Documentation, Analysis and Representation of Modernist Heritage through Building Information Modeling

The paper is focused on research activities on documentation, analysis and representation of Modernist Heritage in Latin America. The research is part of a broad project developed by the Department of Architecture of the University of Ferrara following the main aim of documentation for knowledge, enhancement and preservation of cultural heritage. In addition to several on site projects developed in cooperation with local institutions, mainly in Brazil, and based on historical analysis, documentation, survey, modelling and diagnostic assessment, the research has then opened up to an in-depth study of Modernist architecture. The field of investigation has been extended to Latin America, through the analysis of the main architectures of the iconic figures of Modernism, in order to collect a database of models as support for different research avenues. The methodological process is based on the “survey of the project”, an analysis of documentation as the starting point for the representation in BIM environment from which to extract conventional representations and different levels of interpretation.