Baroque Banded Vaults: Surveying and Modeling. The Case Study of a Noble Palace in Turin

This paper presents the methodological framework set up for the analysis, interpretation, and representation of the banded vaulted systems recognized in eleven Baroque atria in Turin. In these atria, the banded vaults, locally named “a fascie”, are featured by a series of arches orthogonal to the perimeter walls on which they rest. The arches divide the room’s ceiling into spaces that can accommodate small vaults of different shapes. The atria have been the subject of bibliographical, historical and documentary analyses, laser scanner metric survey, two-dimensional graphic representations, and interpretative hypotheses through three-dimensional modeling of the design’s geometries of the vaults. The integration between terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) technique, architectural drawing and three-dimensional modeling methods led to the definition of new workflows, aimed at optimizing the use of data. From these procedures new opportunities for the research arise, such as the comparison (metric and geometric) through the superimposition of design ideal models and point clouds.