On 16-19 February 2019 Blue Shield Georgia alongside ICOMOS CIPA Heritage Documentation hosted a joint workshop titled “Winter School Documentation Training”. The event was held at the Chess Palace and the Alpine Club in Tbilisi, Georgia. The project was offered under the Getty Foundation’s Keeping it Modern Initiative which is committed to architectural conservation with a focus on important buildings of the twentieth century. Past grant awardees of the Keeping it Modern initiative have included the Sidney Opera House, the Price Tower in Oklahoma by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau. . After a thoughtful process of selection the Chess Palace in Tbilisi was chosen this year.
The four-day-long workshop in Georgia’s capital united 15 Georgian participants and four international experts, as well as representatives of Blue Shield Georgia. The event mainly targeted young architects, engineers and art specialists, all of them either students or alumni of Georgian Universities.
Invited were international experts from CIPA Rand Eppich, Dr. Andreas Georgopoulos, Abhijit (Abhu) Dhanda and Stratos Stylianidis.
In the four days of the worship the participants covered three relevant topics for heritage documentation:
- photography
- photogrammetry
- Laser scanning
The opening day served as an introductory occasion for the involved organizations. The participants listened to introductory lectures and went on a tour of the Chess Palace and the Alpine Club.
The next two days were spent with the main focus on practicing. Three groups of participants worked separately with the experts on photography, photogrammetry and laser scanning. They had the opportunity to learn important techniques and got acquainted with various tools widely used in documentation. During these two days they were able to directly communicate with the experts, asking questions and doing the follow-up on the most interesting topics.
The last day of the workshop was dedicated to presentations by the participants. They demonstrated the skills and knowledge they’d acquired during the workshop. They also discussed their expectations from this event. Both the experts and the participants praised the workshop as a very practical event and expressed the willingness for further co-operation.
The workshop will result in a Documentation Report that will be edited in both Georgian and English and illustrated with examples made by the participants. This report will be subsequently submitted to those responsible for the building as well as the Getty Foundation. Importantly, this report will inform the following Values Assessment and Condition Survey training. Ideally those involved could participate in both workshops. At the end of the project, the web page will accommodate all of the project outputs in easily accessible format. Finally, the participants will be able to include this in their professional portfolios.
Photo by Rand Eppich