6. Persistent Modeling of the Built A Collective Experiment Merging Structural Preservation and Digital Design Between Academia and Industry

With an interest in the dynamics of structure and decay, this experiment challenges prevalent logics of building preservation by developing a hybrid strategy between digital geometrical data and physical manipulation. It informs an intervention to an exemplary construction, with the intention of adding structural redundancy and thereby converging model and building. In this regard, the chapter discusses the results of several on-site workshops with partners from business and industry, conducted at and on a derelict brick barn in Brandenburg, Germany. It merges 3D scanning data with industry practices for foundation injections and an external tensile structure, exemplifying an extension of prevalent strategies on building and the built, of what is finished and what may be persistent. Overlaying the obtained point cloud with an ideal model construed upon evidence from observed detailing and constructional history, it approaches the multiplicity of forces that over time have acted upon the brickwork. A translation of this deviation, traditionally conceived of as material and structural failure on a path towards collapse, functions as a qualitative representation of global deflection and allows for quantitative assessments of prospective strategies for intervention.