From Materiality to Immateriality and Vice Versa. Digitisation for Built Heritage

Abstract

Although the materiality of built heritage constitutes a crucial aspect to interface with in order to act effectively for its protection, the field of immateriality has witnessed a progressive advancement registered in recent decades. Beyond the various “forms” of intangible cultural heritage, as well as the intangible components linked to the tangible works, it is precisely immateriality that can be considered for its “instrumental nature” for cultural heritage assets. Hence, the topic of digital applied to the built heritage.

In the context of digitisation, with which we will increasingly have to deal in the future, this contribution intends to present possible fields of action that are revealing their potential in terms of conservation and valorisation of the existing heritage. Starting from operational examples implemented in this sense, the investigation focuses attention on the experience related to the 4CH Project for the establishment of a Competence Centre for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage, in the framework of which modelling and semantic enrichment issues through ontologies and HBIM models are also addressed.

What it is outlined contributes to highlighting the perspectives for heritage that digital is able to enable, underlining how, with reference to the built heritage, these frontiers, although endowed with new potential, require a path “from materiality to immateriality and vice versa” in order to continue to pay attention to the material substance of architecture, in its stratified consistency, as the only one that allows the effective transmission to the future of the asset inherited from the past.