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Digitizing Farag ibn Barquq. |
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Introduction Note--For a full account of our project, please download our papers on Farag ibn Barquq. With over 800 notable historic structures, there is a real need for world heritage documentation in Islamic Cairo. A picture of disintegration in slow motion, the structures of historic Cairo are subject to the ravages of atmospheric pollution and environmental instability. Working with Dr. Chip Vincent of the American Research Center in Egypt's Egyptian Antiquities Project, we undertook a project to document a Zawiya and Sabil in the heart of Cairo's Bab Zuwayla district. Since this monument had been selected for conservation by ARCE, the first step towards restoration was complete documentation of the monument, both interior and exterior. Dr. Vincent was particularly interested in studying the extent of disintegration that atmospheric pollution has caused to the limestone facade shown at right. |
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Preparing for Scanning ARCE's primary need was for an accurate ground plan to use in their restoration of the monument. Since the entire monument was shifted several meters during the widening of the road alongside Bab Zuwayla, all of the internal rooms had been slightly moved vis-a-vis one another. These slight, but important shifts would be very difficult to survey using conventional techniques, so we opted to create laser scan documentation of the whole building as a means of generating a new ground plan. As seen at right, we set up our scanning equipment at several points on the exterior of the monument, in order to capture the entire exterior surface. Our team also set up the scanner throughout the rooms of the zawiya and sabil, in order to collect detailed measurements for the ground plan. |
 Laser scanning the exterior facade. |
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Capturing a 3D Model of
the Entire Monument As we
scanned, our team took care to ensure that all of the scan viewpoints could
be correlated into a complete plan according to the layout shown below, at
left. |
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 A detail view of laser scan data (see above). |
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Extrapolating a Ground
Plan from 3D Data After
scanning, we were left with a precise 3D model of the building (below), from
which we developed orthographic plan views, as shown below, at right. |
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 Detail of the 3D plan view.. |
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Detailed 3D Models of the
Sabil Ceiling In specific cases, important decorative details were captured at high resolution to allow future study. At right is a 3D view of the highly ornate stalactite ceiling found in the Sabil. |
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Polychrome Reconstruction
of Facade Details Our team also prepared images of polychrome restoration for details on the facade, basing the colors on existing fragments. |
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Detailed 3D Scans of the
Facade As mentioned above, Dr.
Chip Vincent had requested high-resolution scans of the exterior, so that
degradation over time could be monitored. Below is a photo of a facade
detail (left) and its accompanying laser scans (right). |
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 Photograph
of a detail on the facade |
 Laser scan data relating to the detail at left. |
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