AR for Understanding Architectural Drawings: Gustavo Tognetti’s Plates

Tools such as augmented reality and virtual reality are now available to anyone with a mobile device. These technologies have aroused considerable interest for their possible applications in education. The ability to visualise, through mixed reality, information directly superimposed on reality, augmenting and enriching it with notions, procedures and insights, offers an important channel of dissemination directly linked to the portions of reality to which this information refers. Among the innumerable fields of application is undoubtedly the study of historical heritage; heritage that is often characterised by limited accessibility, be it physical or cognitive. Often the understanding of such heritage must also be mediated by a preparatory background that is not always available. An emblematic example is architectural drawings, whose variety and complexity require specific training and culture for in-depth compression. The proposed study hypothesised a possible application of AR tools based on architectural drawings. Specifically, the heritage studied are 12 didactic plates drafted by architect Gustavo Tognetti at the end of the nineteenth century and addressed to students of Drawing courses at the University of Cagliari. The aim is to allow the students to visualise the three-dimensional models of the architectural elements depicted and described in the Tognetti’s plates, especially those relating to the architectural orders. A direct visualisation of the 3D reproduction of what is depicted two-dimensionally in the plates constitutes a rapid support to the understanding of such elements characterised by geometries that cannot always be immediately visualised mentally by students of Architecture in their early years.