Drawing and Geometrical Interpretation of Historical Constructive Elements for Conservation Activities: The Sixteenth Century Coffered Wooden Ceilings and the “camorcanna” Vaults of the Villa Cicogna Mozzoni

Villa Cicogna Mozzoni is located in Bisuschio, north of the city of Varese and a short distance from Lake Lugano, on the border between Lombardy and Switzerland. Archival and bibliographical sources trace the existence of an original nucleus of the present Villa to the 1540s, but it was configured as a hunting lodge owned by the Mozzoni family. Major works in the sixteenth century transformed the hunting lodge into a “villa di delizia”, with the addition of gardens around it and a rich decorative apparatus of both the interior and exterior surfaces of the Villa’s rooms, much of which has come down to us. The subject of this article is the account of a work of accurate geometric analysis of the geometries of the building and its structural elements, starting from laser scanner and photogrammetric data surveyed in 2021. In particular, this research work, which is still in progress, focused on the study of the wooden coffered ceilings covering the rooms on the first floor of the Villa and the “camorcanna” wooden fake vault of the Grand Staircase of Honor. From the study and interpretation of the geometric data obtained on these structures, together with comparison with historical and recent manuals, it was possible to derive morphological-constructive information and the state of conservation of the elements considered to provide fundamental information for the diagnostic and restoration project.