Villa Muggia a Imola: modellazione e digitalizzazione delle informazioni di "una rovina del moderno"

A masterpiece by Piero Bottoni in collaboration with Alberto Mario Pucci, Villa Muggia in Imola constitutes the outcome of an intervention carried out between 1936 and 1937 on a hunting mess dating back to the 18th century. Preserved the most significant Baroque fractions of the building – the great hall and the sinuous external staircase – Bottoni and Pucci’s project transformed the existing through new additions, not only shaping a high proof of Italian Rationalism, but also experimenting with the use of innovative techniques and materials, with outcomes of great relevance. Hit by bombing during World War II, Villa Muggia, a protected cultural heritage asset since 1994, today constitutes “a ruin of the modern”. Starting from the research already carried out on the topics of this paper, the present work aims to focus on an ongoing experience related to the modelling and digitisation of information of this 20th-century architectural work, whose ruined condition is constantly evolving. Such modelling is achieved through the use of HBIM, ‘reinforced’ through the use of ontologies referring to specifically prepared semantic languages. Although various are now the experiences in the field of HBIM and ontologies, the cut of this research is marked by a specific and original application, oriented to the development of a methodology aimed at the systematisation, referenced and in digital format, of information about the materials, including the autarchic ones, the related risks and their state of conservation. For the modelling and semantic enrichment procedures, the guidelines under development within the 4CH project for the creation of an European Competence Centre for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage (G.A. no. 101004468) will be applied. This experimentation contributes to highlighting possible utilities and frontiers of HBIM, with reference to a methodological and operational process that pays particular attention to the path of knowledge of the built heritage, aimed at its protection within a project of architectural restoration, hopefully of quality, as well as of planned conservation. In the awareness that the analysis must have a necessary confluence in the executive intervention, it should be taken into account that the modelling and digitisation of information must be compatible with a management 'open' to the new acquisitions coming from the construction site, as well as to an ex post planning of the maintenance-conservative activities. For this purpose, the produced data will be made usable through their publication with the INCEPTION technologies, developed in the homonym research project and at the basis of the Competence Centre’s future 3D services, capable of combining the visualisation of the 3D model with the linked information apparatus.