The project Digital Craftsmen received financial support from the Ceará Foundation for the Support of Scientific and Technological Development - Funcap, through the Edict No. 07/2021 of Aid for the Support of Research Projects. It is coordinated by professor Dr. Daniel Cardoso (PPGAU+D UFC) and its team includes professors Me. Eugênio Moreira (DAUD UFC), Dr. Roberto Vieira (DAUD UFC), Dr. Aura Celeste (DAUD UFC), Me. Diego Ricca (DAUD UFC), Dr. Mariana Lima (PPGAU+D UFC) and also undergraduate and graduate students from DAUD UFC.
Among the strategies for safeguarding the built cultural heritage, documentation plays a key role in mitigating the risks arising from the degradation of the original material support. This task is particularly difficult in the case of architectural styles with the massive presence of ornaments, where the geometric complexity of such elements makes the use of traditional representations (through orthogonal views, sketches and photographs) ineffective in processes of recomposition of lost or severely damaged parts. The project Digital Craftsmen: digital fabrication applied to restoration processes seeks to investigate possible solutions to this problem by using digital-based technologies to capture, document and materialize these elements. The research is organized in 4 stages:
Capture, where methods of obtaining a point cloud and triangularized mesh (such as photogrammetry and laser scanning) that describe geometrically the elements of interest in a detailed way will be investigated and compared;
Documentation, where the possibilities of organization and storage of the data obtained by the previous step will be investigated, aligning the results with the products that are expected as documentation of the built cultural heritage, already updating them to the paradigm of the building information modeling (BIM);
Materialization, where the digital files captured and processed will serve as a basis for testing and comparing some digital fabrication techniques in order to assess their accuracy in reproducing the geometry of the artifacts surveyed and their suitability in reconstituting their original material;
Compilation, where the results of the previous steps will be compiled for the elaboration of process reports and academic publications.
As a result, it is expected the creation of a survey and registration methodology, tested and supported by material results, which can be used by agencies that protect the built cultural heritage as a safeguarding strategy.