Digital Tools for Hisorical Research: Updating Teaching for Knowledge and Conservation of Architecture

Abstract

In the last fifty years, within architectural conservation, as in many other disciplines, the great improvement of technology for information and communication has deeply enhanced the development of knowledge organisation systems. As an example, interesting improvements have concerned cultural heritage territorial census, as well as state of conservation surveying and studying, previous interventions documentation or design management and implementation, together with scheduled maintenance activities. As a matter of facts, within this scenario, issues mostly referred to architectural comprehension, are actually deeply anchored to ‘traditional’ instruments. Among these, a particular role is played by historical research that is nevertheless upgrading, since the second half of the 20th century, traditional sites for bibliographic and archival studies with online resources. As a result, nowadays, teaching aimed at architectural historical research, cannot disregard online resources, either to educate to an effective and adequate information retrieval or to orient studies and analysis finalized to the understanding of the constructive phases of a building, to support its conservation design. The present paper aims at discussing how teaching may further develop online research, to cope with historical architectural studies, warning, in the meanwhile, on possible risks outcoming from an excessive and, sometimes, equivocal trust placed in the Internet.