Digital tools for the study of the industrial building heritage: from data acquisition to parametric modeling and interactive visualization

During the Twentieth Century, the industrial buildings represented an “ideal laboratory” for the development of architectural techniques and languages of Modernity. For the study, conservation, and valorization of the industrial building heritage, advanced digital tools and processes can play a crucial role. This paper presents a workflow based on data acquisition – documental analysis – parametric and informative modeling, and interactive visualization of the building details and the related documental sources. The workflow is conceived to support the study of buildings featuring non-standard structures and construction solutions, based on complex geometries. Specifically, an Application Programming Interface (API) has been defined combining the use of the parametric modeling platform Grasshopper©, enriched by the Geometry Gym© tool kit, the structural analysis software FEM Sap 2000©, the open standard IFC 4, and the cloud-based Shape Diver© platform for AR. The workflow is presented via the case study of the so-called “Silberkuhl system” – consisting of hyperbolic paraboloid (HP) thin shell elements – which was worldwide applied for industrial building roofing between the 1960s and 1970s.