Typological and Structural Authenticity in Reconstruction: The Timber Roofs of Church of the Pieve in Cavalese, Italy

In case of exceptional or accidental destructive events (e.g., earthquakes, floods, fire), the advisability of completely reconstructing a vanished artifact may be questionable. Among the possible approaches for reconstruction, the so-called philological method allows the complete reading of the whole building. Analogous to the study of literary texts, this method is based on the analysis of the “architectural language” of a building that is its form and its technical characteristics as well as its structural behavior. This case study concerns reconstruction of the timber roof of the Church of the Pieve in Cavalese (Italy), destroyed during a fire on March 29, 2003, for which the philological approach has been chosen. The design process consisted of two important phases: first the determination of the precise form of the original roof, by considering different kinds of evidence, then the introduction of necessary modifications, to meet the present-day structural standards. Such design choice, far from being a simplistic solution, involved the participation of different experts and a thorough multidisciplinary investigation.