MichiganSTatePres.pptx

The $500 Challenge:

3D Modeling of Heritage Structures in High Risk or Developing Areas

Professor William Spates
Bryan Buxton, Arathi Krishna, and Varun Prasad
Birla Institute of Technology and Science
K.K. Birla Goa Campus

17 March, 2017


Local Hands, Foreign Masters1
1. J. Folda, "Crusader Art in the Kingdom of Cyprus c. 1275-91," Cyprus and the Crusades, edited by N. Coureas & J. Riley-Smith (Nicosia, 1995).
One of the fascinating aspects of Eastern Mediterranean medieval and early modern architecture and for that matter culture is the intricate and nuanced melange of influences.
The city walls pictured to the left show evidence Byzantine, Lusignan, Venetian, and Ottoman work.
This type of modeling which may limit its usefulness as a pure presevation project offers enormous potential as a means of gaining an intimate understanding of space and place. The attention to detail required might also be compared to a close reading, and can, I believe, yeild similarly productive results.

Local limestone-imported marble


Blender IX: Synopsis

Blender VIII: Surface as Simulacrum
Blender VII: Surface as Simulacrum
Why, When, Where, How?:
Background
Modeling structures like St. Anne's places this project in a long tradition of imag(in)ing Famagusta.
Several maps and images suggest that the Famagusta fosse was flooded with seawater, but there seems to be no historical evidence that this was the case.
Such representations follow Famagusta traditions such as Venus's sacrophogus; Othello's castle, and Leonardo's column: a palimpsest of culture and meaning. Cannot then (re)creation also spur new meaning and new understanding for new students and scholars of the city, island, and region?
Imagining Famagusta
In this context, my $500 challenge-that is to say the creation of a 3D model of a heritage structure with a camera/phone, laptop, and opensource software, is a small part of a series of multinational and multidisciplinary collaborative project largely under the impetus of Professor Michael Walsh of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Researchers from Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America participate in related projects that address the city of Famagusta and its artistic, historical, and cultural heritage.

Heritage Structures at Risk II
A variety threats include conflict, vandalism, illegal excavations, misguided preservation projects, and/or theft of artifacts, and techtonic activity to name a few.

Some threats are more mundane. Centuries of winter rains in the Eastern Mediterranean can erode stone, as in this example where runoff has degraded St. Anne's masonry.
Heritage Structures at Risk I
"The façade has a simple doorway which has been augmented with additional masonry. Perhaps there were structural concerns about the integrity of the very large lintel which may have threatened to fail under its own considerable weight. Today the door is completely filled with concrete."

"There were also, at one time, significant frescos inside the church." Late nineteenth and early twentieth century writers
"complained of the advanced state of disrepair of the frescoes, not least because the church had been used as a stable until 1907."
(Langdale and Walsh, 2007, p. 105).
St. Anne's tympanum featuring a heavily degraded fresco of Mary and the infant Jesus. Photograph by Wilbert Norman.

A History of Conflict

St. Anne's only became available for scholarly research a decade ago after being off limits (within the confines of a Turkish military base from 1974-2007).*
The structure was originally a Latin, probably Benectine Church, before the Maronites took charge of the building in the fourteenth century.*
As such St. Anne's serves as a good example of Famagusta's fabulous multicultural historical narrative encompassing (to name but a few) Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Genoese, Venetian, and Ottoman cultural influences. (Langdale and Walsh, 2007, p. 105).


St. Anne's Maronite Church
St. Anne's Maronite Church is in the northwest quadrant of Famagusta.
This area was known as the Syrian quarter after Saladin's conquest of Acre in 1291 since it was settled by Levantine Christians who fled the mainland after the fall of the outremer kingdom.
For more on St. Anne's, see Michael Walsh and Alan Langdale, "A Short Report on Three Newly Accessible Churches in the Syrian Quarter of Famagusta", Journal of Cyprus Studies 13 (2007), pps. 105-123.
Blender VI: Surface as Simulacrum

Why, When, Where, How?:
Background

Professor Walsh was instrumental in helping to not only bring the great cultural value of the city to international attention but also the pressing need to perserve its many endangered historic structures.
To this end, he led the successful drive to have UNESCO place Famagusta on the World Monuments Watch in 2008 and 2010, and we hope that this will eventually result in Famagusta being recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Marc Antonio Bragadin monument in Santi Giovanni e Paolo Church, Venice
Blender IV: Surface as Simulacrum





Target Structure
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02
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05
Multi-Modal Planning
Sketching and Drafting
Photogrammetry
3D Modeling
Challenges and Opportunities
Establishing a Methodology
A Basis for Comparison
Two high-tech treatments of St. Anne's and the neighboring Armenian Chruch. To the right: an orthoscan cross section of St. Anne's, and above: a VR still approaching the Armenian church with an inset of historical data.
High Tech / Low Tech Innovation
Having worked with Professor Walsh at Eastern Mediterranean University (2009-2010) and contributed to the Eastern Mediterranean Studies Master and contributed to subsequent Famagusta projects such as the "Historic Famagusta a Millennium of Words and Images" Conference (Central European University, 2012), and the essay collection, Famagusta: City of Empires (Cambridge Scholars, 2015), in 2016 I proposed that we attempt a project to complement Michael's emerging high-tech preservation projects that were just getting underway.
Working in Digital Humanities at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, I became increasingly interested in two questions pertaining to the Famagusta project(s):
a.). How can students approach fields such as cultural studies, cultural history, art history, and architectural studies through Building Information Modeling (BIM) to engage in multimodal learning projects?
b.) How can projects like this be developed to enable local communities to engage in independent acts of cultural heritage and preservation?

Why, When, Where, How?:
An Outline

Sebastian Münster, "Contrafestung der Statt Famagusta", Cosmographey oder beschreibung aller Länder, 1544; Basel:1578. (Image from Braun and Hogenburg's 1572 Civitates Orbis Terrarum)
The aim of this project is to address how 3D modeling of heritage structures can be undertaken with a minimum of resources.
This sort of project is not meant to challenge a project with signficant funding and support, such as Michael's work with Nanyang using professional outfits such as HiverLabs and SolvoTek, but rather how projects can be undertaken by students and community members through grass-roots programs in remote or dangerous environments where one might only carry a camera or possibly just a mobile phone.
Hardware and Software

Required:
Laptop (preferably with at least 8 GB RAM; an i5 or i7 processer preferred but not necessary)
Digital Camera
Opensource software such as Blender (alternatively, proprietary software such as Autodesk 3D software, Maya may also be used)
* A tablet such as the Intuos Pro; Windows SurfacePro, or an Apple IPad Pro is very helpful, especially when diffuse mapping surface textures


Desired:
Laser scans and/or high quality/professional photographs
Textual, architectural history (earlier/existing architectural drawings), topographies, and other potential Building Information Modeling (BIM) data, including building history, history of usage, etc.


Blender V: Surface as Simulacrum
Once the skin is placed over the wire frame model, the rendered surface is "painted" on the skin by lifting it from photographs.
This part of the process utilized an Intuos Pro tablet. While this is not necessary; the high level of functionality available with a good tablet makes this painting process much simpler then it would be on a trackpad or a mouse.
Sketching and Drafting
"The interior consists of a single hall with two groin vaulted bays and a polygonal apse with a ribbed vault over it [...]. Two transverse arches springing from corbels at the clerestory level demarcate the bays of the vaulting" (Walsh and Langdale, 2003), p. 105.

Blender II: The Wire Frame Model

Once the dimensions are blocked out, then an increasing amount of internal and external detail can be added.
Blender I: Drafting the Structure
This is an iconographic rather than an indexical project. The image is create by blocking out the dimensions of the structure and then gradually tightening up the details.
This iconographic aspect puts a limit on the usefulness of such a project as a
means of perserving the exact dimensions and details of the target structure. However, this sort of project is invaluable as a teaching and learning tool, which can yeild an intimate and intuitive understanding of the space, dimensions, and features of a building.
Blender III: The Wire Frame Model
In this process, layers are both inevitable and imperative. This cycle of three images stress the attention to detail required to draft the interior.

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