Abstract
The chapter shows some of the outcomes of a research project begun in 2021 in collaboration with the Archivio Progetti Iuav of Venice, with the aim of disseminating the drawings, documents, and projects preserved. On the basis of the documentary collection including pieces, projects, models, together with a conspicuous repository of photographs and reproductions, the research deepens a little-explored aspect of an unbuilt Venice, circumscribing the investigation scope to the 20th century masters of architecture who contributed in rethinking the urban form of the lagoon city, such as Luciano Semerani's project for the sestiere of Cannaregio Ovest in 1978. The discussion on the Venetian structural system, the urban trace, and the architectural configuration is re-established in a dialogue between its history and its contemporaneity. This is achieved starting from the digital models and virtual tours with in-depth texts that integrate the information actions with respect to the qualities of the architectures and urban spaces activated and consulted with the exploration of the model.
TopBackground
The current reflection posed on Digital Heritage determines a constant rethinking on the ways of visualisation, communication and dissemination of cultural heritage across different research fields and disciplines “from museography to computer graphics, from archaeology to design, from art history to engineering, from archives to statistics, etc. It is therefore an overarching term, encompassing many ICT topics and heritage themes” (Pescarin, 2016, p. 1), increasingly leading to an overlap and interconnection between different knowledge. The era of large ‘digital meta-collections’ is taking shape in an increasingly massive way, bringing into its domain not only groupings of digital information pertaining to specific institutions, but also and above all their interoperability and ability to define a dissemination of knowledge increasingly relying on shared and networked exploration (Windhager et al., 2016).
Along the lines of the definitions given by UNESCO to the concepts of tangible and intangible cultural heritage (UNESCO, 2003), looking at the use and development of digital technologies for the preservation and enhancement of heritage makes it possible to develop ways of accessing even those cultural assets that are difficult to reach or even just to consult, based on the assumption that preserving heritage means documenting, protecting, reconstructing and disseminating (Skublewska-Paszkowska et al., 2022).
There has long been talk of increasingly democratic ways of access aimed at an open science, making people increasingly aware of their heritage and thus of the need to safeguard it through participatory processes: “the application of technology in a democratic manner could refer to access to the technology for all, as well as use of the technology to actually serve democratic purposes. This prompts us […] to consider whether the user driven approaches to the collection of digital heritage data in some ways represents the Heritage community taken control of the digital agenda” (Laing, 2020, p. 2).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Digital Knowledge: Increasingly massive way of collecting data able of bringing into its domain not only groupings of digital information not only belonging to specific institutions or entities, but also their interoperability to create a dissemination of knowledge based on shared and networked exploration.
Typological Knowledge: Linked to the sphere of abstraction, this kind of knowledge develops three issues: the relationship between urban theory and theory of architecture; the scalarity of design themes; the significance of the assumption of the urban context, for architectural project.
Digital Exploration: The valorisation and online dissemination of the graphic heritage preserved in the archives aims at the construction of memory by means of digital interpretations and elaborations telling new places and imaginaries.
Unbuilt Project Views: A given representation of an architectural environment, executed under particular time-space conditions, a result of a specific attitude of thought that is subject to being studied over time by different observers who can ascribes to each sign meanings as a function of own knowledge, aspirations, and judgment on the representational techniques used.
Archive Drawing Digitisation: Reading and integration of the missing information by means of models elaborated with an information level suited to their exploratory possibilities and to be published on online and open source platforms enhancing the accessibility of the range of users.
Digital Hybridisations: Combinations of images, integrations between the digital model and the archive drawing capable of amplifying the perception of the imagined spatialities and providing an increasingly integrated degree of knowledge.
Digital Objects: Items produced to provide a level of information that can be consulted from fixed or mobile devices and on open source platforms in different formats and viewing modes, depending on the type of use: images, virtual tours, explorable in standard and immersive modes, and videos.