Analogue Meets Digital: History and Present IT Augmentation of Europe’s Largest Landscape Relief Model in Villach, Austria

Manfred F Buchroithner

doi:10.3390/mti3020044

Abstract

Brought to completion in 1913 after a production time of 24 years, the landscape relief model of Carinthia (Kärnten), on display in Villach, Austria, is, at 182 m², the largest of its kind in Europe. It is painted with nature-like land-cover information and presents the whole federal state of Carinthia and its surroundings including Austria’s highest peak, Großglockner, at a scale of 1:10,000. From 2016 to 2018, a series of computer-generated and partly computer-animated educational contents for rental tablets as well as for projection onto the terrain model and above it have been produced. Their topics are briefly presented. The described Relief von Kärnten is also a paramount example and master copy of how to improve the attractivity of historical physical landscape relief models by means of state-of-the-art information technology. The article is, furthermore, meant to raise awareness for a piece of “geo-art”, which is worth being known at an international scale by both experts and laymen.

Highlights

It may be considered a strange fact that the largest landscape relief model of its kind in Europe is—even in times of a revival of 3D visualizations—almost unknown amongst professionals, not to mention the laymen
The initial idea to generate a detailed, topographically exact terrain model of the Austrian federal state of Carinthia (German: Kärnten) and its surroundings was raised around the year 1885
Since the Section Villach of the German and Austrian Alpine Club could not procure the funds for the completion and the shelter-building construction of the landscape relief model, in the same year of

Summary

Introduction

It may be considered a strange fact that the largest landscape relief model of its kind in Europe is—even in times of a revival of 3D visualizations—almost unknown amongst professionals, not to mention the laymen. This is all the more surprising as this piece of educational “geo-art” is located in the center of Villach, a city in the southern Austrian Alps that is probably the most important traffic hub there with rail- and highway connections to Germany, the Region of Vienna, Hungary, the Balkans, and Northern Italy. This applies to all statements where no explicit literature references are given in the text

Initiation

Production

The Digitally Augmented Relief

Findings

Example