Parametric Modeling as a Tool of Analysis and Interpretation of Built Heritage: The Case Study of Complex Baroque Vaults

In this chapter are developed some considerations about the heuristic potentialities of parametric digital modeling as a tool for analyzing and interpreting architectural heritage. Observed that the parametric thinking in architecture could be recognized almost from the origin, new parametric modeling software allows to verify the design criteria of the past. On the basis of previous studies on Baroque vaulted atria, this chapter develops, using parametric modeling tools, a real vocabulary of shapes and their possible combinations, suggested by the architectural literature of the time and the survey of about seventy atria in Turin. This method has been tested on the case study of the lunettes dome in the atrium of Palazzo Carignano.