Architecture archeology: a way to understand and preserve historical buildings

Abstract

This article presents a study system and register results of surface exploration which, combined with documents and scientific analysis, are employed to acknowledge and assess historical buildings of complex building chronology, as part of the basic postulates of the Architecture Archeology as a discipline. It is about archaeometric and stratigraphic researches that have been carried out for some years within the framework of the program "Integrated Architectural Assets Conservation and Restoration" of the University of São Paulo Cultural Preservation Center (CPC- USP), with the participation of researchers and students from different areas. This study category provides a solid set of indicative physical data about objects which, beyond their dating reference, lead to important understanding about building and artistic material, techniques and procedures used in the past. What happens is that stratigraphic systematic produces data which are apparently heterogeneous and hard to interpret for professionals unaccustomed to prospective practices. This article presents a case study of Casa de Dona Yayá (Yayá's House), in São Paulo, and aims to define and employ time indicators which, intertwined, can shed light upon the building history of a studied architecture. To highlight specificities and boundaries of every stratigraphic virtual unit coming from such indicators, we resort to computer technology to portray a system of graphic synthesis supported by tridimensionality, considered more adequate to architectonic representation.