Per un utilizzo ‘attivo e cosciente’ dei sistemi di acquisizione digitale nel progetto di restauro

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the significant role that digital acquisition systems play in establishing a quality conservation project today. To be truly effective, it must be based on a genuine dialogue and not just a mere act of transferring data. The use by the architect of models detected and returned without his participation, without his contextual planning, without a complete knowledge of methodologies and practices, and their respective limits and advantages is not acceptable. On the contrary, a ‘conscious, sensitive and controlled’ employment of reality-based technologies can prove to be especially useful for the purposes of documentation, conservation, and valorisation, if they are rigorously integrated and combined with that intimate and direct contact with the architectural object, which however remains an indispensable and not ancillary condition. Founded on a consolidated experience in this context, the result of a multidisciplinary approach governed by a great cohesion of intent and sharing of objectives, the essay intends to underline the convenience deriving from an integration and proactive use of these precious instruments. To this end, it presents a case study of great interest – the recent restoration of the Aragonese castle of Piazza Armerina, Enna – with the aim of exposing the survey process adopted and the advantages that emerged from an integrated survey programme followed in the phase relating to the process of knowledge and continued during the subsequent construction site. The information obtained, which will continue to be integrated with new investigations and as-built checks, constitutes a particularly detailed database, serving both the documentation of the asset and new studies and restoration projects.