Hera Lacinia temple recounstruction

How to apply 3D printing for architecture

3D printing allows to give back glory to ancient monuments lost because of time. This was the ambitious goal of the Hera Lacinia temple

The temple, or sancturary, was placed in Capo Colonna, an important promontory over the Taranto Bay, and it was built during the VI century BC. Now the site guests the archeological area and we saved just few ruins. Among them we’ve the icon of the area, the column that gives name to the entire promontory. It is important to remember the importance this temple had during the Magna Grecia period, when the sancturary was the seat of different alleances.

The temple was ade with several buildings, each dedicated to different rites and cerimonies. The anterior face had 6 columns made in doric style (with an height of 8 meters) and, like the ancient greek temples, was oriented to the sea. The total number of columns was 48 (36 on the sides, 6 for the face, 6 on the back). The roof was made with marble sheet.

The project

The project wants to be the union between classic tradition and innovative technologies like 3D printing to give new life to ancient monuments today lost. The Engilab staff started from the informstion we now have about the temple to sketch it completely, reproducing the looks and the internal rooms and columns. Because of lack of information, the staff used other temples structure to model the “new” Hera Lacinia shape.

Once they had the model, they divided it into different section to ease the printing process (as you can see by downloading the .stl files) and started printing with different Sharebot professional and desktop 3D printers. Once assembled, the model size is 240 x 600 x 200 mm, while the printers used were: Sharebot 42, XXL and NG.