Digital exploration in archival heritage. Research for the knowledge, use and communication of architecture archives through digital representation

Abstract

The application of digital representation technologies in the archives of architecture is an important support for the knowledge, use and the most effective communication and enhancement of the documentary heritage. In this sense the contribution proposes some research experiences aimed at the acquisition of graphic materials from private archives that risk disappearing without an appropriate systematization. The goal is to present case studies that investigate the contribution that the drawing can offer as a tool for educational and popular analysis of these assets, in which cultural moments are summarized linked to different historical periods and different territorial realities that express the material values and intangible ones from which they were generated. The acquisition in digital environment of collections of drawings, photos and other materials that accompany the compositional process developed by designers of different historical periods, allows, first of all, to transmit and consult in an interactive way the cultural heritage, procedures and professional experiences from which they derive, it also allows to retrace and analyze in detail the construction events of built and unbuilt architectures, also rediscovering the undisclosed experiments, remained on paper. The study specifically examines the activities of designers who have worked in Abruzzo, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, highlighting the presence of unpublished materials from which merge figures of valid professionals and compositional events that deserve to be investigated and brought back to the internal of the national archival system.