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.
Castello di Mirafiori: Reconstructive Modelling and WebAR
This paper presents a digital heritage project focused on the reconstruction and public communication of the lost Castello di Mirafiori in Turin through 3D modelling, WebAR, and physical prototyping. Developed through a collaboration between Politecnico di Torino and the Municipality of Turin within the European proGIreg urban regeneration programme, the research combines archival drawings, cadastral maps, engravings, historical texts, and territorial cartography to reconstruct the morphology of the Savoy residence and its formal gardens during their period of greatest splendour between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. The resulting digital model was optimized for lightweight online visualization and integrated into a browser-based augmented reality application using open-source AR.js technology, allowing visitors on site to access the reconstruction via QR code without installing software. Users can superimpose the castle model onto an information panel and explore different scales and views. The project also includes the design of a tactile physical model produced through laser cutting and 3D printing. The study demonstrates how low-cost AR solutions can reactivate vanished heritage, support community engagement, and contribute to cultural-led urban regeneration.
Connecting AR and BIM:a Prototype App
This contribution discusses an ongoing project integrating information modeling and immersive tech-nologies for the built space, in particular augmented reality (AR). We examined tools and procedures to quickly recognize the equipment present on telecommunication network sites and access the cor-responding components on a digital information model. A first phase of the project, recently complet-ed, produced an app prototype for mobile devices capable of showing a 1:1 scale AR representation on-site. The project highlights current limitations and opportunities in making the interaction between AR and building information modeling (BIM) technologies fully scalable.
Promotion of the Museum of Oriental Art in Turin by AR and Digital Fabrication: Lady Yang
A fundamental aspect of visiting museums is the involvement of visitors to facilitate the understanding of the collections on display [Black 2005, p. 7]: museums must therefore adopt techniques derived from the fields of relational and experiential marketing to improve the services offered.This contribution focuses on an ongoing experience, conducted at the Museum of Oriental Art in Turin (MAO), which involves the use of augmented reality (AR) combined with digital fabrication, applied in the field of cultural accessibility and marketing.In June 2021 the museum chose Lady Yang as artwork/mascot that would symbolically accompany the users in the visit path. It was decided to make this accompaniment tangible through digitally fabricated objects (a bookmark and a tactile replica) and an AR experience.The contribution wants to show the research workflow, from the digital acquisition of the artwork up to AR experience and digital fabrication, in a continuous transition between real and virtual, to demonstrate how they are mutually enriching in the visiting experience and process of knowledge.
AR&AI in the Didactics of the Representation Disciplines
The class of Digital Representation Techniques is an optional class for architecture and engineering students at the Politecnico di Torino. For the second year, the program of the class, focused on the the-oretical and applicative panorama of technologies for digital drawing, integrates an introduction to the most recent developments in augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI), two technological fields that are deeply influencing the interpretation of physical assets through digital models. The class requires students to produce different deliverables, including a research essay, graphic representation documents (plates or brochures), a video proving animation and editing skills, and a prototype AR ap-plication. The proposed contribution presents methods, objectives, and some of the results of the class, highlighting the interaction between the different digital representation techniques and deepening the critical aspects related to the introduction of new AR and AI technologies.
Data, Models and Computer Vision: Three Hands–on Projects
Advances in information and communication technologies unveil unprecedented opportunities in the documentation and analysis of architectural and urban assets. Nevertheless, the (over–)abundance of data does not always seem sufficient for a thorough understanding. This contribution summarizes three connected research experiences that produced apps and prototypes exploiting geospatial da-tabases, AI for image recognition, and AR based on model tracking, applied to built heritage contexts. The three cases contribute to a reflection on the interpretation of the form of the built environment as a means to produce shared knowledge and operational outcomes.
Scalable AR for Bim: An Application to Telecommunication Network Sites
A growing number of research works, experiments and applications is investigating the potential at the intersection of augmented reality (AR) and the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Project management, project communication, collaborative design, maintenance and construction progress documentation, construction site safety, and training are some of the cases that can benefit from blending real and virtual views through mobile devices. In recent years, research also highlighted how mixed reality and building information modeling (BIM) could cooperate to provide effective communication between multiple agents and closer interaction between digital information and the building site. Nevertheless, consolidated applications in these fields are still limited, especially when compared to other areas of AR adoption. This paper presents the development of an AR-based mobile app for exploring telecommunications tower sites and interacting with a related BIM database. The project aims to provide easy-to-use tools to maintain both the physical assets and an up-to-date model. We discuss critical issues in developing a scalable and interoperable application, supporting the feasibility study of similar solutions in the AEC sector.
Reconstructive 3D Modelling and Interactive Visualization for Accessibility of Piffetti’s Library in the Villa della Regina Museum (Turin)
This research is realised in the framework of a project recently funded as part of the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) in the Accessibility sector. The working team has been established in the framework of the scientific agreement between the Museum of Villa della Regina in Turin, the Department of Architecture and Design at Politecnico di Torino, and the Department of History, Drawing and Restoration of Architecture at Sapienza Università di Roma, and includes knowledge from art history, digital surveying, 3D modelling, and digital solutions for cultural heritage. The research involves the reconstructive 3D modelling of Piffetti’s Library, once placed in the cabinet toward midnight and west inside the Villa della Regina and today in the Palazzo del Quirinale, and its interactive visualisation through augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) aimed at accessibility.