2000-year-old architecture close enough to touch thanks to surveying and milling techniques

People stroll up and down the pulsating shopping street. Soft music seeps out of the cafés on to the packed piazzas. The traffic throngs through the alleyways. Everything is moving in Turin. Almost everything. For 2,000 years, the daily hustle and bustle has drifted by the Palazzo Madama in the heart of the city where the Savoy dynasty once resided. The Regione Piemonte (Piemont Regional Council)commissioned Hexagon Metrology with the task of creating a 1:30 scale model of the venerable building using CNC milling technology.

The roots of the Palazzo Madama reach back to the time of the Roman Empire. The building has been subject to countless alterations over the centuries. From a fortress in the Middle Ages, it developed into a splendid palace. The Palazzo owes its present appearance above all to Filippo Juvarra, one of the greatest Baroque period architects. Juvarra built the majestic facade and the front structure in the 18th century. The building therefore shows two faces to the world: the Baroque is captured on the front. Going back three centuries in history takes only a few steps towards the rear of the palace, where the walls of the medieval fortress can still be seen. Today the Palazzo houses the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica (Civic Museum of Ancient Art).

Extensive renovation work was necessary in the late 1980s and continued until 2006. Diego Giachello, a freelance architect from Turin, managed the general refurbishment of the historic building. He was also responsible for the creation of the synthetic resin model. “As part of the renovation we had surveyed the interior and the facade in conjunction with Geomar. Consequently most of the 2D survey data was still available. That brought us to the idea of generating a threedimensional model,” says Giachello . . . . .