Safeguarding the Anonymous Industrial Building Heritage by an Interactive Catalogue of Paradigmatic Construction Elements: The Case of Thin Shells

The industrial buildings represent a key asset of the 20th Century cultural and technological heritage: the reuse of industrial heritage involves the essential phase of recognizing the intrinsic values of the industrial legacy, dealing within the development of specific safeguard strategy and tools. The ideation and the construction of specific digital tools to support the cataloguing of the industrial buildings, with specific reference to the anonymous industrial buildings is presented in this paper. A specific addendum of the cataloguing form and a typological database of geometrical and informative models of paradigmatic construction elements, featured by significant structural and building innovations are, thus, developed. The platform allows to disseminate the base knowledge framework of specific construction systems and automatize the customization of the cataloguing form related to the single building. Thin shells roofing elements, applied in Italy for industrial buildings between the 1930s and the 1960s, are considered as case study.