THE VIRTUAL REPRESENTATION OF CONVERTED SACRED SPACES. THE CASE OF SAINT NICHOLAS CHURCH IN ALBANIA

Abstract

In a century immersed in technological acceleration, documentation of heritage buildings is the preliminary action to solve any built heritage problem. The documentation procedure requires a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data to be investigated to produce accurate analyses from the building's digital presentation. However, capturing data and interpreting them is often done independently by different actors for various purposes. This paper aims to analyze the space of sacred objects that have converted their function and tries to include the documentation of the investigation process of the inherited heritage to draw results on the creation of space. The research will focus on the case of the Memorial of National Hero of Albania, Skanderbeg, which has undergone various transformations during different periods. Usually, a non-document of the historical material related to the building can lead to different interpretations that impact cultural monuments' restoration. Therefore, this research focuses on the converted spaces precisely for the duality that these spaces show and how carefully they should be treated during their preservation or restoration. The extracted data will be divided into four categories which include: available documentation obtained from the archives of the Institute of Monuments, historical materials obtained from the literature and related to the morphology of the structure in time, which help to create a more knowledgeable, deepened, and as a conclusion the current state of the monument obtained from the survey through laser scanner that will demonstrate to us regarding the status of heritage. This data will create a solid basis for further processes related to the visualization in different periods of the monument and carry out a comparative spatial analysis. In studying built heritage, the preparation of documentation on the converted space analysis is fundamental, contributing to "creating a permanent record" (Rossi, 1966) of the past and its presence. In the "analytical" report, its current state and understanding of its veracity encourage its preservation in the future. In this way, the visual model of the architecture and the modeling of the databases are linked together to create a complex information system that can be manipulated and interactive, and which can be helpful to understand, provide knowledge, provide communication, and enhance the values of architectural heritage.