the conservation and rehabilitation); technological documentation (identification and characterization of constructive cultures); archeometrical documentation (characterization of materials and identification of pathologies) and ethnographical documentation (identification of relations between the constructive nature and the social cultures).
The knowledge of construction techniques used in the past is a starting point not only to restore accurately these architectures, but also to project innovative solutions that they would be coherent with traditional systems. The study is conducted in some vernacular representative units by type, size and organizational system: Er Raheb and Oum Aamoud Seghir.

Er Raheb: open unit consists of two pseudo-conical domes communicating through an arc, for residential use.
Oum Aamoud Seghir: unit directly closed from the buildings in order to create a courtyard. It is consists of more pseudo-conical more domes, both single and communicating through an arc, for residential, agricultural, storage use and for the housing of animals.
[El abstract original contine imágenes]

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