The Muqarnas Wooden Ceiling and the Nave Roofing in the Palatina Chapel of Palermo: Geometries, Failures and Restorations (original) (raw)

Complex wooden carpentries, as that of muqarnas ceiling in the Palatina Chapel of Palermo induce technicians and scientists to have a relationship with interesting study-cases, in which the aspect connected merely to basic geometries and volumes (particularly -for the examined case -the intrados and extrados surfaces, strongly plastic, corrugated and modelled), indissolubly integrate themselves with the adopted materials (above all, wood and iron), with constructive elements on a vast scale (we thought to the realization of principal and secondary bearing structure, of finishing and completing parts, useful to the intrados continuity), as they integrate themselves with detailed aspects (we cited the little wooden rods, joists, tablets and slats used to model now the muqarnas alveoluses, now the barrel vaults, the segmental domes or the vaults having a mixtilinear profile, etc.), and also with specific constructive technologies (particularly we refer to connection systems through nails and strips, permeation of structural elements, …, resulting very important and resolutive for a wooden carpentry so articulated, and that have to be extremely accurate and reliable, because of they constitute "sensible" points of efficacy and/or structural frailty, besides a punctual constraints).