Chapter La basilica inferiore di San Crisogono: lettura morfometrica di un’architettura stratificata

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences

La basilica inferiore di San Crisogono: lettura morfometrica di un’architettura stratificata San Crisogono’s Basilica: a morphometric reading of layered architecture

Il contributo intende investigare le potenzialità dei modelli numerici 2D e 3D per la lettura dell’architettura archeologica. Tale obiettivo è declinato sul caso studio della Basilica inferiore di San Crisogono (Roma). Questo manufatto, ad oggi fortemente compromesso nella sua configurazione spaziale, è palinsesto dal punto di vista artistico, per la stratificazione di sequenze di pitture stilisticamente e cronologicamente distinte su di uno stesso supporto murario, e dal punto di vista archeologico e architettonico, per la forte contaminazione tra strutture originarie, interventi successivi, restauri e consolidamenti strutturali. Questa complessità del monumento richiede un approccio di analisi sistematico, in grado di definire i termini del problema per muoversi dal noto, le tracce esistenti, all’ignoto, la ricostruzione del passato. Questo percorso, con una vocazione interdisciplinare per prerogativa, ha come primo cruciale passaggio la restituzione morfometrica delle tracce esistenti per la loro corretta localizzazione nel contesto e funzionale alla loro lettura sincronica comparativa. La ricerca ancora in corso, di cui presentiamo i primi risultati, ha come obiettivo finale la ricomposizione architettonica ed artistica del manufatto nelle sue diverse fasi di trasformazione. Questo ambizioso obiettivo vede nell’utilizzo dei modelli digitali integrati un valido strumento di comprensione oltre che di rappresentazione del pensiero critico specialistico.The paper aims to investigate the potential of 2D and 3D numerical models for the studying of archaeological architecture. Such objective is applied on the case study of the Lower Basilica of San Crisogono (Rome). This artefact is currently strongly compromised in its spatial configuration, nevertheless it is a palimpsest from the artistic point of view, for the stratification of sequences of stylistically and chronologically distinct paintings on the same wall support, and from the archaeological and architectural point of view, for the strong contamination between original structures, subsequent interventions, restorations and structural consolidations. This monument’s complexity requires a systematic approach of analysis, able to define the terms of the problem in order to move from the known, the existing traces, to the unknown, the reconstruction of the past. This path, with an interdisciplinary vocation for prerogative, has as its first crucial step the morphometric representation of the existing traces for their correct location in the context and functional to their synchronic comparative reading. The research still in progress, of which we present the first results, has as its ultimate goal the architectural and artistic recomposition of the artifact in its various phases of transformation. This ambitious objective sees in the use of integrated digital models a valid instrument of comprehension as well as representation of critical specialist though