Spherical Panoramas, and non Metric Images for Long Range Survey, the San Barnaba Spire, Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

The Sagrada Familia by Gaudi in Barcelona about 80 years after the death of its creator is going quickly to take its final shape as well as, maintain its original form as Gaudi would have wanted, the actual builders say.  Complicated and elaborated forms, following the construction layout of the Chapel of Colonia Guell in Santa Coloma, tend to reproduce, on a gigantic scale, the organic forms of trees going to draw the charming and attractive complex of the small church derived from the model of wires used by Gaudi for its design. It has been long debated, and still it is debated on this approach as "camouflage", how it is consistent with the attitude of Gaudi architecture in the sense that he saw a sort of self-generating form of architecture during its own construction gradually responding to the stress placed by the same growth of structures, shapes, and materials. ("We do not reproduce the forms but we are able to reproduce a character owing its spirit,” A. Gaudi). But beyond this, the reality remains of the gradual suppression of what Gaudi realized until his death. Basically the sole facade of the Nativity, with its striking features and ending with four original towers as hyperboloids pinnacles with glittering glazed mosaics, is the only one that was finished by Gaudi himself, in particular the San Barnaba’s spire. In this action of progressive “destruction”, it is very important to analyze, survey and plot what realized by Gaudi for recovering the original forms and keeping them in their Gaudian formal and constructive features. The spire of St. Barnabas is one of the most architecturally significant occurrence of the whole building and its survey poses major technical problems: their possible solution represented by the experience here shown, has been already experimented in the previous 90 years as one of the first applications of expeditious photogrammetric techniques of survey (Clini, Fangi,1990). The technical problems consist basically in the difficulty given by its height above the street level, about 100 meters. Long focal lenses have to be used to get a suitable resolution and accuracy. We wanted to repeat now the survey using a different photogrammetric technique from the old one, that was DLT algorithm for non-metric images. The new technique is the Spherical Photogrammetry. Multi-image Spherical Photogrammetry makes use as sensor of a pseudo-image that is the spherical panorama, composed by the images taken from the same station point. For details of Spherical Photogrammetry see (Fangi, 2,3,4,9). A particular procedure appropriate for the orientation of very narrow field of view lenses panorama has been already set up and used for the orientation and plotting of the three minarets of the Great Mosque of Omayyad’s in Damascus, Syria. Their heights range from 60 to 80 meters above the courtyard pavement of the mosque. The technique consists in taking different focal lengths panorama from the same station point (Fangi, New Castle, 2010), one with WA wide angle and another one with NA Narrow Angle, adding to the stability of WA panorama the resolution of NA panorama. The same approach has been used in the Sagrada Familia, for the survey of San Barnaba’s spire. In 1990 the A. made a survey of the same spire. But in comparison to the years 90, there is one difficulty more: now the rear of the spire is not visible because of the construction of the roof of the church, while it was visible in 1990. The solution has been then to use the original images taken in the years 90 for the rear of the spire and the spherical panoramas for the rest, i.e. the part toward the façade, using the original control points. Then we had to make a combined adjustment of non metric images using DLT approach and spherical photogrammetry algorithms. The restitution has been indeed carried out using both type of imagery, spherical panorama and non metric images. The results are satisfactory in the sense that the principles of quick photogrammetry have been respected: short surveying times, simple and inexpensive tools, reaching in a ny case suitable outcome.