A Comprehensive Review on the Applications of Stereography and Stereophotogrammetry in Architectural Documentation

Abstract

Current efforts in the digital documentation of built cultural heritage focus on producing fully interactive digital surrogates using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry techniques. These approaches require massive quantities of data in the form of point clouds or input images, along with enormous and difficult-to-share final models. Moreover, these approaches do not capture the architectural character as well as fundamental geometry. Rather than generating fully three-dimensional (3D) models, which is time-consuming and inefficient, stereography provides a potential alternative for graphic documentation. However, stereography has never been used as a heritage deliverable, comparable to architectural photos and technical drawings. Given this fact, this thesis suggests integrating stereography and stereophotogrammetry to allow users to observe stereopairs and record their spatial experiences (i.e., using a phenomenology method) or the architectures' geometry (i.e., using a Cartesian method). In fact, integrating these two approaches will significantly reduce the volume of data required for documentation, allowing for better long-term storage. These combined approaches do not require a digital surrogate and can provide nearly the same information as other documentation methods. In this regard, this thesis presents a comprehensive literature review on integrating stereography and stereophotogrammetry for digital documentation. In addition, some examples of heritage architecture in Kingston, Ontario, have been provided to showcase the gaps in heritage documentation.