The design of the Politecnico di Torino “Campus delle Architetture, del Design e della Pianificazione” has an enormous strategic value, both for the reorganisation of the University and for the city dynamics, contributing to the overall development of the Po cultural axis. The transformation involved by the new campus will significantly impact the life of the area, radically changing its intensity through the daily flows of thousands of people and making the park an actual natural connective tissue. The communication project includes the realisation of events aimed at presenting the Campus to disseminate and popularise the outcomes of the realisation process to different stakeholders, showing a scale model of the area. Among the innovative features of the communication proposal is the superimposition of digital layers on the physical model for audience engagement through a webAR that activates a step-by-step journey with descriptions of different aspects of the campus project.
Edutainment in Museums: Facilitating the Educative Role of Cultural Institutions by Introducing XR Technologies
The integration of Extended Reality (XR) technologies is transforming the role of museums from static repositories of knowledge to interactive, experiential spaces. This shift is driven by the evolving digitalized public, characterized by heightened expectations for immersive, engaging, and personalized content consumption. Museums now employ innovative strategies, such as edutainment, to merge education with entertainment, fostering deeper emotional and cognitive connections with visitors. XR technologies, encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR), play a crucial role in enhancing cultural heritage interpretation, visualization, and interaction. In the contemporary scenario, many applications are revolutionizing visitor engagement in museum environments by enabling digital storytelling, gamified learning, and interactive exploration and, as a long-term result, improving knowledge retention and fostering a stronger appreciation for cultural heritage among the visiting digitalized public. Despite the transformative potential of XR, challenges persist, including accessibility issues, financial constraints, and the need for specialized staff training. Future research aims to refine XR applications by employing frameworks to optimize usability and engagement. As museums continue to embrace digital transformation, XR technologies will be instrumental in ensuring their long-term relevance, enhancing visitor satisfaction, and bridging the gap between cultural heritage preservation and contemporary digital advancements.
Immersive Experiences for the Re-contextualization of Statues of the Goddess Sekhmet
This paper presents a multidisciplinary workflow for the digital reconstruction and immersive re-contextualization of the Sekhmet statues preserved at the Museo Egizio in Turin. Combining archaeological research, 3D modeling, and virtual reality technologies, the study reconstructs the original architectural contexts of the statues—specifically the Temple of Amenhotep III and the Temple of Ptah—and explores multiple hypotheses regarding their spatial arrangement. The resulting VR experiences enable users to navigate reconstructed environments and interact with contextual information, supporting both scholarly investigation and public dissemination. The research highlights the potential of immersive technologies as heuristic and communicative tools in cultural heritage.
Re-contextualizing the standing Sekhmet statues in the Temple of Ptah at Karnak through digital reconstruction and VR experience
Recent trends in the Digital Humanities – conceived as new modalities of collaborative, transdisciplinary and computational research and presentation – also strongly influence research approaches and presentation practices in museums. Indeed, ongoing projects in museums have considerably expanded digital access to data and information, documentation and visualization of ancient ruins and objects. In addition, 3D modelling and eXtended Reality opened up new avenues of interacting with a wider public through digital reconstructions that allow both objects and sites to be presented through visual narratives based on multidisciplinary scholarly research. The article illustrates the use of 3D digital reconstruction and virtual reality to re-contextualise standing statues of Sekhmet in the Temple of Ptah at Karnak, where they were found in 1818. Today, they are on display at Museo Egizio, Turin. The theoretical framework of the research and the operational workflow – based on the study of the available archaeological, textual, and pictorial data – is presented here.