ARChitectural HEritage Thesaurus through Integrated digital Procedures and Open data

ARCHETIPO spans a highly interdisciplinary domain, involving expertise from professionals in Digital Humanities, Architecture (including conservators and architectural historians), and information sciences. It also engages with public administration (responsible for historic buildings) and professionals active in the cultural heritage sector. Its primary objective is to coordinate knowledge exchange focused on what has been termed as ‘Built Knowledge’ – cultural heritage embedded in architecture. Specifically, the WG aims to explore (new) methods of documenting architectural heritage. Its practical aspect is to facilitate discourse leading to the creation of ‘a digital platform for the representation and management of heritage data on historic buildings in Europe’ – HERIGITAL. To achieve this goal, the WG also serves as a proto-consortium seeking European funding. This WG has methodological ties with other relevant WGs (BiblioData, ELDAH, DiMPO, DARIAHTeach) while content and tool-wise shares common ground with UDigiSH – Digital Practices for the study of Urban Heritage. ARCHETIPO is chaired by the two heads of VCC3 (Elena Gigliarelli and Georgios Artopoulos). The WG has garnered support from institutions/experts in Italy, France, Belgium, Ireland, and Cyprus; while the WG emerged through existing collaborations with numerous institutions within Italy.

Topics
The main strategically selected activities of the WG will address some of the most promising research topics in the field:

• Methodologies for managing the processes of documentation, preservation and enhancement of historical buildings through digital approaches to guide conservation, renovation and re-use decisions and actions;

• Knowledge bases, tools, data and services to support heritage building digitalization methodologies;

• Solutions to integrate established and currently developing digital resources for knowledge representation and management;

• Open processes (open source – free and shared) for building information management: dissemination of protocols and tools;

• Gathering, digitalisation and sharing of the studies of built heritage to enrich our understanding of architectural construction techniques (including vernacular architecture) as intangible cultural heritage and to preserve living knowledge that we are losing in time.

Target groups

The main protagonists and interlocutors of the WG will be:

• Researchers and experts in Digital Humanities; scientific societies

• Architects / Conservators;

• Cultural heritage Institutions;

• Technical operators and individuals with expert knowledge;

• Public administrations, historical building owners and managers;

• Enterprises operating in the field, and professional associations;

• Economic sectors of cultural heritage.