4D-Reconstructing the Area of Lacus Iuturnae, Rome
Architect SAFA, Juhana Heikonen
The area of Lacus Iuturnae between the House of Vestals and the Temple of Castor in the Forum Romanum was first excavated by Giacomo Boni in 1900 when he was the director of excavations of Forum Romanum 1898-1925. The excavations were partly published the following year in Notizie degli Scavi, but a full excavation report never followed. Between the early 1900's and 1970's nothing much happened on the site until Professor Eva Margareta Steinby reopened Boni's trenches and started new excavations. The first part of the project has been published and the second part will be published very soon.
My part of the project is to make 3D-models and reconstructions of the site. Since the site has been used from the archaic times up to the medieval period and it holds several historical layers. Since the different architectural finds intervene with each other in the most complicated ways and often continue outside our perimeter reconstructing the building phases is hard at its best.
The graphic documentation of the site was relatively well done in 1900 by Boni. The 1980's drawings were more comprehensive totaling three plans and seven sections of the site and hundreds of plans and stratigraphical sections of the trenches. All the graphic material was digitized to an AutoCAD platform 2003-2006.
In my part I have been first making my own measurements and to fill some missing parts of the documentation. The 3D-modell is thus based on the measurements in 2005-2006, the 1980's documentation and the Boni documentation. The long span of the selected material is because several structures have disappeared from the site during the last 100 years of restorations and reconstructions. Also Boni's photographs have been included in the model. This way the 3D-model will include all the vital information from the work done on the site during the last 100 years in order to get a picture of the development from the archaic times up to medieval times.
The object of my work is to first create a computer model of the site which can be sectioned into different building phases according to the archeological evidence. Thus creating the conclusive model with AutoCAD helps to "shut down" the other building phases and to present a hypothesis for the reconstruction of the selected building phase.
