Symbolic Architectural Identity: The Digital Survey and Representation of Garage Musmeci in Catania

The paper illustrates the architectural identity of Catania in the 1920s, still rooted in the urban landscape of the city and in the architecture designed by Francesco Fichera, an architect from Catania who worked intensively in reinterpreting tradition through innovation. During the period of automotive industry development, he designed the Garage Musmeci (1924) building with a dual commercial and residential use. The architect reinterpreted the characteristics of the period through new perspectives taken from the national and European cultural scene. Fichera's design ability is expressed his skilful placement of the building in a corner lot that dialogues with the adjacent square and the highly figurative decorative elements on the façade offering strong symbolic reference to the automotive industry. For these reasons, we decided to investigate this architectural expression of Art Déco re-interpreted by the designer. Digital photogrammetric survey techniques and comparison with original design drawings were performed to obtain a three-dimensional model able to communicate and enhance the important cultural and symbolic value of the building and to study the geometric genesis of the project. The survey of Garage Musmeci is part of a wider research project aimed at discovering and enhancing the architecture of the early 1900s that enrich the city of Catania with high morphological and formal identity.