The 1050th anniversary of the Baptism of Poland (14.04.2016) was an inspiration to create a mock-up of a baptistery in Ostrów Lednicki, where this historical event took place. To carry out the project a company SCANNING3D took 3D scans of ruins and used different historical source materials. After that, Fucco Design printed a mock-up of a palace and chapel in scale 1:40. The enterprise had a few stages and historical consultations were required.
Ostrów Lednicki is an island on lake called Lednica. I the early Middle Ages there was there one of the most important boroughs of the first sovereigns of Poland – Mieszko I, Bolesław Chrobry i Mieszko II. Historical fortifications and architectonic relics remained for this day. Of major importance are relics of palace residence, which was build in the second half of X century by prince Mieszko I.
The ruin of palace and chapel belong to the oldest buildings made of stone in Poland. The rectangular palace is divided into several rooms, from which the biggest and the most important was royal hall. The chapel was places on the east site of the building. It has a shape of a Greek cross with four pillars. Elements which determine its uniqueness are two hollows in shape of cross, which probably were used like props for the baptism.
The first model based on technical drawings from 1993, published in study of a team: Żurowska, Rodzińska-Chorąży, Biedroń, Łastowiecki, Węcławowicz, Wrzesiński: FAZA I: Baptysterium i Pałac Biskupi (Phase I: Baptistery and Bishop’s Palace). If only it was possible, the drawings were put on orthophotos. The model was scaled, what let to control the elements. A minimal thickness of each element was 1 mm.
The next phase was correction – changing some guidelines and checking results. The construction of the building was not complicated, but it had to be reconstructed several times, especially the baptistery. The guidelines were very precise, for example: a pitch of roofs, a shape of arcade and apses or dimensions of beams. Some actions were carried out with trial-and-error method, like placing of a throne on the way, that the king could see an altar.
After that, using the photographs of the ruins, the team tried to define their shape and tried to generate models of stones. Placing of the stones on the mock-up was a little bit problematic, because the building was not situated on a perfectly flat ground.
The last step was to divide the model into several parts. The customer decided where to cut it. The contractor was responsible for the elements. They had to be matching and floors could not have moved. A lower layer of the mock-up and a layer below it should have been additionally reinforced, because their parts were weak and easy to break. All of the parts of the model were given to Fucco Design in form of .stl files.
Printing of the elements (when we consider only good ones) lasted 352 hours and 9 spools of ABS were needed – the team used two colours: bright grey for the baptistery and dark grey for roofs. They were printed with: two MakerBot 2X, Ultimaker Original, Ultimaker Original and concept 3D printer eXXtrudo. The mock-up has 5 layers: remained ruins (the lowest level), ground floor, first floor, second floor and roofs. The mock-up can be reclined – each floor can be removed to look how did the baptistery look like from the inside. Each floor consists of 20-40 elements. An important role in creating of the project had FabLab Leszno, which was working 4 weeks on postproduction, treatment and gluing the parts of the mock-up together.
SCANNING3D scanned this priceless monument. In cooperation with Museum of the First Piasts on Lednica, managed by professor Zygmunt Kalinowski, created a 3D model in the most probable shape.
