Papers by Ana Almagro Vidal
Recent dramatic events have brought to the forefront the debate on how to protect, safeguard and ... more Recent dramatic events have brought to the forefront the debate on how to protect, safeguard and document Cultural Heritage in conflict areas. Heritage places have become battlefields, sources of illicit trafficking and even deliberate targets of destruction because of the politicisation to further conflict ideologies as well as misinterpretation of the values they represent. Is it possible to protect Cultural Heritage under such circumstances? If yes, when is the right time to intervene and who can help in this task? How can documentation and training assist?
The International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis promoted by ICCROM (The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) in collaboration with various partners focuses specifically on ways to help in such difficult and stressful situations. This paper explores the methodological approach and highlights the special circumstances that surround rapid documentation and preliminary condition assessment in conflict areas, and in cases of complex emergencies such as an earthquake striking a conflict area. The paper identifies international actors that might play a special and crucial role in the first steps of such a situation and recognizes the need for training activities to strengthen capacities for disaster response to cultural heritage at national and regional levels.
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The Toledo Gate of Ciudad Real, Spain, constructed between the late 13th and early 14th centuries... more The Toledo Gate of Ciudad Real, Spain, constructed between the late 13th and early 14th centuries, is the last remaining portion of a once complete medieval city wall. It represents the long history of the city and constitutes its main heritage symbol, dividing the historic city centre from the later 19th and 20th century expansions. In October 2012, the Town Hall and the Montemadrid Foundation started the conservation works to preserve this important monument. The preliminary phase of this project included an in-depth series of scientific studies which were carried out by a multidisciplinary team focusing on archival research, historic investigations, archaeological excavations as well as material composition analysis and main treatment application tests. As a result of these studies a series of virtual 3D models were created to inform, discuss and study the monument. A first digital model permitted visualization of the gate in the 19th century and how the main entrance to the city was integrated as a fundamental part of the city walls. This virtual reconstruction also became an important part of the campaign to raise awareness among the citizens towards a monument that had remained in the shadows for the last century, isolated in a roundabout after the systematic demolition of the city walls in the late 19th century.
Over the last three years and as a result of these archaeological and historic investigations and subsequent virtual models, surprisingly new and interesting data were brought to light thus permitting the establishment and corroboration of a new and updated hypothesis of the Toledo Gate that goes beyond the previous ideas. As a result of these studies a new architectural typology with construction techniques of has been suggested.
This paper describes how the results of this continuous and interdisciplinary documentation process have benefitted from a computer graphic reconstruction of the gate. It highlights how virtual reconstruction can be a powerful tool for conservation decision making and awareness raising. Furthermore, the interesting results of the final reconstruction hypothesis convinced the technical team responsible for the conservation to alter some aspects of the final project physical interventions in order to focus on some of the features and conclusions discovered through the virtual model study.
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Recent dramatic events have brought to the forefront the debate on how to protect, safeguard and ... more Recent dramatic events have brought to the forefront the debate on how to protect, safeguard and document Cultural Heritage in conflict areas. Heritage places have become battlefields, sources of illicit trafficking and even deliberate targets of destruction
because of the politicisation to further conflict ideologies as well as misinterpretation of the values they represent. Is it possible to protect Cultural Heritage under such circumstances? If yes, when is the right time to intervene and who can help in this task? How
can documentation and training assist?
The International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis promoted by ICCROM (The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) in collaboration with various partners focuses specifically on ways to help in such difficult and stressful situations. This paper explores the methodological approach and highlights the special circumstances that surround rapid documentation and preliminary condition assessment in conflict areas, and in cases of complex
emergencies such as an earthquake striking a conflict area. The paper identifies international actors that might play a special and crucial role in the first steps of such a situation and recognizes the need for training activities to strengthen capacities for disaster response to cultural heritage at national and regional levels.
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EL CIELO EN EL ISLAM, Sep 17, 2014
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iluminação Internacional Illuminacion en en monumentos histórico Zonas, Oct 22, 2012
En los últimos tiempos en cada vez más frecuente observar cómo los monumento y centros históricos... more En los últimos tiempos en cada vez más frecuente observar cómo los monumento y centros históricos se han convertido en reclamo turístico de ciudades y países, los cuales suelen emplear su imagen nocturna para destacar la belleza y encanto de la ciudad y su atractivo turístico. Sin embargo, en algunos casos esta tendencia está llevando a un excesivo y desmesurado empleo de iluminación urbana y monumental que desdibuja y en ocasiones distorsiona por completo el edificio y su entorno o partes del mismo, bien esporádicamente o de forma continua.
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ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol II-5/W1, Sep 6, 2013
Technology to document and investigate cultural heritage sites is rapidly advancing – multispectr... more Technology to document and investigate cultural heritage sites is rapidly advancing – multispectral and high dynamic range
imaging, spherical high resolution photography, three-dimensional laser scanning and unmanned aerial vehicles are only a few of the new technologies available to heritage conservation professionals to record monuments, buildings, city centres and landscapes. These advanced tools are giving architects, engineers and conservation professionals’ new insights and additional information which helps to make better informed decisions. But this technology and the knowledge about its correct use are extremely unevenly distributed across the world. The Digital Divide is present and growing in the field of cultural heritage preservation (Letellier, 2001). Many of those responsible for the management, maintenance and care of some of the world´s most significant cultural heritage sites do not have access to or information about the latest technologies. They are also confronted with an overwhelming assortment of new technologies and consultants or developers that promote them and therefore must allocate their limited budgets with limited information.
What is to be done about bridging this gap? Obviously cost and accessibility are issues. However one of the most important
challenges to be addressed is education. As the base knowledge of these technologies is very uneven this leads to further questions:
Are there strategies or methodologies for teaching this technology? How to combine and balance different professional backgrounds from different and so unevenly distributed places around the world and provide them all with useful information to make good documentation and conservation decisions?
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ICOMOS Symposium 2008 Quebec Canada
A conservation process usually generates new knowledge and an enormous amount of documentation du... more A conservation process usually generates new knowledge and an enormous amount of documentation during the inception and implementation of the project: the information collected from archives and other institutions; the information provided by the preliminary studies carried out prior to the intervention; the data provided in the field during the works and at the end of the process; and the final set of documentation delivered to the institution responsible for the maintenance and management of the monument.The challenge for conservation professionals and cultural heritage managers throughout this process once the works are over is to achieve and transmit this information to the public and specialists in order to raise awareness for better conservation of our built heritage.During the last few years, one of the actions that the Caja Madrid Foundation has activated with its restoration projects has been the opening of permanent on site museums or “Salas de Fábrica”, a place on site to understand the restoration works, to exhibit the remains that have being retrieved during the project and to permit the public to better understand the historical and artistic values of architectural and archaeological heritage as well as the importance of preserving our cultural legacy for the future.
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XXi International CIPA Symposium Athens Greece, Oct 1, 2007
The publication of important works of documentation with photogrammetry of two monuments of the c... more The publication of important works of documentation with photogrammetry of two monuments of the city of Seville serve as the basis for a reflection focusing on the traditional systems of architectural representation and their possible substitution by new techniques based on three-dimensional digital models obtained since the advent of laser scanners. Taking into account that CIPA has concerned itself more, in these last few years, with technological advances and their adaptation to applications in the field of conservation of the heritage than with adequately following the real applications that in practice are made with such advances, we suggest the advisability of evaluating, if only provisionally, the application and utility of the new arising methods.
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Editorial de la Universidad de Granada, 2005
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El trabajo que presentamos deriva en gran medida del levantamiento planimétrico de los Reales Alc... more El trabajo que presentamos deriva en gran medida del levantamiento planimétrico de los Reales Alcázares de Sevilla, realizados por encargo del Patronato del Real
Alcázar a la Escuela de Estudios Árabes de Granada (CSIC) (Almagro 2000). Como viene siendo propuesto reiteradamente, el levantamiento arquitectónico debe entenderse como una forma de análisis y aproximación al conocimiento de los edificios que integre toda una serie de estudios e investigaciones que permitan la comprensión global de la realidad material e inmaterial de un edificio. Dentro de este
proceso, la obtención de la planimetría constituye una parte del análisis que en ningún modo puede ser sustituido por otro tipo de investigación. La información generada durante el proceso de medición y dibujo, que por necesidad tiene que
corresponder a un análisis exhaustivo de la propia materialidad de las estructuras arquitectónicas, es siempre muy superior a la que luego queda plasmada en los meros dibujos finales. Resulta por ello poco recomendable, desde nuestro punto de
vista, encomendar a terceros la realización de tales trabajos por parte de quienes tienen la responsabilidad del estudio, la tutela y la conservación de los edificios, pues debieran ser ellos las personas que mejor los conocieran, poniendo para ello
los medios adecuados cual es la realización de los levantamientos. Bien es cierto que la complejidad metodológica y el recurso muchas veces necesario a técnicas de medición, por desgracia aún poco generalizadas como pueda ser la fotogrametría, obliga en ocasiones a recurrir a otros técnicos, que en muchos casos carecen de la formación adecuada para poder realizar simultáneamente un análisis completo de la realidad arquitectónica que se está estudiando o restaurando. Lo que aquí presentamos puede constituir un modelo metodológico del modo de abordar el estudio de nuestro patrimonio histórico arquitectónico.
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Annual Publication of the Spanish Academy, Apr 2002
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Papers by Ana Almagro Vidal
The International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis promoted by ICCROM (The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) in collaboration with various partners focuses specifically on ways to help in such difficult and stressful situations. This paper explores the methodological approach and highlights the special circumstances that surround rapid documentation and preliminary condition assessment in conflict areas, and in cases of complex emergencies such as an earthquake striking a conflict area. The paper identifies international actors that might play a special and crucial role in the first steps of such a situation and recognizes the need for training activities to strengthen capacities for disaster response to cultural heritage at national and regional levels.
Over the last three years and as a result of these archaeological and historic investigations and subsequent virtual models, surprisingly new and interesting data were brought to light thus permitting the establishment and corroboration of a new and updated hypothesis of the Toledo Gate that goes beyond the previous ideas. As a result of these studies a new architectural typology with construction techniques of has been suggested.
This paper describes how the results of this continuous and interdisciplinary documentation process have benefitted from a computer graphic reconstruction of the gate. It highlights how virtual reconstruction can be a powerful tool for conservation decision making and awareness raising. Furthermore, the interesting results of the final reconstruction hypothesis convinced the technical team responsible for the conservation to alter some aspects of the final project physical interventions in order to focus on some of the features and conclusions discovered through the virtual model study.
because of the politicisation to further conflict ideologies as well as misinterpretation of the values they represent. Is it possible to protect Cultural Heritage under such circumstances? If yes, when is the right time to intervene and who can help in this task? How
can documentation and training assist?
The International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis promoted by ICCROM (The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) in collaboration with various partners focuses specifically on ways to help in such difficult and stressful situations. This paper explores the methodological approach and highlights the special circumstances that surround rapid documentation and preliminary condition assessment in conflict areas, and in cases of complex
emergencies such as an earthquake striking a conflict area. The paper identifies international actors that might play a special and crucial role in the first steps of such a situation and recognizes the need for training activities to strengthen capacities for disaster response to cultural heritage at national and regional levels.
imaging, spherical high resolution photography, three-dimensional laser scanning and unmanned aerial vehicles are only a few of the new technologies available to heritage conservation professionals to record monuments, buildings, city centres and landscapes. These advanced tools are giving architects, engineers and conservation professionals’ new insights and additional information which helps to make better informed decisions. But this technology and the knowledge about its correct use are extremely unevenly distributed across the world. The Digital Divide is present and growing in the field of cultural heritage preservation (Letellier, 2001). Many of those responsible for the management, maintenance and care of some of the world´s most significant cultural heritage sites do not have access to or information about the latest technologies. They are also confronted with an overwhelming assortment of new technologies and consultants or developers that promote them and therefore must allocate their limited budgets with limited information.
What is to be done about bridging this gap? Obviously cost and accessibility are issues. However one of the most important
challenges to be addressed is education. As the base knowledge of these technologies is very uneven this leads to further questions:
Are there strategies or methodologies for teaching this technology? How to combine and balance different professional backgrounds from different and so unevenly distributed places around the world and provide them all with useful information to make good documentation and conservation decisions?
Alcázar a la Escuela de Estudios Árabes de Granada (CSIC) (Almagro 2000). Como viene siendo propuesto reiteradamente, el levantamiento arquitectónico debe entenderse como una forma de análisis y aproximación al conocimiento de los edificios que integre toda una serie de estudios e investigaciones que permitan la comprensión global de la realidad material e inmaterial de un edificio. Dentro de este
proceso, la obtención de la planimetría constituye una parte del análisis que en ningún modo puede ser sustituido por otro tipo de investigación. La información generada durante el proceso de medición y dibujo, que por necesidad tiene que
corresponder a un análisis exhaustivo de la propia materialidad de las estructuras arquitectónicas, es siempre muy superior a la que luego queda plasmada en los meros dibujos finales. Resulta por ello poco recomendable, desde nuestro punto de
vista, encomendar a terceros la realización de tales trabajos por parte de quienes tienen la responsabilidad del estudio, la tutela y la conservación de los edificios, pues debieran ser ellos las personas que mejor los conocieran, poniendo para ello
los medios adecuados cual es la realización de los levantamientos. Bien es cierto que la complejidad metodológica y el recurso muchas veces necesario a técnicas de medición, por desgracia aún poco generalizadas como pueda ser la fotogrametría, obliga en ocasiones a recurrir a otros técnicos, que en muchos casos carecen de la formación adecuada para poder realizar simultáneamente un análisis completo de la realidad arquitectónica que se está estudiando o restaurando. Lo que aquí presentamos puede constituir un modelo metodológico del modo de abordar el estudio de nuestro patrimonio histórico arquitectónico.
The International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis promoted by ICCROM (The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) in collaboration with various partners focuses specifically on ways to help in such difficult and stressful situations. This paper explores the methodological approach and highlights the special circumstances that surround rapid documentation and preliminary condition assessment in conflict areas, and in cases of complex emergencies such as an earthquake striking a conflict area. The paper identifies international actors that might play a special and crucial role in the first steps of such a situation and recognizes the need for training activities to strengthen capacities for disaster response to cultural heritage at national and regional levels.
Over the last three years and as a result of these archaeological and historic investigations and subsequent virtual models, surprisingly new and interesting data were brought to light thus permitting the establishment and corroboration of a new and updated hypothesis of the Toledo Gate that goes beyond the previous ideas. As a result of these studies a new architectural typology with construction techniques of has been suggested.
This paper describes how the results of this continuous and interdisciplinary documentation process have benefitted from a computer graphic reconstruction of the gate. It highlights how virtual reconstruction can be a powerful tool for conservation decision making and awareness raising. Furthermore, the interesting results of the final reconstruction hypothesis convinced the technical team responsible for the conservation to alter some aspects of the final project physical interventions in order to focus on some of the features and conclusions discovered through the virtual model study.
because of the politicisation to further conflict ideologies as well as misinterpretation of the values they represent. Is it possible to protect Cultural Heritage under such circumstances? If yes, when is the right time to intervene and who can help in this task? How
can documentation and training assist?
The International Course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis promoted by ICCROM (The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property) in collaboration with various partners focuses specifically on ways to help in such difficult and stressful situations. This paper explores the methodological approach and highlights the special circumstances that surround rapid documentation and preliminary condition assessment in conflict areas, and in cases of complex
emergencies such as an earthquake striking a conflict area. The paper identifies international actors that might play a special and crucial role in the first steps of such a situation and recognizes the need for training activities to strengthen capacities for disaster response to cultural heritage at national and regional levels.
imaging, spherical high resolution photography, three-dimensional laser scanning and unmanned aerial vehicles are only a few of the new technologies available to heritage conservation professionals to record monuments, buildings, city centres and landscapes. These advanced tools are giving architects, engineers and conservation professionals’ new insights and additional information which helps to make better informed decisions. But this technology and the knowledge about its correct use are extremely unevenly distributed across the world. The Digital Divide is present and growing in the field of cultural heritage preservation (Letellier, 2001). Many of those responsible for the management, maintenance and care of some of the world´s most significant cultural heritage sites do not have access to or information about the latest technologies. They are also confronted with an overwhelming assortment of new technologies and consultants or developers that promote them and therefore must allocate their limited budgets with limited information.
What is to be done about bridging this gap? Obviously cost and accessibility are issues. However one of the most important
challenges to be addressed is education. As the base knowledge of these technologies is very uneven this leads to further questions:
Are there strategies or methodologies for teaching this technology? How to combine and balance different professional backgrounds from different and so unevenly distributed places around the world and provide them all with useful information to make good documentation and conservation decisions?
Alcázar a la Escuela de Estudios Árabes de Granada (CSIC) (Almagro 2000). Como viene siendo propuesto reiteradamente, el levantamiento arquitectónico debe entenderse como una forma de análisis y aproximación al conocimiento de los edificios que integre toda una serie de estudios e investigaciones que permitan la comprensión global de la realidad material e inmaterial de un edificio. Dentro de este
proceso, la obtención de la planimetría constituye una parte del análisis que en ningún modo puede ser sustituido por otro tipo de investigación. La información generada durante el proceso de medición y dibujo, que por necesidad tiene que
corresponder a un análisis exhaustivo de la propia materialidad de las estructuras arquitectónicas, es siempre muy superior a la que luego queda plasmada en los meros dibujos finales. Resulta por ello poco recomendable, desde nuestro punto de
vista, encomendar a terceros la realización de tales trabajos por parte de quienes tienen la responsabilidad del estudio, la tutela y la conservación de los edificios, pues debieran ser ellos las personas que mejor los conocieran, poniendo para ello
los medios adecuados cual es la realización de los levantamientos. Bien es cierto que la complejidad metodológica y el recurso muchas veces necesario a técnicas de medición, por desgracia aún poco generalizadas como pueda ser la fotogrametría, obliga en ocasiones a recurrir a otros técnicos, que en muchos casos carecen de la formación adecuada para poder realizar simultáneamente un análisis completo de la realidad arquitectónica que se está estudiando o restaurando. Lo que aquí presentamos puede constituir un modelo metodológico del modo de abordar el estudio de nuestro patrimonio histórico arquitectónico.
These are the teaching notes used for the ICCROM / GCI course on stone conservation.