Classifying the Heritage Elements Using Shape Grammars

Abstract

Traditional architecture style represents the evolutionary style and experienced characteristics of an urban environment that give a sense of place and identity. This style includes a mixture of technical and cognitive values that are difficult to conserve compared to other material resources. The process of organizing and classifying the architectural elements of these constructions in virtual digital manner is one of the means of preventive conservation for such elements and their values, which is essential in conservation operations of the built heritage. The study analyzes a number of international experiments that have employed shape grammar in studying and classifying the heritage elements in digital technique with specific rules. That because of the ability of these systems to examine the structure of the historic elements as it offers the possibility to combine their dimensional and morphological values, to classify them into a variety of categories with common characteristics in a specific style according to the local architectural language. The study seeks to determine the approaches of using the shape grammar as a mechanism of analyzing the structure of the elements of the Built heritage for classification. Next, to derive the rules and relationships that are used for the digital virtual reconstruction of the Built heritage according to the traditional architectural principles, and highlighting the digital applications and software that deals with the shape grammar in this field. The methodology of this study adopted the analysis of a number of studies that employed the shape grammar in the built heritage domain in order to review the potential of this digital systems and applications, to be presented as a documentation procedure for information management of preventive conservation projects of the urban environment in ancient cities.