Repairs to the Villa Saraceno

To be asked to look at the repairs of the boundary walls and write a report on the fabric of the House Keepers cottage of Villa Saraceno was quite an honour. The very building where Palladio set out his classical geometric styles is such a beauty to behold and even more intriguing is that it is essentially an oversized granary!

The first job was to divide and concurrence the wall, using a selection of marking sticks to split the wall up into survey sections. This was then roughly split into sections for marking up, although this is a little bit backward to my normal process, all I had available to myself at the time was my sketchbook pen and tape.

Upon completing the survey we carried out a photogramatic survey of the existing fabric to allow for transferring out marked up survey notes to the structure. If we had our normal setup and were not so time constrained we would have done this first. One thing we were taught on the S.P.A.B Scholarship was the importance of looking and sketching, the sketch forces you look and examine in detail, things you may miss just taking a photograph.

The hand sketch was combined with CAD and Photogrametry to give a diagrammatic "as Existing" wall, showing areas of concern, age and significance.

The final repair proposal drawing was marked up with a schedule of repairs detailing the techniques for repair, amount and mortar types.