“The building is connected to memories. People remember going to the beach and seeing the building and watching it change,” Ciraldo says. “With reality-capture scanning, it is important to have a sense of time and continuity, to understand how these buildings evolve, how their site evolves, how the neighborhoods evolve.”
The beach patrol building includes public restrooms and showers for beachgoers, which posed particular challenges when it came to scanning the site and keeping people out of each setup. Along with beachgoers coming and going, utility trucks were entering by the side of the building. All this activity required fast setups for the scans and accuracy to get it right on the first take.
There are two options for laser scanning: static (tripod-based) scanners or handheld, mobile scanners. For the Miami Beach Patrol Headquarters, I used a handheld reality- capture scanner that made it easy to scan the entire building quickly and accurately in under an hour. I was able to walk and scan when certain areas were clear and pause accordingly. The scans included all façades and the building’s multiple roof levels for a total of 23 scans and 3D color photos of the building’s exterior. Without the steady flow of people and the need to move and reset the tripod for scans, the process would have probably taken 15 minutes.
BRIDGING THE PAST AND FUTURE
Beyond capturing a single historic structure, the resulting digital twins of buildings have profound implications for the future of historic preservation beyond traditional surveying methods. These methods are core to MDPL’s mission of preserving, protecting and promoting the architectural, cultural, social, and environmental integrity of Miami Beach and the surrounding areas.
“Our roots are in protecting the buildings and much of the preservation relies on the use of surveying technology,” Ciraldo remarks. “It’s really cool to see how surveying has developed over time. In our archives, we have the original survey from 1979 where essentially, people are going one by one and describing the building in writing, on a piece of paper, and then taking individual photographs.”
Ciraldo said he was impressed by what new reality-capture technology means for the Miami Beach Patrol Headquarters, as well as other sites in the area. A complete laser scan and the resulting digital twin gives preservationists a comprehensive understanding of the headquarters for a variety of purposes, from maintenance and repair work to creating digital tours and models of a building for the public to view online.
“We can capture the building as it currently is, which has many uses in the future, whether for future renovation and restoration projects,” Ciraldo adds. “We think it’s more important than ever to have real, comprehensive and detailed surveys of these buildings, to have that record of how they look now, which can help guide our work going forward. It’s really the next era of historic preservation.”