Digital archives: Fostering and enhancing the architectural heritage

Abstract

Summary form only given. Digital architectural archives -public institutions, architecture museums, university institutes, private foundations, by their continue improvement of their interoperability, proficiency and efficiency, contribute to multiply access to information and to promote cultural dissemination at large scale. The expansive process of multidisciplinary knowledge, experienced in today digital environment, combined with the ability to synthetize and recognize new or hidden patterns for new disclosures, is becoming the major asset also for architectural study. Technology supports today's learning process by offering new tools and interactive devices while making learning experience deeper and more informal at the same time. The ongoing global trend of digitization of the architectural heritage, has extensive applications: as conversion of items in visual files, as resources management, as user interface and interaction design, and as multimedia platforms where, at different levels (for curators, designers, scholars, final users, as well as simple amateurs), a creative interpretation offers to set up links among contents, objects, images, texts, audiovideos, via notions and emotions, augmenting exponentially the network effects. Digital archives, upon layouts and filters, allow not only to run digital data flow, to better display their contents and exploit their value (input), but also to create fluent and dynamic links and aggregations, as visual and synthetic mind maps (output). The most diverse architectural institutions around the world rely more and more on digitization, improving accessibility to their collections by creating digital repositories and making them available on websites. The potential of open source databases and powerful research engines, when combined with the imaginative, creative th