Baroque banded vaults with independent arches: from literature to realizations in Turin atria

This contribution presents a part of the work and the methodology applied to it developed for the realization of an international research project aimed at the analysis and preservation of an architectural heritage characteristic of Turin's baroque architecture: the ‘a fasce’ vaults, locally named as ‘a fascioni’. This architectural solution, used by important architects, such as Guarini up to the local workers, to cover spaces of various sizes, has found in the court of Turin area a wide application in buildings atria. A considerable number of banded vaulted atria were identified and surveyed by the research group to recognize and investigate those whose bands are generated from independent arches. The objective is the comparison of metric and geometric data between ideal models and realizations over time, to evaluate their variations and understand a constructive methodology through three-dimensional modeling.