Zastosowanie techniki cyfrowej 3D do rekonstrukcji historycznej zabudowy Krakowa

Abstrakt

THE USE OF 3D DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN THE RECONSTRUCTION OF KRAKOW’S HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN LAYOUT

One of the projects conceived as part of the exhibition scenario of the Kraków – the European City of Magdeburg Law 1257–1791 exhibition organized by the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków was the reconstruction of Kraków’s old architecture and urban layout in the form of a 3D digital model. The project was carried out by an interdisciplinary team of specialists comprised of architects, architecture historians, art historians, archaeologists and historians specializing in the issues of economic history, archive studies and heritage conservation. Specialist computer programs were utilized to create the digital models of architectural objects and elements of the natural landscape. One part of the project had been inspired by a view of Kraków dating from 1603–1605. The objective was to reconstruct the entire Kraków agglomeration as it looked like at the peak of the city’s prosperity, i.e. around the mid-17th cent. – immediately before its decline and, consequently, the slowing down of its urban and architectural development. The choice of this particular period was supposed to enable the presentation of Kraków’s urban layout and architectural design as a refl ection of the city’s harmonious growth and an eff ect of the gradual accumulation of structural layers and architectural styles. At that time, the city still retained its mediaeval layout and some of the mediaeval character of its architecture, while undergoing revolutionary transformation processes via which it was entering the Modern Era, including the early wave of the Baroque. The 1:1000 digital scale model reconstructs Kraków within the city walls, Wawel Hill, the satellite towns of Kazimierz and Kleparz, the Garbary and Stradom suburbs, and the Wesoła jurydyka – the entire area stretching to the borderline running along the channel of the River Prądnik in the east. It includes the villages of Krowodrza and Prądnik, together with the bishops’ manor in the north, the Royal Palace in Łobzów, the village of Zwierzyniec and the Norbertine convent located on the bank of the River Vistula in the west, and the villages of Dębniki and Ludwinów, together with Lasota Hill and Krakus Mount, in the south. The participants of the project reconstructed the landscape and the natural lay of the land into which the scale models of buildings and other architectural structures (diverse in terms of their sizes and functions) were then incorporated. The second part of the project was the reconstruction of the Kraków Market Square, together with the architectural details of the buildings in that area, as it looked like toward the end of the Old Polish period which was at the same time the final stage of the application of Magdeburg Law in the city. In this case, the team used the oldest surviving detailed plan of the city created in 1787 by the municipal land surveyor Dominik Pucek – a source which provided a detailed map of the Market Square, including the largest number of buildings and facilities in the entire history of the site – as the major source of inspiration and the starting point for further development of the project. The 1:200 scale model reconstructs the buildings in the Market Square area with particular emphasis on the exact shapes and colours of the elevations and on architectural details. The scope of the reconstruction included the entire area of the Main Market Square, together with the Town Hall, the local churches and the entire complex of trade facilities (until the 19th cent., this would mean the Cloth Hall, the Rich Stalls, the Greater and the Lesser Scales and the single-storey wooden facilities located on both the east and the west side of the Market Square – apart from the Cloth Hall, these buildings do not survive in our times). The scale model also presents the entire complex of houses and palaces surrounding the square, including the elevations of all the buildings overlooking it, and fragmentary reconstructions of the houses located within the building lots surrounding the Market Square. At the present stage, the digital reconstruction is utilized to popularize the outcomes of the latest research on Kraków’s history by facilitating the preparation of all sorts of comprehensive educational programs and materials. The digital scale model represents an important stage in the process of creating a large database documenting the outcomes of contemporary research on the spatial and architectural development of the city. The range of possible uses for the 3D model may expand far beyond historical reconstruction, as it may play an important role in the fields of national heritage protection and the promotion of Kraków in the future.