MACE book - European association for architectural education

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edited by 

produced by 

powered by 

published by 

supported by 

browsing 

architecture 

metadata and beyond 

eaae Transactions on Architectural Education no. 40 

Matteo Zambelli, Anna Helena Janowiak and Herman Neuckermans 

mace Consortium 

Collaboratorio 

eaae European Association for Architectural Education 

Fraunhofer irb Verlag 

European Commission, eContentplus Program 

mace 

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Bibliographic information published 

by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek 

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists 

this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; 

detailed bibliographic data are available 

on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. 

isbn 978-3-8167-7770-0 

printed by Fraunhofer irb Media Services 

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cover illustration 

Moritz Stefaner 

printing 

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typography 

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Typeface With No Important Name) 

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table of contents 

introduction 

foreward 

Herman Neuckermans 

browsing architecture. metadata and beyond: The concept 

Furio Barzon, Anna Janowiak, Matteo Zambelli 

mace 

mace: Connecting and Enriching Repositories for Architectural Learning 

Moritz Stefaner, Vittorio Spigai, Elisa Dalla Vecchia, Massimiliano Condotta, 

Stefaan Ternier, Martin Wolpers, Stefan Apelt, Marcus Specht, Till Nagel, Erik Duval 

models of design activities: 

Towards Effective Design Scaffolding 

Mario De Grassi, Alberto Giretti, Roberta Ansuini 

mace: 

Enabling Legacy Repositories 

Stefan Apelt, Christian Prause, Mathias Casaer, Ann Heylighen 

everyville installation: mace at La Biennale of Architecture 

Interaction Design Lab and Interface Design, 

University of Applied Sciences Potsdam (fhp) 

e-learning 

textidattica: 

Saggio Teaches Information Technology in Latin 

Antonino Saggio 

indexed and browsed: 

A New Didactic Approach Towards the Orders of Columns 

Susanne Schumacher 

housing@21.eu: 

Integrating Learning Spaces and Architectural Repositories 

Leandro Madrazo, Paul Riddy, Luca Botturi 

beyond digital repositories: 

Architectural Information Presentation 

Verdy Kwee

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144 

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towards using digital modeling systems: 

The Context of E-learning 

Nada El-Khoury, Giovanni De Paoli 

@gd: Keeping a Record of Learning Paths 

on Digital Graphics Representation for Architecture 

Adriane Borda, Neusa Felix, Luisa Dalla Vecchia, Janice Pires 

virtual studio: 

A Digital Repository in Architectural Education 

Andy Earl, Carl O’Coill, Joss Winn 

going digital in the classroom: 

Lessons from the Integration of Wikis in an Architectural History Course 

Francesca Torello, Marie Norman 

archives 

building up digital collections: 

From Policy to Implementation 

Patricia Alkhoven 

the on-line catalogue of the giancarlo de carlo archives: 

An Attempt to Integrate Paper-Based and Digital-Born Documents 

Riccardo Domenichini 

electronic documents in an architectural practice: 

Graphics Creation, Maintenance, Selection and Preservation 

Elena Triunveri 

image archive: 

A Hybrid Structure for the Enhancement of Architecture Videos 

Paola Ricco 

the facetag engine: 

A Semantic Collaborative Tagging Tool 

Emanuele Quintarelli, Andrea Resmini, Luca Rosati 

computer integrated building system: 

Preliminary Thoughts 

Hong Zhang 

save the bubble: 

The Architectural Archive in the Digital Age 

Bernhard Franken, Berthold Scharrer, Suemri Nina Michaela Vogel

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367 

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table of contents 

a classification system for construction units and products: 

Methodological Hypothesis and Application Testing on Pre-Modern Building 

Sara Scapicchio 

the probado framework: 

A Repository for Architectural 3d-models 

Ina Blümel, Harald Krottmaier, Raoul Wessel 

websites 

mimoa: 

An Interactive Architecture Guide 

Mieke Vullings, Naomi Schiphorst 

nextroom: 

The European Hub for Contemporary Architecture 

Juerg Meister, Helga Kusolitsch, Stephan F. Haupt 

the lafis project: 

Managing Publicly Induced Data into a Scholar Environment 

Francisco Agostinho 

a database of architectural repositories: 

Criteria for Selection and Evaluation 

Stefan Boeykens, Herman Neuckermans 

cultural heritage repositories: 

Digital Archives for Conservation and Management 

Alonzo Addison, Mario Santana Quintero, Marta Severo 

images 

A collection of photographs and charts from the essays 

index of terms – folksonomy 

colophon

introduction

herman neuckermans 

k.u. leuven 

Heverlee, Belgium 

http://www2.asro.kuleuven.be/asro/english/home/ 

HN/home.htm 

The author is professor and head of the research group 

Building and Design Methodology at the Department 

of Architecture at the K.U.Leuven. He has former 

experience as a self-employed architect, but is now 

full-time member of the academic staff. He teaches 

several courses, including Construction of Buildings, 

Design Methodology and CAAD. He is program 

director for the Department and is the past president 

and currently a council member of the European 

Association for Architectural Education (EAAE). 


foreword This book is one of the achievements of the EU-cofunded MACE project on Metadata 

for Architectural Contents in Europe. “Browsing Architecture. Metadata and 

Beyond” is about digital collections of contents useful in the broader context of 

regular education, e-learning and lifelong learning in architecture. In MACE these 

contents are called learning objects. Learning objects are qualified by their metadata 

i.e. data about data. Metadata are mostly hidden for the user, but they are essential 

‘backstage’ in order to use, retrieve and search the data. 

The MACE project sets out to transform the ways of e-learning about architecture in 

Europe. It is integrating a considerable amount of contents from diverse repositories 

created in several large former projects as well as from existing architectural design 

communities. 

MACE will provide a framework for community based services such as finding, 

acquiring, using and discussing about e-learning contents that were previously only 

reachable to small user groups. 

The project builds on several successful projects including, but not limited to, 

DYNAMO, INCOM, WINDS and ARIADNE. In addition to that, three members of the 

consortium are main content partners who have access to a large number of content 

providers or are themselves associations of architects and universities dealing with 

architecture and design. Therefore the project reaches a critical mass of digital 

content that grants a significant impact on the EU scenario concerning architecture 

and cultural heritage, and will become a base for further community activity in these 

domains. 

The project develops and uses several types of metadata for tagging contents: traditional 

content metadata and ontologies, context metadata, competence metadata 

and learning process metadata, usage related metadata and metadata acquired 

through social interaction, e.g. recommendations by peer users or blog entries. Close 

integration of universities as well as professionals ensures that demands from the 

user side are recognized and fitting solutions are created. Since users are distributed 

across different countries in Europe, the project addresses the multicultural and multilingual 

issues resulting thereof and create s working solutions for sharing contents 

across borders. 

foreword 9

Repositories belong to the world of meta-architecture, of what belongs to architecture 

but is not architecture. Architecture has always existed in and through the 

discourse on architecture, repositories belong to that discourse and hence somehow 

to the “beyond architecture”. 

It is true to say that information technology has changed our world and our lives 

and of course education is in the frontline of this process of change. The impact of 

IT on architecture is even more radical because the information society challenges 

the traditional, stable notions of time and place upon which our modern society and 

modern architecture is based since the renaissance. Distances are shrinking, humans 

are no longer bound to one place on earth, ideas travel at the speed of light, and the 

specificity of cultures seems to fade away in a global world where everyone connects 

to everyone instantly. The virtual is competing more and more with the real world, it 

becomes our real world. 

In this changing world, learning objects become available via electronic means to an 

ever-growing extent. It happens in regular teaching environments as well as in learning 

modes during and after graduation: knowledge is out of date within five years 

and grows so fast that regular teaching ‘in school’ cannot cope with this knowledge 

boom in a comprehensive way. Therefore academic teaching evolves into teaching 

of principles, methods and attitudes, into a state of mind allowing lifelong learning 

(LLL). Subjects for LLL are produced by universities, by practice and by industry. They 

are disseminated via conferences, short courses and more and more via e-learning 

formulas. Today, subjects for learning – called learning objects – are prepared by 

specialists, somewhere on earth, disseminated via electronic communication means 

and shared amongst distant users. 

E-repositories play a role of growing importance in this context and this book focuses 

on the role of e-repositories in lifelong learning in architecture. 

In this book major attention is paid to the presentation of some interesting repositories 

and the newly developed tools to search a wide variety of architectural repositories 

developed within the framework of MACE, aiming at federating architectural 

repositories all over Europe. The newly developed MACE system for harvesting 

– repositories keep their data – searching and enhancing metadata was presented at 

“La Biennale di Architettura 2008” in a showcase . 

Ultimately built architecture tells us who and what we are, where we come from and 

where we are going as a society. The built environment is our ultimate repository of 

ideas and dreams; it is the theatre of our daily life. It is an environment in permanent 

change, alive in a permanent struggle or tension between old and new, between 

tradition and modernity. All students of architecture today are modernists, but they 

still have to learn from the lessons of the past. They should visit places and actively 

try to understand the genius loci, and in doing so, learn from other’s experiences. 

They have to be familiar with so many places, but cannot physically visit them all, 

and therefore we need the help of digital representations as the best substitute for 

the experience in situ. Hopefully, these virtual visits will trigger real visits later on. 

We can learn so much from the authentic design efforts embedded in the built environment 

surrounding us. Roger Schank has proven that humans learn from previous 

experiences. Personal “learning by doing” (Donald Schön) prevails over learning 

from other’s experience, but again the latter is the best substitute for the former, and 

so makes databases containing cases so vital for architectural education. Turning 

cases into knowledge, into assimilated information is essential for creative behaviour 

and it is expected from architects. For creativity is putting the elements of someone’s 

experience into new combinations in the pre-conscious. MACE is contributing to that 

experience. 


acknowledgments 

The book is a result of the International conference, entitled “On-line Repositories in Architecture”, 

held at the Teatro Piccolo of “La Biennale di Architettura”, Venice, on 20-21 September, 2008. 

The major goal of this conference was to disseminate ideas, ambitions and achievements of MACE 

to a wider public of potential contributors and to mobilise a great number of users. 

The programme of the conference was scheduled over 2 days in 3 sessions, each session having a 

set of presentations followed by a roundtable workshop. 

The sessions articulate the following three themes: 

1. Teaching architecture in the digital era: the digital world has changed our teaching and learning 

schemes. Teaching is less and less bound to a physical location. The famous slide projector has 

been replaced by beamers and students no longer present on paper but also beam their project in 

flashy real time simulations. More and more books include demos, exercises and practice on digital 

media. Contents created by one person can be shared with others and updated faster than with 

printing. Students find everything on the web, produce papers heavily relying on ‘cut and paste’ 

and are confronted more and more with issues of intellectual property rights and quality assessment. 

Teachers have to evaluate the authorship of documents. Education is no longer specified in 

subjects but in competences. 

2. Digital Archives: preservation, dissemination and use. The vulgarisation of digital media has 

brought many teachers to build their own teaching environment, their own contents. Since they 

are by definition limited in capacity and in time, the MACE project has been conceived to open 

up these collections of data in order to share them with colleagues and reversely to profit from 

someone else’s work. This conference has the ambition to gather interesting initiatives and to disseminate 

them amongst colleagues. 

3. Websites: a European network of architectural contents. Our search for digital contents has 

shown that the web has plenty of isolated repositories, not at all linked and frequently ignored or 

unknown. MACE has the ambition to federate many repositories and enhance the search capabilities 

by connecting contents. 

For any further information about the International conference, go to: 

www.mace-project.eu/conference 

For any further information about the MACE Project, go to: 

www.mace-project.eu 

foreword 11

furio barzon 


Venice, Italy 

www.collaboratorio.com 

Furio Barzon is Founder of Collaboratorio, General 

Manager of Green Prefab and Director of the 

www.architecture.it Internet portal. He is curator of 

exhibitions, courses and symposiums on architecture 

and author of articles and books about new trends in 

contemporary architecture. He wrote The Charter of 

Zurich (Basel: Birkhauser, 2003) that was published in 

Italian, English, Chinese, and Croatian. He has lectured 

in several Italian and foreign universities 

and institutions. 

anna helena janowiak 


Venice, Italy 


Anna Janowiak graduated in International Relations 

at Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan (Pl) and is 

completing a PhD in European Social History at Ca’ 

Foscari University of Venice (It), where she studies 

Russian intellectual history. In 2007 she worked as tour 

manager of a Cuban circus. Since May 2008 she is a 

Collaboratorio collaborator. She is currently a Marie 

Curie Fellow at Södertörns Högskola (Se). 

matteo zambelli 


Venice, Italy 


Matteo Zambelli is an architect (1998) with a Ph.d in 

“Ingegneria edile (Construction Engineering)” (2002). 

He is also an adjunct professor in architectural design 

at the Faculty of Engineering of Trento, Italy. He is 

currently the Scientific Director of Collaboratorio. He 

is the author of: Tecniche di invenzione in architettura 

(Venice: Marsilio, 2007), Landform Architecture 

(Rome: Edilstampa, 2006) and Morphosis - Operazioni 

sul suolo (Venice: Marsilio 2005). He collaborates 

with several Italian architectural magazines: Arch’it, 

Arketipo and L’Industria delle costruzioni. 


owsing architecture. 

metadata and beyond: 

the concept 

While conceiving the format of this book, we drew inspiration from the way articles 

are featured on the Internet and in newspapers. We have tried to mix together these 

two diverse ways of presenting information, as nowadays switching from one means 

of presentation to another has become second nature for the reader. Our book 

is devised in order to enable the reader to read or the user to browse. The text is 

accessible in several ways: traditional, transversal, fast and hyper-textual. With the 

traditional method, the reader starts the book from the first page and continues until 

the last. Following the chronological order of a book is the most conventional way to 

acquire its contents in a deep and thorough manner. 

Nowadays however, this traditional method of reading is not solely sufficient, as we 

are gradually becoming used to the different modes of reading proposed by new 

digital media. This means that when we scan a page, we subconsciously enable 

techniques used in “digital reading”, which can inevitably lead to confusion between 

the different media. 

Gestalt theory says that we tend to see any page as a whole, meaning that first we 

literally scan the overall layout of the page, spotting self-contained chunks, before 

starting to reading. Each chunk is defined by a precise content or purpose. This mode 

of using pages has definitely modified the way we approach reading. We tend to feel 

the necessity to be drawn-in by different stimuli coming from the same page, we 

desire to jump from one spot to another following the information scent, to follow 

the hidden dimensions of our thoughts and searches. We want to flick through pages 

before starting to peruse their contents. 

Starting from these considerations we propose further ways to “browse” the book. 

We find them more actual and they are directly related to the idea of browsing Internet 

resources. Also the way we read journals and daily newspapers has defined our 

approach to the organisation of this book. 

The transversal way of using the book enables the reader to skim through the book’s 

pages. While reading magazines or newspapers we usually read just the main 

headlines, subtitles and the highlighted sentences within the text. In doing so we can 

quickly get acquainted with the whole set of news. We can also easily sort out the 

most interesting articles and delve into them, without loosing the general overview 

or the feeling that we may have missed something interesting. Therefore, in each es- 

the concept 

13

say we have highlighted the sentences that we have deemed to be more significant 

and/or capable of summarising content. Instead of top to bottom reading, the “user” 

can proceed through the text “horizontally”. 

Then there is the fast way. We have all felt the souring sensation of not being able to 

remember a book in the very last moments before entering an exam, or the feeling 

of confusion when compelled to decided which book to pick up in a bookshop when 

presented with a large amount of possibilities. We have, however, a large number of 

different websites to consult daily, and yet we manage to consult them all. Since we 

either have no time to re-read the whole book, or thoroughly deepen all the titles in 

the bookshop, or read all the news on the website, we need tools and means to 

locate information quickly, to aid our choices or to find the learning we require. Most 

importantly these tools should guarantee the desired results, such as the required 

topics for an exam, the most relevant book from the shelf, or not missing the most 

important news item. 

To tackle these goals we have provided the reader with two sets of keywords. The 

first set, right below the title of each chapter, contains keywords, which were handed 

to us by the authors of the essays. Thus the reader can “comprehend” any chapter 

simply by consulting these words. 

We have also collected all of these suggested keywords from all the essays in a table 

titled “Index of keywords – Folksonomy”, which appears at the end of the book. This 

collection of keywords has a very similar function to a traditional index of terms, 

typical of books and essays. These keywords also resemble the “tags cloud”, which 

is nowadays commonly used on websites, as it works in much the same way in our 

book. The higher the number of black bullet points next to the keyword, the more 

frequently the term is used in the book; a fast glimpse at the “Index of keywords” allows 

the reader to immediately see which terms have more occurrences and deduct 

which are the main topics of the book. In using this system the reader may also 

discover new lines of research. 

We labelled the index of keywords also as “folksonomy”, because all of the terms 

suggested by the authors are not organised in any kind of taxonomy or glossary. 

They have not been modified and are inserted into the index just as the authors 

created them. This may cause problems to the reader because some terms are too 

domain specific and others are too personal. There is also a wide range of synonyms 

or closely related terms, which are not organised into general categories. For these 


easons the “folksonomy” may in some cases be rather useless or not fully comprehensible. 

It is however, a reflection of the mindset in current use. 

The second set of keywords is conceived in order to enable the hyper-textual way 

of reading. Just below the line of each paragraph on the left-hand side, we have put 

a list of keywords that the reader can find in the paragraph. These keywords come 

from both the authors of the essays and us. Under every keyword there is a black 

bullet point numbered from 01 to 27. The number indicates in which essay of the 

book you can find the same topic. In this way the reader can deepen a specific topic 

by skipping between essays, just as they would when using the Internet. 

In order to easily grasp the connections between the essays, we have devised a 

“metro line” map, which is presented within the first pages of each chapter. With this 

map it is possible to create a virtual net among different essays, which at first glance 

might seem thematically unconnected. Here the reader can immediately see all the 

keywords (or connections) along different lines of study, discovering the keywords 

that refer to other chapters in the book. 

This system reflects the main purpose of the MACE project: to tie together architectural 

and engineering contents from all over the Internet, even though these 

concepts come from different digital repositories and were conceived and organized 

that way for certain specific goals. 

Besides the aforementioned methods for browsing the contents of this book, we propose 

in the following pages two “slightly tendentious” ways to use all the keywords. 

The first way is called the “Ideological Map”. We have defined macro-categories 

under which are collected almost all terms/keywords found throughout the book. 

These terms are related to one another, even though relationships are not specified 

(most terms are synonyms). The ideological map is a kind of faceted classification 

that enables the “user-reader” to quickly find the contents that they are looking for. 

The second way to browse the book is called the “Learning paths map”. We suggest 

several different possible learning paths that the “user-reader” could take. Each route 

is organised as a “metro line”. The end points of the route have a departure and arrival 

station, whose names sets out the learning path for the reader to follow. Along 

the line the reader meets intermediate stations that correspond to defined keywords 

enabling the possibility to deepen certain aspects of the chosen learning route. Along 

these routes the reader will find many possible crossroads, just remember - all roads 

lead to MACE. 

the concept 

15

ideological map 

architecture 3 9 16 

architectural heritages 26 

architectural history 6 12 

contemporary architecture 22 23 

modern architectures 22 

archival management 13 14 15 

archival description 14 

archive standards 15 

cis - collection information system 13 

file naming 15 

identity metadata 15 

record management 15 

selection criteria 13 14 15 

browsing 1 6 17 19 21 22 26 

application profile 1 3 4 11 24 

browsing by images 1 1 6 

browsing tool 1 6 

content based queries 21 

search engine 20 

text-based queries 21 

user interface 6 22 

visual browsing 1 4 

copyrights 14 22 

creative commons 22 

open source 24 

rights of property 14 

database 6 19 20 21 22 23 

digital architectural record 15 

16 browsing architecture. metadata and beyond 

digital archive 11 13 14 

digital resources 26 

media database 6 

on-line database 23 

user generated database 22 

digital design 2 18 19 22 

design process 2 18 

digital modeling system 9 

digital models 9 

virtual design studios 7 

3d models 21 24 

digitalisation 1 8 13 14 15 19 

digital data 13 

digitisation 19 

education 1 2 5 9 7 12 

constructivist pedagogy 7 

constructivist theory 9 

education theory 2 5 

multidisciplinary approach 9 

teacher 5 

tutorial discourse 2 5 12 

e-learning 1 6 9 10 

ariadne 1 2 3 

digital teaching tools 6 12 

dynamo 1 2 3 

eContentplus 1 2 3 

learning objects 1 3 10 

learning path 10

mace Metadata for Architectural- 

-Contents in Europe 1 2 3 4 

web-based collaborative learning 7 

web-based teaching 11 

winds 1 2 3 

keywords 7 13 17 21 

keywords system 13 15 17 21 

vocabulary of keywords 7 

knowledge organisation 17 20 

classification 3 20 21 

clustering 17 

collaborative tagging 17 

facet 1 1 17 20 

folksonomy 17 

indices 6 

knowledge management 20 

matrix of terms 6 

ontology 10 

tag clouds 17 

tagging 1 11 17 

taxonomy 4 17 

metadata 1 4 6 8 10 15 17 19 21 

content-based indexing 21 

data about data 15 

data collection activities 13 

interoperability standards 1 3 

metadata harvesting 1 3 

oai - open archives initiative 1 3 11 13 

pmh - protocol for metadata harvesting 1 3 

the concept 

multimedia 30 31 

film 16 

gallery 24 

image 16 

photography 16 19 22 23 24 

video 16 

preservation 

best practice for preservation- 

15 16 19 

-of digital data 15 16 

hardware selection 15 19 

stability of electronic records 1 

repository 8 10 11 14 16 21 26 

database 20 21 

digital database 19 

digital repository 7 

institutional repository 11 26 

on-line database 23 

website 22 23 

architectural portal 22 23 

digital platform 8 

on-line presentation 23 

presentation of architectural data 8 11 

web 2.0 7 8 22 

collaborative work space 9 

team-based project 12 

wiki 12 

17

learning paths map 


the concept 

19


1 

mace 

Metadata for Architectural 

Contents in Europe 

mace, an eContentplus project co-funded by the European Commission, 

is aimed at improving architectural education, by integrating and connecting 

a vast amount of content from diverse repositories, including past European 

projects and existing architectural design communities. mace, with the 

creation of innovative e-learning tools, will provide the community 

with services to find, acquire, use and discuss content that was previously 

only accessible to small groups. 

The project is built around several successful projects, such as dynamo, 

incom, winds and ariadne. In addition, the project is aimed at identifying 

and adding alternative repositories in Europe. The consortium includes three 

content partners, who have access to a large number of content providers, 

including architects and universities dealing with architecture and design. 

Once the project has reached a substantial mass of digital content it will 

have a significant impact particularly for eu architecture and cultural 

heritage, and will certainly become a landmark for further community 

activity in these domains. 

The initiative will develop and use several types of metadata for 

tagging contents: traditional content metadata and ontologies, context 

metadata, competence metadata and learning process metadata, usage 

related metadata and metadata acquired through social interaction, 

e.g. recommendations by peer users or blog entries. Close relations with 

universities and professionals ensure that user expectations are met, 

adapting proposed solutions to the real needs of the community. Since 

these users are distributed across different countries in Europe, the project 

will have a multicultural and multilingual approach, designing and deploying 

working solutions that allow content to be shared across borders. 

mace 

21

22 

1 

› digital libraries 

› domain-specific architectures 

› interoperability 

mace: 

Connecting and Enriching 

Repositories 

for Architectural Learning 

› interactive data exploration 

and discovery 

› user interfaces 

Education in architecture requires access to a broad range of 

learning materials, so as to develop flexibility and creativity 

in design. The learning material is comprised of textual 

and visual media including images, videos, descriptions of 

architectural concepts or projects, i.e. digital artifacts on 

different aggregation levels. Until now, repositories storing 

such information have not been interrelated and have not 

provided unified access. Consequently, finding and retrieving 

architectural learning objects is cumbersome and time 

consuming. In this paper, we describe how an infrastructure of 

federated architectural learning repositories will provide unique, 

integrated access facilities for high quality architectural content. 

The integration of various types of content, usage, social 

and contextual metadata enables users to develop multiple 

perspectives and navigation paths that support experience 

multiplication for the user. A standards–based, service– 

oriented software architecture, and flexible user interface 

design solutions, based on embeddable widgets, ensure easy 

integration and re-combinability of contents, metadata and 

functionalities.

moritz stefaner 

FH Potsdam (FHP) 

Potsdam, Germany 

www.fh-potsdam.de 

Moritz Stefaner received a B.Sc. with distinction in 

Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück, 

in 2005 and an M.A. in interface design at the 

University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam, in 2007, 

where he is currently employed as associate 

researcher. His main research interest is how 

Information Visualization, statistical methods and 

Machine Learning techniques can help in organizing 

and discovering information. 

vittorio spigai 

Iuav (Istituto Universitario 

di Architettura di Venezia) 

Venice, Italy 

www.iuav.it 

Vittorio Spigai graduated in civil engineering (Rome, 

1968) and in Architecture (Venice, 1971). He is 

Associated Professor of Architectural and Urban 

Design at the IUAV University of Venice, where 

he has been teaching since 1971. His research 

interests are in the areas of urban and architectural 

intervention methodologies in monumental, 

historically relevant sites and landscape. He has 

been involved in many projects funded by CEE, 

CNR and MIUR regarding the use of innovative 

information technologies applied to urban design, 

architecture and components production. 

elisa dalla vecchia 

Iuav (Istituto Universitario 

di Architettura di Venezia) 

Venice, Italy 

www.iuav.it 

Elisa Dalla Vecchia received a master’s degree with 

distinction in Architecture at the IUAV University 

of Venice, Faculty of Architecture, in 2004. She’s 

been working at IUAV as an assistant teacher since 

2005 and as an associate researcher since 2007. 

A licensed architect, she collaborates as designer 

and construction site manager for several design 

projects, and on historical restoration sites. 

23

24 

massimiliano condotta 

IUAV (Istituto Universitario di Architettura di 

Venezia) 

Venice, Italy 

www.iuav.it 

Massimiliano Condotta received a master’s degree 

with distinction in architecture at the IUAV University 

of Venice, Faculty of Architecture, in 2002. A 

licensed architect, he is a member of the Architect 

Association of Venice, and is enrolled as associate 

researcher at the Department of Architectural 

Construction of IUAV. Since 2000 he works at various 

academic research projects at the IUAV University 

focusing on “collaborative e-learning systems”, 

“knowledge management” and “computer aided 

design”. 

stefaan ternier 

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 

Leuven, Belgium 

www.cs.kuleuven.be 

Stefaan Ternier obtained a Ph.D. degree at the 

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 2008. His research 

deals with software architectures and specifications 

for managing learning objects and metadata. He 

participated in ProLearn (a ‘Network of Excellence’ 

financed by the Information Society Technology 

programme of the European commission) and coauthored 

the Simple Query Interface (a CEN ISSS 

standard). Currently, he is involved in the MELT, 

MACE and iCoper eContentPlus projects. 

martin wolpers 

Fraunhofer FIT 

Bonn, Germany 

www.fit.fraunhofer.de 

Martin Wolpers holds a PhD in electrical engineering 

and information technology from the Leibnitz 

University, Hannover, obtained in 2001. He is 

leading the group “Context and Attention for 

Personalized Learning Environments” at FIT ICON, 

dealing with trend and user-goal identification from 

contextualized attention metadata streams. He is 

also coordinator of the eContentPlus project MACE.

stefan apelt 


Bonn, Germany 


Stefan Apelt has a diploma in computer science in 

business obtained from the Technische Universität 

Dresden, Germany, in 2002 and has since worked 

on EU projects at Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. His main 

interests include the design of complex information 

systems, quality assurance procedures and technical 

project management. 

marcus specht 

Open University Netherlands (OUNL) 

Herleen, Netherlands 

www.ou.nl 

Marcus Specht is a Professor at the Open University 

of the Netherlands and is currently involved in 

several national and international research projects 

on competence based life long learning, personalized 

information support and contextualized learning. 

He received his Diploma in Psychology in 1995 and 

a dissertation from the University of Trier in 1998 on 

adaptive information technology. 

till nagel 

FH Potsdam (FHP) 


www.fh-potsdam.de 

Till Nagel received a diploma in media and computer 

science at the University of Applied Sciences, Wedel, 

in 2002. He has worked for different media agencies 

and software firms as a leading software engineer 

and IT consultant for international clients. He is an 

assistant professor at the Berlin Technical University 

of Arts since 2006, and employed as associate 

researcher at the University of Applied Sciences 

Potsdam since 2007. 

25

26 

erik duval 

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 

Leuven, Belgium 

www.cs.kuleuven.be 

Erik Duval is a professor in the computer science 

department of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 

Belgium. Erik teaches courses on Human-Computer 

Interaction, Multimedia, problem solving and design 

and on multitouch interfaces and sketch based 

modelling. Prof. Duval is the president of the ariadne 

Foundation, chairs the ieee ltsc working group on 

Learning Object Metadata, and is a fellow of the 

aace, a member of acm, and the ieee computer society. 

5 

2 3 4

education 

5 

architectural design 

2 

1 

introduction 

In architecture, technical and artistic knowledge blend and influence each other. Due 

to this double influence, there is not an “exact” and “unique” solution to architectural 

design problems. Therefore, the architect, while developing a project, will 

remember, compare, choose and re-elaborate a large stock of possible solutions, 

moving towards the final outcome step by step. The background of this process is 

the architect’s personal erudition and culture, mainly consisting of images and visual 

inputs, collected in a life-long process. Visual memories can be about the most different 

aspects of the subject: from architectonic solutions and shapes to examples of 

applied theories, suggestions, or personal experiences. 

The design solutions produced by an architect therefore are, most of the 

time, the outcome of a process of recalling and reworking images: the aim of 

achieving new solutions and shapes is reached through the designer’s personal 

contribution in the interpretation of something already seen and known [1,2]. 

digital media 

collective external 

memory 

So, while an architect is working on his personal stock of erudition and culture, his 

mind will mostly return back only the notions that are perceived as more familiar [3], 

while leaving in the background the less seen, or understood, ones : in this way, a 

first selection, and therefore a limitation, is unconsciously operated on the architect’s 

personal knowledge set. Evidently, when we focus on architecture education, the 

case-based aspects of these mental processes are amplified and carried to extremes: 

when students are not very experienced, they need a very wide range of possible 

suggestion providers, and a high number of examples to look at. Indeed, non-expert 

designers and students spend a lot of time in libraries, searching for a large number 

of cases similar to their current situation, to get cues and suggestions on how to proceed, 

thus carrying out this activity in a very inefficient and time-wasting way. This 

happens because of the great heterogeneity of information that can be inferred from 

a single book: for instance, a technical solution for a window frame detail may often 

be deduced observing a picture in a monograph on a great architect, and not from a 

technology manual. Probably, if architecture students only could, they would spread 

around all the pages of architecture books, like the tesserae of a muddle up mosaic 

of images, drawings, sketches, graphic schemes and they would walk through this 

cloud of information ready to catch from the corner of their eyes the contents helping 

in their documentation or design problem solving activity. 

Digital media for experience multiplication in architectural design process 

Given the fact that a considerable part of the knowledge which was once printed in 

architecture books is being moved to digital media, we can get closer to enabling 

and improving this vision. 

It is possible to reshape the existing enormous mass of digitally factored 

information to create an organized and structured “cloud” of notions, and 

to consequently allow its exploration in a logical and intuitive way: a multiplication 

of the learning opportunity using the web as a collective external 

memory. 

One consequence is the availability of a large amount of meta-information for a 

mace 

27

indexing strategy 

visual media 

digitization 

8 13 14 15 19 

mace 

2 3 4 

given resource: who links to that page, how did others like this book, etc. All these 

kinds of contextual information are already accessible on the web. However, they 

are still distributed over different services and not yet specific for the architectural 

domain. 

A second consequence of the ongoing digitization process is the so-called “microchunking” 

of information. This is not only an effect of the technologies used to 

search, publish and communicate information (such as search engines, blogging 

software, or federated learning object repositories) but also of the changing 

consumption behavior and social practices [4]. Moreover, in architecture, a large 

amount of information is held in visual media (images, photos, sketches...), which 

are generally hard to index and find. Most search tools currently available do not offer 

the multiple perspectives and exploratory search needed to support effective and 

seamless interaction within the domain of architecture and engineering. Providing 

the right tools can lead to novel and rich experiences: the revising of the formative 

elements (context, suggestions, ideas, diagrams, functions, shapes, images, etc.) as 

a remix of dynamic collections, recombination and juxtapositions, can lead to previously 

unavailable insights and discoveries. 

The computer can be useful in many ways in the generative phase of a project, for 

intance in the field of computer aided architectural design [5,6]. Through 3D-modelling 

and other kinds of representation software, a computer can assist the designer 

to create sharable, storable and visible representations of personal ideas and suggestions. 

By proposing a wide range of new and unexpected shapes, diagrams, or 

colours or by applying different clustering, ordering, or indexing strategies, computer 

systems can extend the limit of obtaining and getting solutions from a limited number 

of elements (the personal background of the designer). 

The potentiality of multiplying experiences and perspectives can also come to an 

architect, with an even deeper impact, in the earlier project conceiving phases, if the 

digitalized knowledge management allows him to access resources in a way that 

reflects the typical logical behaviour of an architectural learner. In MACE, we concentrate 

our efforts on this aspect. 

In the domain of architectural design we can therefore regard digital media and the 

web as experience multipliers: a digitally assisted design process can have a more 

complex recombination of a multi-faceted, mosaic-like agglomerate of loosely connected 

information and meta-information. In particular, this additional information 

can be used not only as raw data, but can trigger new mental processes. 

MACE aims to support the shaping and reorganization of the large 

number of already existing, but uncoordinated, pieces of architectural 

information by creating the core of an indexing strategy to structure them 

and their following addition. The system will allow the end user to both 

enlarge his set of visual memories and enrich the online collective 

external memory by recognizing, catching and linking the contents through 

an interactive navigation system. 

Architectural digital media characteristics: 

strategies for mosaic recomposition 

intuitive navigation Currently, an architectural-like intuitive navigation, as the one MACE aims for, has 

learning objects 

still not been enabled for either the architectural discipline or peculiar visual media 

visual media features. One of MACE aims then is 

to find new indexing strategies, capable of 


classification 

winds 

metadata 

6 8 10 15 

17 19 21 

1 

structuring a high number of Learning Objects (LO), with the aim of reaching the 

maximum utility for the final user. Obviously, indexing strategies have to be suitable 

to the treated discipline; they will have to support the logic pattern of the user 

navigating through this cloud of contents, and they will have to support his search 

criteria. 

At first, obviously, the content and the domain meta-information of the LO will drive 

the choice of the user, even if this choice is very often influenced or led by usage 

experiences made by others and by the comprehension of their exploration and 

learning paths. In other situations, the user and content competence profile, or the 

context, in which the LO is inserted or used, might be key to accessing the right kind 

of information. 

mace – metadata for architectural contents 

in europe 

MACE sets out to integrate architectural learning contents from Learning Object 

Repositories (LORs) spread around Europe and beyond, and to enrich them with 

different types of metadata and classification structures in order to enable improved 

access and experience multiplication for students, teachers and professionals. 

Enrichment here includes both the manual and automatic provision of metadata 1 

about the learning object itself, its contents or the context of its use (including social 

metadata, competence metadata and contextual metadata). 

An overview of currently integrated content repositories (adopted as contents base 

in the first phase of the project, but intended to be increased) can be seen in Tab. 1. 

The available contents range from multimedia resources about architectural projects 

over technology enhanced learning courses to literature references and regulations. 

Our open, standards-based infrastructure allows an integration of further content 

databases in the future. 

As will be detailed below, Fig. 1 gives an overview of the different layers in the MACE 

approach. Based on a shared technical infrastructure for federated access to the 

repositories, metadata harvesting and content enrichment, we provide web services 

for metadata manipulation and retrieval and metadata-based content access. 

These are the basis for both automatic as well as manual content enrichment. As 

user interfaces, we develop compact, modular components with rich visualization 

and interaction possibilities – so-called widgets. These can be used standalone, 

combined in a search portal or embedded into existing applications. This framework 

allows usage of our solutions in a variety of scenarios relevant to learning and work 

situations in the architectural world. 

Fig. 1: MACE technical infrastructure (p. 320). 

mace 

29

Content source 

WINDS 

(An ensemble of several universitary 

courses featured by a 

data model with two alternative 

structures – hierarchical 

course and concept network – 

enabled learner centred education 

via more navigational 

control and personalized 

adaptive learning.) 

ARIADNE 

(The ARIADNE Foundation is 

one of the early pioneers having 

a “share and reuse” vision 

for education and training. It 

provides access to several tens 

of thousands of additional 

objects, several hundreds of 

which are relevant for the 

MACE context.) 

DYNAMO 

(Dynamic Architectural 

Memory Online is a database 

developed in order to stimulate 

and support architects’ 

life-long process of learning 

from previous design experience.) 

MONUDOC 

(MONUment DOCumentation 

is a fulltext database to all 

questions of the restoration 

of worth preserving buildings 

and their interior.) 

BAUFO 

(Is a database that serves as 

basis for finding ongoing and 

completed projects from all 

fields of building research? 

It covers projects, which 

have been realised inside the 

Federal Republic of Germany 

and a row of international 

research projects.) 

Objects 

5,529 compound objects, 

10,542 single content blocks 

(text, image, multimedia) 

5,000+ objects, of which 

several hundreds can be used 

for MACE 

544 architecture projects, 7351 

files (text, image) 

15,000 Facts and Literature 

Reference covering preservation 

of monuments and 

historic buildings 

13,000 descriptions of building 

research projects 

Metadata 

Tab. 1: Overview of MACE repositories. 

1,744 index terms (text) 

Technical and educational 

metadata, keywords 

1,944 index terms (text) 

Bibliographic description, 

Index terms, classification 

Index terms, classifications 


Metadata level 

3,521 of 5,529 objects 

enriched with content 

metadata 

Almost all objects have 

mandatory technical and 

educational metadata, some 

content metadata, no context 

and a few social metadata 

High level of content metadata 

All units with classification, 

bibliographic data and index 

terms 

All units with classifications 

and index terms


harvesting metadata 

1 

connecting lors for architecture 

The MACE infrastructure aims to open up the existing Learning Object Repositories 

(LORs) to enable the access to Learning Objects (LOs) through MACE tools. We rely 

on a hybrid combination of harvesting metadata from and federating searches to 

existing content repositories. Additionally, the infrastructure enables the enrichment 

of LOs with metadata about their use including contexts of use, necessary competencies, 

etc. 

The project aims to make the learning objects in all repositories jointly 

searchable and retrievable. 

oai 

3 11 13 

application profile 

3 6 11 22 24 


The technical infrastructure allows searching over the contents of all content repositories 

based on metadata. In order to enable semantic interoperability among LORs, 

the LOs are described through the MACE application profile of the Learning Object 

Metadata standard (LOM) [7]. 

Existing metadata from the connected repositories are collected via metadata harvesting, 

based on the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Managing Harvesting OAI- 

PMH [8]. Harvesting in this context means the transfer of the content metadata from 

the providing repository into the central content metadata repository on a regular 

basis. Note that only the metadata describing the learning objects is transferred; 

the learning objects themselves will remain in the repository, and thus in control of 

their owner, without changing the access conditions. In turn, the central content 

metadata repository also offers an OAI-PMH interface so that interested content 

providers can retrieve enriched metadata suitable for their learning objects. 

Educational metadata and the MACE application profile 

IEEE defines metadata as information about an object, be it physical or digital [7]. 

Different communities have defined metadata standards that fit their needs. A 

simple standard such as Dublin Core allows for expressing key-value pairs and is 

widely used in the digital library community. Domain specific initiatives such as LOM 

(educational) or MPEG-7 (multimedia) cover more elements within a domain. Concrete 

implementations usually do not use all of these fields. Furthermore, implementers 

often need to choose between many standards that are both complementary, but 

are also overlapping. 

[9] presents a number of mechanisms through which a community or organization 

can adopt a metadata standard. One can impose restrictions on existing metadata 

standards and for instance constrain the value space on some elements. [10] defines 

an application profile as a schema that consists of data elements drawn from one 

or more namespaces, combined by implementers and optimized for a particular 

local application. Thus, an application profile can allow for the construction of mixed 

metadata sets. A metadata instance validates using an application profile to check it 

does not violate any of the rules that are set in the profile. 

The MACE metadata application profile builds on LOM and gives some LOM fields 

a mandatory status: eg. title, description, identifier and technical location. Because 

these – rather trivial – metadata fields are mandatory, MACE metadata instances 

validate against the GLOBE metadata application profile 2 . As a result, the GLOBE 

federated search infrastructures are interoperable with the MACE metadata application 

profile, which enables transparent search into MACE at the level of the 

worldwide GLOBE learning repository federation. 

mace 

31

In order to meet the specific information needs in architecture engineering 

and design, the MACE metadata application profile includes additional 

attributes from architectural taxonomies and classification systems. 

metatagging 

Encoding the various information requirements for MACE services into the application 

profile simplifies the extensibility of the MACE system by providing a general 

mechanism to access the information for all MACE services. 

The MACE application profile captures all sorts of metadata that are defined in the 

following sections. It specifies how architectural taxonomies or competency classifications 

can be encoded in a LOM metadata instance. 

Because the MACE metadata application profile unambiguously specifies how the 

various kinds of MACE metadata are to be encoded, MACE applications, but also 

third parties can uniformly search the different MACE content providers using these 

metadata features. 

MACE real world objects 

As described, the MACE infrastructure allows the description of digital Learning 

Objects, such as texts, pictures, lessons etc. However, 

one of the key features of architecture is the work towards the building as a 

physical manifestation of a design; for this reason, in architecture education, 

it is fundamental to identify, discuss and compare architectural projects in 

their context. Consequently, we also support the description of “real world 

objects” (RWO): design projects, buildings, or other artifacts of interest in 

architectural learning. 

Following the W3C recommendations these are represented as “non-information 

resources” [11]. RWOs differ from traditional digital documents by having no direct 

digital representation. Instead, RWO metadata sets capture attributes of the RWO, 

such as, for instance, the creation date of a building, as opposed to the creation date 

of a photograph of the building. RWOs are connected to their associated media or 

text resources using LOM relations. In summary, RWOs serve as a reference point for 

storing facts about objects in the real world, and also as reference sets to all related 

media in the database. 

This approach supports example-based learning and a natural grouping 

of documents around concepts and topics. 

From a metatagging 3 point of view, we produce more precise and expressive 

metadata, by distinguishing tags assigned to e.g. a photograph or, in contrast, the 

object depicted in the photograph. Furthermore, we avoid redundant metadata, thus 

making our tagging more effective: Instead of applying the same “architectural style” 

tag to numerous photos of the same building, we apply the tag only once by storing 

it into the RWO metadata set that represents the building. Moreover, we can connect 

our metadata more easily to existing repositories and open databases dealing 

specifically with architectural projects. Of special importance in this context is the 

URI design identifier [12], in order to relate MACE metadata to existing information 


1 

resources. Where applicable, MACE RWOs are identified with their respective DBPedia 

4 or freebase 5 counterparts, in order to facilitate interoperability with existing and 

future repositories of architectural knowledge. 

MACE METADATA TYPES 

Several different kinds of metadata need to be used to index and tag 

the critical mass of factored LOs, in order to create the desired organized 

and structured “cloud” of notion. 

collaborative learning 

platform 

intuitive navigation 

aloe project 

oai 

3 11 13 

The wish to create an architectural-like intuitive navigation system to search 

through the concepts, but also the need for a colaborative educational/learning 

platform, triggered the necessity to base the indexing system on four different kinds 

of metadata: Social and usage metadata to describe events and user activities; 

Competence metadata to show which digital contents can be used to obtain a 

specific competence; Context metadata to describe the context of an object (or 

subject) depicted in a digital content; and moreover Content and domain metadata 

containing information about the digital objects’ contents as well as the real-world 

objects they refer to. 

Usage and Social metadata 

Usage metadata describes how, by whom and in which context a learning resource 

is used. It is obtained from the learning resource providers as well as the MACE tools 

and for instance is extracted from the access logs provided by the different applications. 

Within the database layer, usage metadata will be collected using the RSS 

(Rich site summary) protocol [8]. We chose RSS instead of OAI-PMH, because the 

latter is well suited to collect up-dated metadata, while RSS enables the continuous 

provision of new metadata instances as a stream. In the case of usage information 

captured from frontend tools and widgets, contextual data like the position of the 

user, or date and time, are captured to complement the user profile. Exchanged with 

RSS, usage metadata is unified relying on the contextualized attention metadata 

schema (CAMs) [13]. By correlating usage metadata, new information about learning 

objects is generated, e.g. the most downloaded objects or trends in the interest 

of users in learning objects over time. 

In order to capture social metadata (or user-generated metadata), we integrated 

the ALOE project [14] into our infrastructure. The ALOE system gives users a variety 

of options to organise, share and search resources based on their personal interests. 

In MACE, the ALOE project will enable the user to annotate, rate, tag and store 

architectural learning resources in personal portfolios. The social software functionality 

provided by ALOE enables the MACE user to actively share and discuss learning 

resources and thus also the learning paradigm of communities of practice for MACE 

supported learning scenarios. Designed as an open, adaptable system, most of the 

ALOE functionality is available via web services, which allows an easy integration 

into the MACE infrastructure. 

Competence metadata 

Competencies can be defined in a manifold way and there have been many approaches 

including functional, cognitive and behaviouristic. For a good overview and 

mace 

33

competence card 

schema 

metatagging 


5 

integration see [15]. In coordination, MACE and the TENCompetence consortium 

interpret competence as all the factors for an actor to perfo rm in an ecological 

niche. Performance in that sense includes the specific context that is necessary for 

the interpretation of a competence. Of course, competencies include competencies 

and knowledge that are necessary to put the competence into performance. 

In the context of previous projects in the field of architecture, competence taxonomies 

have been defined for the different areas relevant for architecture and design. 

Nevertheless, there is a high need to standardize those competence taxonomies and 

descriptions from different perspectives. On the one hand, there is a European need 

for standardisation of the competencies described and implemented in the European 

curricula for architects, on the other hand, there is a need in competence driven 

education to have a shared and common set of competencies or at least a common 

understanding of what competencies are and of their role in the educational process. 

For MACE several problems are related to competence metadata: 

1. Selecting and defining a competence metadata schema that is compatible with 

the current approaches in ongoing standardisation efforts. Basically, the defined 

schema must allow the import and export from and to existing standards like IMS 

[16], and HR-XML [17] and foster the exchangeability of competence taxonomies 

and furthermore be conformant with the current agreements, as for example in the 

European Qualification Framework 6 . 

2. Support the definition of competence taxonomies for the domain of architecture 

and design, and in this context take into account the different approaches and 

granularity of competencies that are described in the professional development of 

architectural education. That means that on the one hand the schema must be able 

to support competence driven applications based on competence taxonomies on a 

fine granular level describing 200-500 competencies, on the other hand it should be 

possible to represent higher level approaches like those of the European directive 

describing the profession of an architect with 11 high level competencies. 

3. Defining the schema in a way that it supports bottom up and top down approaches 

for competence taxonomy definitions. Basically the schema should allow the 

definition of a starting set of competencies but also support the continuous update 

and be able to manage multiple interpretations of competencies. 

4. Enable the easy metatagging of knowledge resources with competence metadata 

in an approach with little overhead and as a side effect of using resources. 

5. Support the integration of competence metadata with other types of metadata 

and explore the possibilities for educational applications in enabling the user to 

explore competence descriptions that are contextualized in a community of practice. 

As a key issue to enable a cost effective and enduring enrichment process in MACE, 

the main requirements for the schema design were on the one hand to be compliant 

to standards, and on the other hand to enable an easy and understandable communication 

about competencies. MACE uses a simplified competence schema, which is 

compliant and extensible towards the above described standards, but which enables 

us to use competence cards as the main mean to communicate competencies and 

allow the users to metatag and annotate contents and competencies. 

The Competence Card Schema contains the following core elements: 

› Domain: a domain to which the competence belongs; 

› Competence: the information about the competence itself (title, description, etc.); 

› Competence maps: combine competencies in profiles that can be used either as 

personal learning objectives or professional profiles; 

› Proficiency scales: describes which proficiency scales are used to rate relations to 

the competence, which is also in conformance with the EQF; 

› Related resources: a list of resources related to the competence; 

› Related persons: a list of persons related to the competence; 


eal world objects 

22 



community 

8 22 23 

1 

› Related evidences: a list of evidences related to the competence. 

The elements in the Competence Card Schema allow us to export/import the competence 

information to/from the standards IMS/IEEE RDCEO or HR-XML. 

Interaction with competencies is complex, as normal users do not think about 

competencies as educators. Most common approaches use everyday language to 

describe competencies and connect them to underlying competence structures, 

such as e.g. the social web application 43things 7 . For allowing users to interact with 

competence profiles and competence cards, we are implementing a simple bar chart 

component that allows the assignment, manipulation and the viewing of competence 

metadata for single learning objects and sets of learning objects. 

Contextual metadata 

As mentioned above, much of our content is related to objects in the real world, like 

places, buildings and towns. For these real world objects, it is important to capture 

and store the object context. Interested parties can later retrieve it and either search 

objects by context parameters or find similar objects for a given object and context. 

Contextual metadata in that sense can be position (Where is the object located?), 

history (When was the object built?), surroundings (What other objects are located 

nearby? How are they situated?) and geography (What is the climate around the object? 

Is it prone to natural disasters?). The list is not complete and can be extended 

to fit additional purposes. 

As a large number of cases and examples already exist, it would not be feasible for 

a small group of experts to create contextual information manually. The good thing 

is that almost all of the information needed is already available online in a variety 

of data sources like Wikipedia 8 , history websites, place descriptions 9 , location and 

disaster databases 10 and can be connected and harvested in automatic or semiautomatic 

(with manual oversight) ways. 

While some of the information is highly structured (e.g. like in Freebase 11 or DBpedia 

12 ), a large part of the data is badly or not at all structured and needs sophisticated 

approaches for data mining, merging and filtering out useless items. 

In MACE, we have been making good progress with connecting GPS positioning 

information with LO contents and displaying these contents on a map. The positions 

information is collected by data mining content full texts and matching keywords 

against the Geonames location database, the resulting matches are being stored in 

a separate data store. 

We are currently further adjusting the matching algorithm beyond syntactic matching 

to include more data sources. 

Content and domain metadata 

Content and domain metadata, i.e. descriptive metadata with relevance in the 

architectural domain, is harvested from the various connected architectural learning 

repositories using the OAI-PMH protocol. It is enhanced with additional architectural 

information through two mechanisms. First, the group of architecture experts 

provides enhancements through tagging activities using controlled vocabularies. 

Second, the community of architecture education (students, teachers, etc.) provides 

their own tags and comments on the learning objects using the Adaptable Learning 

Object Environment (ALOE 13 ) system [14]. 

mace 

35

The architects expert group within the consortium has agreed on using 

a number of architectural terms in a hierarchical controlled vocabulary 

to enhance the descriptions of the learning resources. 

The vocabulary is documented in the MACE classification schema. It complements 

the definition of the MACE application profile and is used within the LOM classification 

category. The classification schema consists of facets, each of which addresses 

and describes a different feature of the architectural content . 

A facet consists of a 

number of non-exclusive categories, containing architectural concepts in a hierarchical 

order (see Table 2 for an overview of facets and categories and the following 

paragraph for theoretical notions at the bases of this classification). Each concept 

has one or more terms associated, which enables us to merge existing vocabularies 

and group conceptually close index terms. The MACE classification schema is based 

on existing thesauri: UniClass 14 , ISO12006 15 , the AAT Getty Vocabulary 16 , and the Ci/ 

SfB 17 . Where necessary, it has been extended based on [13–20] to reflect additional 

information needs in architecture, which emerged in the requirements analysis process 

and have not been addressed yet in established taxonomies. 

Facet Categories 

Identification Intervention type, Project type, Functional typology, Form 

typology 

Context Location, Geographic context, Urban context 

Technical design Materials, Construction form, Building element, Technological 

profile, Structure profile, Systems and equipments, Technical 

performance, Maintenance and conservation 

Constructing Construction management, Construction phase, Construction 

activity, Machinery and equipments 

Theories and concepts Styles, periods and trends, Theoretical concepts 

Conceptual design Project cues, Project actions, Form characteristics, Perceptive 

qualities, Relation with the context 

Tab. 2: MACE content and domain metadata: facets and categories. 

facets and categories in the mace 

classification schema 

An architectural project constitutes a great syntheses effort, where different 

knowledge fields – may they be connected to the poetic-artistic side (ideas, 

cultural and social message of a project) or to the technical one (functionality, 

living wellness, building ease) – are called to simultaneously gather a project. 

architectural design 


facet 

17 20 

To find a coherent strategy to develop a classification schema of such a heterogeneous 

subject, the various and interconnected issues have been separated and 

re-ordered on the basis of two possible end users’ point of view, which are: 

› the researcher, interested in the world of architecture, aiming to deepen descriptive 

aspects, documentation and technical knowledge, but without any design-applied 

goal (Documentation activity); 

› the designer, may he be a professional or a student, active in sectors such as archi- 


1 

tecture, city planning or civil engineering design (Design Problem Solving activity). 

The Documentation activity is a work that can be held both by students as well as 

other users using MACE to obtain information about history, geographical locations, 

typologies, techniques and general documentation in the world of architecture. To 

allow this kind of activity, part of the classification system needs to be based on 

objective fields that should cover all the objective aspects of the domain. With objective 

fields we mean all those aspects of architecture that refers to objective (noninterpretational) 

data and for this reason aren’t influenced by architectural trends or 

by theoretical and personal concerns. The main challenge in this case is to develop 

a standardized and shared taxonomy, able to cover all the aspects of the discipline 

featured in the architectural and engineering domain. 

It is however, more complicated to identify the rules and structures to create such 

schema to support the Design Problem Solving Activity. This is because architectural 

design deals with complex shapes, which represent, through the architect’s personality 

and his conceptual filters, deeper messages. Therefore, architecture and the 

built environment is not only the technical production of concrete “facts” of various 

dimensions (from a city to a small object), but it is also a “sign” featuring a message 

conveyed through materially sensible signs (materials, colors, shapes, etc.). 

Conceiving a project is therefore similar to the process of creating and communicating 

a message. When classifying and organizing the knowledge and the artistic 

production related to these kinds of mental processes it is not wise to rely only on 

objective data (as in the Documentation Activity), but also on a personal and intuitive 

interpretation, which is both individual, when choosing among many ambiguity 

factors, and partial, when focusing on some complexity factors. 

At first glance, trying to classify non-objective data may seem to be an oxymoronic 

task. But if we consider modern and contemporary artistic production, we can see 

that often the oeuvre represents a true challenge sent by the author to the spectator, 

who is called to participate to the work’s creation and to the research of a meaning 

through the eyes of his/her own personal history and personality. Semiotics theory, 

notwithstanding its slow and sometimes contradicting evolution during the last half 

century, gives us the basis to help us perceive and understand messages in art. 

Thanks to those studies and methodologies we can try to develop strategies to classify 

non-objective data. It’s not our intention to summarize here a balance of the results 

of semiotics studies, even if limited to the visual arts field. Among the complex 

and variegated interpretative models offered by the current state of this discipline, 

we decided to rely on the Hjelmslev’s interpretative model, to find the personal and 

intuitive data, used as reading keys to an architectural project. This model is based 

on the double opposition of contents/expression and substance/form [26] and on 

its following interpretation and adaptation held by A. J. Greimas [27] and his young 

pupils in a Paris school during the 1970s. The model, initially evolved in urban analysis 

research, has then been first extrapolated and enlarged to a system of categories 

and levels devoted to the reading of any visual work 18 , and then reduced and focused 

on architectural works 19 [29-30] (Fig. 2). 

Fig. 2: The Hjelmslev’s interpretative semiotic model, based on the double opposition of 

contents/expression and substance/form, reduced and focused on architectural works 

[29]. We can produce hypothetical examples, referring to well-known architectures, to 

clarify how the logic scheme is used to classify architectural features, principles that 

will be used in the MACE knowledge organization system. Let’s imagine there is a student 

who tries to find an example of a building expressing the concept of “lightness”. 

He can trigger a combined search with “aerial” (in a symbolic-metaphorical meaning, 

substance of contents) and “metallic structures” (substance of expression: tectonic / 

mace 

37

uilding elements”). These two search-keys may lead to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and 

to the Crystal palace of Joseph Paxton in London, both being correspondent to an 

oeuvre expressing the combination of a signifying element (“aerial”) and a perceptible 

significant (“metallic structures”). If a further filter “glass” (substance of expression: 

plastic / materials) is used, he would only find the Paxton’s building: a glass and steel 

architecture, expressing aerial lightness (p. 320). 

The conceptual factorization of the architectural domain based on these studies 

and and it’s interpretative semiotic model, has been used as a filter to convert the 

results of the MACE analysis requirements 20 activity carried out to fix all the concepts, 

which will be useful to decompose and classify the whole aspects of the architectural 

domain (Fig. 3-4). The result of this operation is the MACE classification schema and 

it’s taxonomy. It has been organised in 27 “facets”, grouped in 6 “categories” (Tab. 

2). This taxonomy features categories able to decompose and classify all aspects 

of the architectural domain covering both objective data used in the design and 

documentation activity (e.g. Materials, Structural Profile, Functional Typology, etc.) 

and personal and intuitive data used in the design activity (e.g. Perceptive Qualities, 

Project Cue, etc.). 

Fig. 3: The first level of the Mind Map Taxonomy: decomposition and classification 

of the architectural domain; result of the MACE analysis requirements activity (p. 320). 

Fig. 4: The whole Mind Map Taxonomy (p. 321). 

metadata creation and refinement 

Our approach relies on a multitude of available metadata. Whilst some of it 

is automatically generated – such as usage metadata – experts and other users 

can contribute meaningful information as well. This affects especially the 

areas of content and domain, but also context and competence metadata. 


Content and domain metadata is harvested from the existing repositories, but also 

manually enriched, refined and consolidated by a group of MACE experts. Periodically, 

the glossary is refined in order to integrate expert and community suggestions, 

based on the following mechanism: while tagging, users can also add not yet 

existing keywords to a LO. These are stored in a freeform text field, not only to be 

included for search and retrieval, but also for later review by experts. If the keyword 

is commonly used and approved in a periodical check, it will be added to the classification 

vocabulary. This hybrid of a predefined top-down hierarchy and a bottomup 

folksonomy allows us to utilize the wisdom of the users in a controlled manner. 

Competence metadata is treated in a similar way: while the core competencies 

are pre-defined, users can add personal sub-competencies in order to reflect their 

personal interests and abilities, and thus organize learning objects according to their 

information needs. 

Context metadata, on the other hand, is generated through a combination of 

automatic and manual techniques: while most of it is generated automatically, or 

extracted from existing databases, users and experts have, for instance, the option 

of correcting and fine-tuning an only approximately right position. 

On the other side of the spectrum, usage metadata is generated in a fully automated 

manner, with only the results, such as recommendations and access statistics accessible 

to the end user. 


1 

Generally speaking, we aim at making interaction with metadata not only as easy 

and natural as possible, but also open for all users. The recent success of collaborative 

tagging systems 21 has shown that providing users with a framework to tag 

publicly available resources in a ”socially translucent” [31] manner can lead to rich 

and user-centered information architectures. A crucial component is to make the 

users aware of both self-assigned tags as well as the tags and content that others 

contribute to the community: only immediate self and social feedback gives rise 

to the emergent, stable, community-wide patterns in tag usage [32]. The resulting 

multi-faceted, bottom-up organization is often referred to as folksonomy – a neologism 

based on the words ”folk” and ”taxonomy” [33]. 

Concerning incentives for actively contributing, we aim at win-win situations: if 

for the user, tagging contents is valuable for re-finding contents or for enriching 

his online portfolio, we can encourage this by introducing a “tagging game”, with 

the repositories benefiting at the same time from the enriched contents. A variety 

of incentive mechanisms in online collaboration can be identified (see e.g. [34]). A 

further, promising perspective is the “undercover” creation of metadata from joyful 

activities such as gaming [35]. We are currently investigating, which of these techniques 

are best suited for our content partners and user groups. 

mace services 

Services in MACE connect the presentation layer with data sources and provide 

most of the business logic. They process user queries and return results, handle user 

management and provide means for gathering and manipulating metadata. Some 

services provide simple functions while others are more complex and can even aggregate 

functionality. 

Besides metadata manipulation and content retrieval, MACE services allow users to 

annotate contents with their own metadata, track activities and generate metadata 

from user actions. Examples for basic services are: “Searching” which takes in a 

request, queries the appropriate metadata databases and returns the results; “User- 

Handling” which provides authentication and user management functions; “Service- 

Registry”, a directory for discovery and use of services; and so on. 

Based on these basic services, more complex services can be realized in order to 

aggregate and combine various functionalities. For example, a combination of a 

timeline and a map application might query our services for buildings from the 1920s 

and plot the results on a map. In a second query step, related theoretical concepts 

for these contents can be retrieved, leading to new insights and novel navigation 

possibilities. 

In this perspective, services in the logic layer are used to encapsulate and 

hide complexity. They also greatly enhance technology reuse by providing 

a uniform interface to the presentation layer, which can be used by widgets 

as well as third party applications like plugins 

for example Microsoft Office or AutoCAD. These applications can then connect to 

MACE and make use of the technical infrastructure to search for and retrieve contents 

and metadata. 

It is possible to physically distribute MACE services over several server systems that 

are connected through the Internet. Some parts like metadata stores, MACE user 

accounting and a registry for distributed services are centralized to reduce complexity 

and improve performance. Other services can run anywhere on the Internet. This 

mace 

39

allows a wide range of options to be used, from simple, single-server installations to 

a complex and distributed infrastructure. 

To ensure full interoperability, all services are based on open standards. As mentioned 

above, we use OAI-PMH for metadata harvesting and SOAP for remote 

web service connectivity. The search service is enabled through the Simple Query 

Interface (SQI) [36] in order to be able for MACE to join LOR federations like Globe 22 

and Ariadne 23 . SQI allows for the federation of queries and the collection of the 

query results. SQI can be combined with any query language, and is, for example, 

employed in the GLOBE consortium to federate queries over the global network of 

learning repositories [37]. 

interface design strategy 

MACE builds on existing portals, bringing in their existing contents and metadata 

collections, as well as pre-existing facilities for search, access, navigation and 

browsing. Our goal is to connect these contents via metadata and make them jointly 

accessible, thus enabling multiple navigation paths and perspectives on the existing 

collections. 

Accordingly, we identified the following high-level goals for the interface design: 

› Provide convenient and effective ways to enrich the existing contents 

with metadata; 

› Make connections between contents accessible to the user, thus enabling interrepository 

navigation paths; 

› Foster knowledge discovery by making emerging metadata structures and connections 

accessible in interactive visualisations; and 

› Provide search and browsing interfaces that allow users to benefit from multiple 

types of metadata for content retrieval. 

Based on an analysis of the use cases, scenarios and information requirements [38], 

we extracted recurring functionalities and information constellations. These include, 

for example, the grouping of contents by different criteria, automatic suggestions of 

related contents, options to refine search results, etc. 

On the basis of these observed patterns, we designed a set of basic user interface 

components in the form of wireframes. These are low fidelity sketches for drafting a 

user interface with respect to its essential components, but without going into layout 

detail. Wireframes were mostly used to define a shared user interface vocabulary, 

and were used for visually prototyping larger applications, but also to discuss technical 

requirements on a focussed, granular level. The set of available components is 

continuously updated to reflect the current state of discussion and the technical 

possibilities. 

A number of applications are further developed into functional prototypes, in order 

to test interaction flows and allow early evaluation from potential end users, which 

are continuously evaluated by domain experts from the MACE consortium. In the 

following development phases, the group of beta testers will also be extended to 

externals. If the development of a prototype is technically too demanding, mock-ups 

are used to communicate the central idea and potential look and feel of an application. 


1 

Composing widgets for flexible access 

Based on these considerations, we developed an interface design strategy 

based on the notion of “widgets”, which are compact, specialized 

applications or application components. These cannot only be combined 

to build more complex applications, but also be integrated into existing 

portals and content management solutions on their own. 

mace widget 

visual browsing 

6 

On the one hand, this provides immediate incentives for content providers and site 

owners to embed and use MACE service widgets, since they can enhance their existing 

sites with functionality, in a focused manner and with little effort. On the other 

hand, the MACE project benefits by having more contents available, generating 

more metadata, thus improving the findability of relevant resources and increasing 

inter-repository traffic. 

Fig. 5: Mockup of map widget and related links widget integration into 

the DYNAMO portal (p. 322). 

The widget paradigm has been made popular in several domains over the last 

years: Apple’s dashboard widgets 24 allow users to add mini-applications on a semitransparent 

desktop layer, which can be activated by a hotkey. Also, Yahoo widgets 25 

or yourminis.com 26 provide widgets for use on a personalized web desktop, the OS 

desktop and embedded into other web pages. The range of available applications 

reaches from simple clock or weather forecast, to dictionaries, games, content subscription, 

to planners, search engines or messaging services. Other online services 

such as del.icio.us 27 , Technorati 28 or Plazes 29 provide HTML snippets to embed functional 

components into other web pages. There is a diversity of embeddable widgets 

available – displaying site statistics, allowing to search for contents, or displaying the 

site owner’s latest bookmarks, music listened to or books read. 

In MACE, all functionality for end users is made available in specialized widgets. For 

different metadata types or service functionality, a dedicated widget can be used to 

visualize metadata values, edit metadata, filter searches and navigate contents. 

The following MACE widget types can be distinguished: 

› Basic widgets handle basic user management and navigation tasks. Examples are 

a login widget, a simple search box (triggering a search on the MACE portal) or a link 

list widget; 

› Content presentation widgets can be used to display content collections from the 

repositories, such as related pictures for a given article, a list of search results or a 

single content item; 

› Metadata widgets visualize metadata values and aggregations of metadata values 

(so-called metadata profiles). Additionally, they allow editing of metadata as well as 

metadata based navigation, search and filtering; 

› We can further differentiate widgets by their awareness and adaptation with regard 

to context established by; 

› The host application or web site (e.g. currently presented contents); 

› The user (e.g. login status, previously viewed pages, preferences). Here, we distinguish 

user recognition (e.g. via cookie) and user login (via authentification mechanism). 

Some personalized functionality might be available also for recognized, but 

not logged-in users; 

› Other widgets (e.g. selections, navigation history). 

To give a concrete example from our repositories: a map widget for displaying geo- 

mace 

41

mace widget 

location could be used to display the location of a building in a DYNAMO project 

(content-aware), the locations associated with the user’s browsing history (useraware) 

or related places for a selected keyword in a different widget (widget-aware). 

The general goal is to make the “right” kind of information – fitting the user’s current 

situation and preferences as well as the currently focussed contents – visually accessible 

and editable directly in place. 

In the following, we will describe the different use cases enabled in our widget 

framework: from embeddable widgets, widgets for metadata editing and creation, 

over search refinement to visual browsing of contents and classification values. 

Embeddable widgets 

The chosen technical and conceptual framework allows re-use and combination of 

widgets in many different usage scenarios: MACE widgets can be embedded into 

existing web portals, thus making MACE functionality and contents available directly 

to portal owners and their users (see e.g. Fig. 5 for an example for embedding MACE 

widgets on external pages). To allow deeper integration in third party websites and 

other existing tools we are designing an extended widget API so that site owners are 

able to not only embed widgets, but also interact with these components directly. 

The exchange is planned to be bi-directional, i.e. the external web application is able 

to pass over a resource identifier, and MACE will provide related information. A usercase 

for the other way around is an asset search widget from which the user selects 

appropriate images and connects these to contents of the web page. Hence, more 

sophisticated communications between the embedding web page and the MACE 

infrastructure will be possible. Where applicable, the chosen technologies also allow 

an easy adaptation to desktop tools or browser extensions. 

MACE widgets are combinable and will be available for download and integration at 

the MACE portal. 

Add and edit in place 

MACE widgets are also used to edit metadata: Direct manipulation interfaces enable 

visual, interactive access and manipulation, instead of tedious and error-prone form 

filling. 

Fig. 6 shows two examples of MACE widgets for metadata editing: A compact 

version of our classification widget allows the application of over 1800 index terms 

based on auto-completion. Not only values are matched, but also field names and 

hierarchical elements for structuring the values. Consequently, users can either start 

typing “glass” and see immediately which index terms containing “glass“ for tagging 

are available, but also type “period” and see a list of available styles and periods. 

The map widget displays automatically generated content positions. Any of the 

markers can be dragged to a new, more precise location, if the user is not satisfied 

with the result of the automatic assignment. 

Using widgets for browsing and navigation 

Additionally, our embedded widget approach fosters meaningful navigation and 

browsing across repositories: MACE details pages of a resource feature; a patchwork 

of metadata widgets (Fig. 7), which displays and makes accessible metadata for this 

content. Users can not only understand the nature and relevance of the presented 

resource, but also directly navigate to related items or query the MACE database 


facet 

17 20 

1 

based on metadata values. As every metadata value presented in the individual widgets 

can constitute a search re-orientation, we generalize the now ubiquituous “pivot 

browsing” principle first described in [39]. This way, MACE widgets enable multifaceted 

navigation – not only on a semantic, but also a social and contextual level. 

Fig. 6: Add and edit metadata in place (p. 322). 

Fig. 7: The detail view of a Learning Object shows a patchwork of all its available 

metadata in widget form, resulting in various pivot points for further browsing 

and search (p. 322). 

Widgets for orienteering and filtering in a faceted search application 

In general, there is a limit to the quality of search results merely based on keyword 

matching in metadata fields [see e.g. 40]. In order to fully exploit the potential of 

metadata in content access and browsing, not only more sophisticated search 

mechanisms, but also improved forms of metadata visualisation are necessary. 

The exploration of dynamic taxonomies [41] in faceted browsing applications [42], 

are often seen as most promising candidates for ”rich exploration of a domain across 

a variety of sources from a user-determined perspective” [43]. These make different 

aspects of the underlying data accessible in parallel. Selecting one of the values, 

and thus filtering the result set, restricts the available metadata values to only those 

occurring in the results. Consequently, the user is visually guided through an iterative 

refinement process, effectively never encountering situations with zero results. 

The field was pioneered by [43] and gained wider attention with the Flamenco system 

[44]; other implementations include the Exhibit browser developed in the MIT 

SIMILE project [45], the “/facet” system [46] or the mspace browser [47]. 

In a faceted search setting, wigets display aggregations of metadata values, rather 

than single resource values. In a search for “churches” for example, the map widget 

will display the number of churches found in each country or region. On the one 

hand, this often constitutes interesting information already; on the other hand, a 

click on the respective region offers drill-down possibilities for search refinement. 

Fig. 8: (a) MACE advanced search (b) experimental faceted browsing interface (p. 323). 

Especially in combination with the widget patchwork on MACE resource detail 

pages, this navigation principle is especially suited for navigating multi-faceted and 

multivalent “long tail” [48] metadata structures, which typically arise from a collaborative 

tagging activity, since this approach allows both quick and intuitive drilldown 

navigation as well as “context hopping”. By successively selecting metadata 

values across facets, a “place” query can provide an entry point for a concept space, 

where individual concepts might in turn be related to specific users and so on. 

We are currently experimenting with variants of the principle for different content 

access situations and investigating the technical feasibility of making parts of our 

contents available in a dedicated facet browsing application and coordinated view 

applications. 

As a proof of concept, the elastic lists interface for facet browsing [49] has been 

adapted to browsing architectural contents based on architectural style, architects, 

and building types (Fig. 8b) 30 . 

mace 

43


Visual browsing of content classification 

The MACE classification glossary plays a central role not only in the tagging activity, 

but also in content retrieval and access. Accordingly, special care has been taken 

to make the terms and their organization structure optimally available in different 

situations. While for structured tagging, a type-and-autocomplete approach (Fig. 

7) proved to be most effective, the browsing of the vocabulary as such, and also 

contents associated with the terms, is supported by an interactive visualization of 

the terms and their relations (Fig. 7). We extended the classical radial tree layout 

mechanism presented in [50] towards a structured tag cloud, where more frequently 

applied terms are presented larger (Fig. 7). Additionally, special care has been taken 

to produce a visually pleasing visualization, that, e.g. respects the Gestalt law of 

good continuation for the edge drawing, in order to improve joy of use and satisfaction 

with the interface, as this has been shown to have a measurable effect on 

performance as well [51]. 

the mace portal 

The MACE portal 31 serves as a direct access point to discover architectural contents 

and make use of the aggregated metadata. Further, by providing easy mechanisms 

for contribution and incentives for participation, we use the MACE portal to generate 

usage and social metadata, which in turn improves our services. In the end, more 

traffic on the repositories makes it more attractive for further partners to join; on the 

other hand, an active and committed user base is the best basis for a self-sustaining 

knowledge network. 

Consequently, our services will be developed and made public in a successive 

manner: starting from content access and applications for discovering and learning 

to appreciate MACE metadata and contents, we gradually introduce features for 

personal information management. Once these are used sufficiently, enough data 

and users will be available to focus on personalisation, recommendation and social 

software features for advanced users. 

For developers and content owners, the MACE portal will also be a central access 

point for the documentation of the MACE API for adding contents to MACE, but also 

for the download and integration of MACE embeddable widgets. However, as a first 

step, we will prioritize the development and testing of metadata services and the 

development of a growing user base. 

Fig. 9: Browsing the hierarchical classification glossary in structured tag cloud visualizations 

(p. 323). 

conclusion 

By enriching and connecting existing portals and their contents, we aim to provide a 

unique, single access point to high quality contents in the architectural domain. The 

MACE system, enriching and connecting a large number of architectural contents 

through various kinds of metadata, allows navigation through multiple paths and 

many parallel logical perspectives. Besides this being a dedicated instrument, supporting 

the Documentation and Design problem solving activities of architects and 

civil engineers, it effectively leads to a multiplication of learning experiences and to a 

serendipitous finding of results. 

Especially from an informal learning perspective, MACE interface and system architecture 

will foster experience multiplication via metadata on many levels: 


1 

› An open system will be created, and incentives will be provided to actively enrich 

contents and share knowledge. This opens doors to social navigation and online collaboration, 

which are both crucial constituents of an active learning experience; 

› By linking complementary contents across repositories, we establish direct, valuable 

connections among conceptually interweaved notions; 

› Displaying metadata values directly in place supports a better judgement of the relevance 

and context of a single piece of information. By making each metadata value 

a starting point for a potential query on the MACE portal, a rich web of contextual 

information is woven around each content component; 

› Faceted search in combination with our metadata widget approach represents a 

flexible, intuitively accessible model for navigating multidimensional data structures 

in domain specific tools. It enables directed search and browsing of contents with 

respect to features relevant for architectural knowledge in a unique combination. 

The underlying weighted activation model fosters understanding in how metadata 

values and/or search terms relate to each other; revealing these relations can greatly 

contribute to the learning experience. 

Moreover, our service-oriented, distributed architecture allows reuse of both MACE 

contents as well as functionality in applications developed by third parties by simply 

embedding ready-made MACE widgets or by connecting proprietary interfaces and 

applications to the MACE metadata service API. Using open standards and protocols 

ensures interoperability. 

notes + references + bibliography → 

mace 

45

notes 

1 Metadata can be defined as information about an object, be it physical or digital [7]. 

2 http://globe-info.org. 

3 Metatagging is the automatic or manual operation of assign metadata to an object. 

4 http://dbpedia.org. 

5 http://freebase.org. 

6 http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/eqf/index_en.html. 

7 http://43things.com. 

8 http://wikipedia.org. 

9 http://mimoa.eu. 

10 http://mrnathan.munichre.com. 

11 http://freebase.com. 

12 http://dbpedia.org. 

13 http://aloe-project.de. 

14 http://www.connet.org/uk/esc/classification.jsp?node1=root&node2=&format=html. 

15 http://www.iso.org. 

16 http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat. 

17 http://www.ascinfo.co.uk. 

18 Our choice is supported by similar addresses we find in some more recent studies: 

Thürlemann’s work for painting, especially addressed to Klee’s and Kandinsky’s oeuvres [28]; 

Castiglioni’s interpretative model focusing on urban design; models followed by Eco’s 

and Calabresi’s pupils at D.A.M.S. in Bologna during the ’80s. 

19 The sequence of concepts involved in the design activity has been thoroughly studied 

by IUAV of Venice (Prof. V. Spigai), in collaboration with UNIVPM in Ancona (Prof. M. De Grassi), 

during the period 1994-2004. 

20 This analysis work was performed by the MACE consortium under the coordination of UNIVPM 

(Università Politecnica delle Marche, research group leaded by prof. M. De Grassi and A. Giretti). 

21 E.g. such as http://del.icio.us. 

22 http://globe-info.org. 

23 http://www.ariadne-eu.org. 

24 http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/dashboard. 

25 http://widgets.yahoo.com. 

26 http://yourminis.com. 

27 http://del.icio.us. 

28 http://technorati.com. 

29 http://plazes.com. 

30 http://interface.mace-project.eu/projectSearch. 

31 http://mace-project.eu. 

references 

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[25] Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). 1969. Construction Indexing Manual. 

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London: RIBA Publications Limited. 

[26] Hjelmslev, L. 1968. I fondamenti della teoria del linguaggio. Turin: Einaudi, 1968. 

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bibliography 

Stefaner, M., E. Dalla Vecchia, M. Condotta, M. Wolpers, M. Specht, S. Apelt, and E. Duval. 

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ISBN: 978-951-758-492-0 / ISSN: 0356-9403 

mace 

49

50 

2 

› cognitive models 

› design learning 

› design meaning 

› design models 

› design practice 

› design process 

› mental images 

› protocol analysis 

models of design activities: 

Towards Effective 

Design Scaffolding 

› precedent 

based design 

› scaffolding procedure 

› scaffolding tools 

› semiotics 

› signification process 

› sketching 

› tutorial discourse 

Design is one of the most complex types of problem solving 

tasks involving several aspects and components. Its cognitive 

processes and procedures should be conveyed to the learners 

through lectures and revision sessions, but the models available 

must still be defined and made clearer in order to improve 

both learning – be it traditional or distant learning – as well as 

teaching. 

This paper analyses and models design activities in order to 

identify scaffolding procedures and tools that can be used 

to support the communication of design competencies. This 

theoretical apparatus makes up the natural development 

context of research projects such as MACE, aimed at providing 

innovative instruments and technologies, which support design. 

In particular, the paper begins assuming a semiotic viewpoint 

and discusses how and to what extent design can be conceived 

as an act of significance. The paper then introduces a cognitive 

design model that interprets and extends the semiotic view 

to an operational dimension. It then proceeds presenting the 

protocol analysis used in the research and, finally, findings and 

conclusions are drawn with the inclusion of possible guidelines 

and suggestions.

mario de grassi 

Università Politecnica delle Marche 

Ancona, Italia 

www.univpm.it 

Prof. Dr. Mario De Grassi is a Full Professor of 

Building Technology and board member at the 

Faculty of Engineering of the Università Politecnica 

delle Marche. Mario has an in-depth knowledge of 

both architecture design/construction issues and 

information technology models. He founded and 

directs the Building Technology Research Laboratory. 

He was coordinator of the WINDS European research 

project and is currently working on the MACE 

project. 

alberto giretti 



www.univpm.it 

Dr. Alberto Giretti is a Researcher Scientist in 

Building Construction. Alberto is an engineer and 

has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence Systems. He 

was scientific coordinator for the WINDS project 

regarding Virtual Universities for Architecture in 

Europe and is currently working on the MACE project 

carrying out user requirement analysis. He is the 

author of numerous articles regarding e-learning, 

automation in construction and Design Studies. 

roberta ansuini 



www.univpm.it 

Dr. Roberta Ansuini is a PhD student in Architecture, 

Building Constructions and Structures. Roberta 

graduated in engineering and worked in a number 

of architectural design studios following her 

degree. She is currently working on research 

projects involving design-learning models for the 

development of didactic models. At the same time 

she is working on the MACE research project carrying 

out user requirement analysis. 

51

design learning 

design practice 

2 

introduction 

Learning to design is not only a question of practise. Design is one of the most complex 

types of problem solving tasks involving cultural, cognitive and technological 

aspects. So it follows that teaching design is not only a question of experience. 

Traditionally, the practice of architectural design is taught from a design 

studio approach. In the studio, designers express and explore ideas, generate 

and evaluate alternatives, ultimately making decisions and taking actions. 

design process 

1 18 

winds 

25 

External representations (sketches, drawings and three-dimensional models) are 

made and these representations are reasoned out in order to inquire, analyze and 

test hypotheses concerning the designs that the designers have represented. In 

current academic courses, design studio education is reflected in homework revision 

practice. Students and teachers collaboratively develop a design theme; they share 

objectives, ideas, issues and solutions. Students’ reflective practice is continuously 

matched against teachers’ expertise, establishing a privileged expertise transfer 

method. The knowledge disseminated in the design studio, either for the purpose 

of education or professional practice, is often packaged in the form of precedents 

(also called design cases) or generalizations drawn from at best a limited number 

of instances, rather than from first principles. Yet, the fact remains that the most 

productive use of case analysis in design is conducted in an informal and ad hoc 

fashion and that this method not always leads the student to the acquisition of the 

autonomy in the design domain, which allows him to move about in the design 

problem space. 

In order for design assistance activities to be as efficient as possible the 

cognitive processes characterizing this type of problem solving must be as 

clear as possible, just as the knowledge of how the processes themselves are 

communicated and transmitted. Hence, what is needed is precise knowledge 

of design as a complex process where a multitude of aspects and perspectives 

converge. Comprehension of design processes is indispensable due to 

the fact that every type of modelling activity, be it web based or traditional, 

has to deal with the scaffolding instrument. In this sense, this research finds 

space in the cultural context, where the MACE research project was developed 

(and earlier still the WINDS Web-based INtegrated Design Systems 

project), as inevitable development of years of experimental observation of 

design activity. 

Understanding the design “phenomenon” requires the assumption of a set of 

models, which can effectively guide the observation procedure. 

In this paper, we will discuss these issues from two perspectives. A semiotic viewpoint 

will provide the necessary framework for describing the processes of signifying, 

communicating and managing the role of representation and visualization in 

the design activity. A cognitive viewpoint will provide an operational model of the 

semiotic frame, which describes the general strategy of design as well as a cognitive 

models of design activities 

53

model, which renders the meta-strategy operational through the identification of 

well-defined cognitive actions. Subsequently, an example retrieved from the protocol 

analysis of a design revision session will show how these frames emerge in real 

design processes. Finally, we will collect our findings, draw conclusions and provide 

possible guidelines and suggestions for effective design scaffolding. 

about the meaning of a design 

In design activities the transmission of solution concepts and values occurs 

principally via visual means. Initially, the most immediate kind of representation 

is the sketch. Later technical drawings, digitals or scale 3d models, 

are used too. 

Observing student/teacher revision sessions however, where the exchange 

occurs through verbal language as well, it has been noted that very often the 

meaning of a design solution is not shared and that the student in particular, is 

not always capable of eliciting contents through visual signs. Semiotics allows 

us to understand why and especially how these situations must be addressed. 

design meaning 

semiotics 

signification process 

sketching 

Semiotics is the study of signs. A sign is anything that mediates meaning; this can 

include words, images, sounds and even gestures. The semiotic framework provides 

a coordinated way of talking about how meanings are expressed through signs. The 

model contains three basic entities: 

› the sign: something which is perceived, but which stands for something else; 

› the concept (interpretant): thoughts or images conjured by the perception of the sign; 

› the object: the “something else” in the world to which the sign refers. 

The model is most often represented as the semiotic triangle (Fig. 1), where the 

sign and the concept are connected by the person’s perception, the concept and the 

object are connected by the person’s experience, and the sign and the object are 

connected by the conventions, or the culture, of the social group within which the 

person lives. Signs are not meaningful in isolation, but only when they are interpreted 

in relation to each other. The production and interpretation of signs depends 

upon the existence of codes or conventions for communication [Jakobson 1971]. 

Codes provide a framework within which signs make sense, and the meaning of a 

sign depends on the code within which it is situated [Eco 1976]. The interpretation 

is the process of understanding the relationship between a signifier (sign) and its 

signified (object). Interpreting the conventional meaning of signs requires familiarity 

with appropriate sets of codes, even in the case of indexical and iconic signs such 

as photographs. Among the potentially infinite set of meanings a sign can assume, 

semiotics distinguish between direct (denotation) and indirect (connotation) relations. 

Denotation is the definitional, literal, or commonsense meaning of a sign. For 

example in the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary 

attempts to provide. Connotation is the indirect meaning the sign recalls through 

the relational structure of the codes it is interpreted with. For example the image 

of a dove with an olive branch denotes the bird and the tree, and connotes peace. 

Connotation and denotation are often described in terms of levels of representation 

or levels of meaning [Barthes 1957; Hjelmslev 1961]. The first order of signification 

is that of denotation: at this level there is a sign consisting of a signifier and a signified. 

Connotation is a second-order of signification, which uses the denotative sign 

(signifier and signified) as its signifier and attaches to it an additional signified. In this 


2 

framework connotation is a sign, which derives from the signifier of a denotative sign 

(so denotation leads to a chain of connotations) (Fig. 1). 

Fig. 1: (a) The semiotic triangle (b) Levels showing how the interpretation process is 

related to the structure of the interpretative codes (p. 324). 

To summarize, meaning includes both denotation and connotation, 

and signification is the process of building both denotation and connotation 

type relationships among signs and objects, in relation to a specific set 

of interpretative codes. 

This is a very general framework, which can be used to understand many of 

the problems occurring in design processes. Very often in fact, the designer 

uses sketches in the ideation phase. This activity, which formalizes the idea 

under his very eyes, often reveals the significance he wants to convey and tie 

(denotation or connotation type) with other objects, buildings and others. 

For instance, Fig. 2 demonstrates how different sketches are elaborated for the same 

case. The designer is in reality referring to two very different meanings. More specifically, 

the designer is evaluating which volume aggregation hierarchy he should use. 

In both cases he has different “references” in mind, buildings already realized that he 

wants as relevant precedents (denotation) and which refer to more generic concepts 

(connotation). In the first case, his sketch denotes a building, which he has in mind 

and that in his mind denotes the idea of ”stratification”. In the second case however 

the reference considered is another as the significance is “made of blocks”. 

Fig. 2: Building sketches and designer’s words denote a reference building and connote 

general concept related to aggregation forms (p. 324). 

During this initial phase, this sort of significance is not relevant for the designer but 

it becomes indispensable for allowing him to proceed in the design quickly while 

taking on composition criteria, which he will then have to safeguard during the entire 

design process. Obviously, these types of meanings will then influence other aspects 

such as the choice of materials, the management of interior and exterior spaces, the 

layout of glazed surfaces and so on. 

At this point we have sufficient elements to understand how design ideation 

can be conceived, as an act of signifying a unique and original construction 

of the reference frame that draws relationships among codes often belonging 

to different domains. This reference frame expresses the set of design 

meanings and, most importantly, it defines the structure of what can be 

understood as the design space. 

precedent based design, a cognitive perspective 

It is now consolidated that design solutions are, for the most part, the result of a 


55

cognitive models 

design models 

mental images 

precedent based 

design 

process of recall and re-elaboration of images and data coming from other design 

cases. In order to arrive at new solutions and shapes the designer re-interprets 

something already seen and known – the so-called “references”, or to use the technical 

term, the “precedent”. 

In the field of education, but generally in every design activity, “references” play an 

inexorable role. Numerous research activities have highlighted that learning architectonic 

concepts through the study of precedents is a common activity [Taeyeol et Valerian]. 

In fact, projects elaborated by others lead students to the identification of the 

main issues they should concentrate their attention on, help them to come to new 

ideas regarding how they ought to proceed, and allow them to preview the effects of 

alternative solutions for the project [Heylighen et Verstijine 2002]. 

Precedent based design is a well-known design paradigm [Oxman 1994, 

Maher 1996]. Precedents are used to recommend solutions that are close 

to the problem under analysis. Adapting the proposed solution to the actual 

working context develops a design. This early procedural view of precedent 

based design is now understood as one of the main cognitive activities of 

designing. Protocol analysis of design processes show that a great percentage 

of design work, especially in the early stages, consists in the construction 

of the so-called design space. 

Aggregating design issues, concepts and solutions on the basis of their reciprocal relevance, 

which in turn is derived from previous cases, makes design space construction. 

In the previous section, we showed that every design carries an original frame 

of reference, which indirectly structures the codes belonging to different domains, 

and contributes to defining its cultural dimensions. In this manner, cases provide 

designers with the “soft rules” that they use to express meaning in a relevant way 

with respect to their cultural environment. 

It is therefore evident that there is a strong relation between the cognitive 

view of design and the semiotic framework. This analogy provides us with 

many useful insights concerning design as a meaningful construction process. 

Multimodal perceptual representation and diagrammatic reasoning [Chandrasekaran 

1999] is a cognitive model that views a “cognitive state” as an 

integrated and interlinked collection of “images” in various modalities: the 

perceptual ones, and the kinaesthetic and conceptual modalities. Thinking, 

problem solving, reasoning, etc. are viewed as sequences of such states, 

where there is no intrinsically preferred mode. So perception and imagination 

are deeply related processes that make use of internal representations called 

mental images. 

Mental images can be aggregated to form more complex patterns and/or abstracted 

to produce their logical interpretation. Mental images can also be reflected 

on external media (e.g. sketches on paper) and reinterpreted. Mental models are 

representation frames that aggregate sets of logical structures and the related 


2 

mental images and characterize significant portions of the reality. Figure 3 shows a 

rearrangement of the signs we introduced in the semiotic framework according to a 

multimodal perceptual representation. 

Fig. 3: Signs and objects of building design domain arranged according to a multimodal 

perceptual representation (p. 325). 

The teacher’s interpretation of a student’s drawing can, for example, be conceived 

according to a multimodal perceptual model as the construction of a mental model 

(Fig. 4). This process starts from the abstraction of the external stimuli to form mental 

images. This usually results in a number of competing images. The emergence of 

one image over the others is related to the possibility of recalling analogous mental 

images from long-term memory. The recalled image brings into the working memory 

the entire set of associated mental models. If the relations in the working memory 

are arranged coherently, the mental model is perceived as a representation of the 

external stimulus. 

In semiotic terms, the mental model, made of signs and of connoted objects, 

is the interpretative frame of the perceived object. So, to a certain extent, 

a cognitive model can be understood as a procedural model of the semiotic 

frame. The interesting factor, in terms of design, is that even the opposite 

trail follows the same rules. The proposal that, in this case is through a sketch 

of a new solution, passes through the instantiation of a concept at the perceptive 

mental level (once again through the recollection of other mental objects) 

and hence to its representation at the external stimuli level via a sketch. 


protocol analysis 

tutorial discourse 

7 12 

The question now is how the meaning of design can be coherently communicated, 

for instance in design learning. In the next section we briefly summaris e 

a protocol 

analysis of a design review session at a university and we address problems and possible 

solutions in order to design the scaffolding. 

Fig. 4: A functional schema of a multimodal perceptual model (p. 325). 

protocol analysis of design revision sessions 

Protocol analysis is a data acquisition technique for eliciting highly detailed information 

regarding a particular process and is usually applied at the sub-process level. 

This method [Newell 1966, Ericsson and Simon 1993] is based on the transcription 

of the verbal content produced by the designer by applying the “thinking aloud” 

method (already part of teacher/student revision) and on the subsequent analysis, 

subdividing the cognitive actions into sequences, that generally last a few seconds, 

and relating them to a precise semantic area. 

Through protocol analysis applied to design revision sessions it is possible 

to observe two types of processes: 

› the student’s cognitive process, which provides information on how a novice 

learns to design; 

› the teacher’s cognitive process, which leads to the understanding 

of how experts design. 

In several protocol analysis experiments conducted so far, the segments relative 


57

to the phase in which the teacher tries to propose alternative design solutions are always 

very interesting. In this phase the teacher, in substance, sets off a micro design 

process starting from the student’s drawings, generally selecting and addressing only 

certain issues. 

In the design fragment described through the figures, the teacher should provide the 

student with hints regarding the aggregative character of volumes. In this case it was 

observed that the teacher is not able to clarify the issue until he develops an alternative 

solution to the student design problem. In this segment, the ongoing definition 

of the resolving concept regarding the “stratified building” is clearly observable 

(Fig. 5). The gradual character of the event is signalled via the teacher altering his 

attempt to visualize the problem and his definition through gestures, words, recalling 

of references and mental images and through the elaboration of sketches. 

Only via this “reflection in action” phase can he rationalize the concept (e.g. “stratified 

building”) from the cognitive point of view, which he will then be capable of 

suggesting to the student. 

Protocol analysis from the students’ side however demonstrates that it is neither immediate 

nor certain that the student grasps what the teacher wants to communicate 

precisely. The observation of subsequent revision protocols has demonstrated how 

communication between teacher and student is not always efficient. In our case for 

instance, the concept of “stratification” did not have the same significance for the 

teacher as it did for the student, and only after a number of revisions did the student 

grasp the sense of what the teacher was saying. 

Fig. 5: Functional scheme that synthesises the interaction between various forms of 

expressions in a solutions’ elaboration process (p. 326). 

The recurring problem in the revisions observed is basically related to teacher/student 

communication and it presents two components. The first component 

is semantic and consists in the fact that an interpretive code that allows 

efficient communication is not usually shared between the two subjects. 

In fact, semantic analysis highlighted many incoherencies between graphic, verbal 

mnemonic representation of the same concept and, in general, it identified an extremely 

low associative capacity in the student. The principal cause for this problem 

is the lack of a clear knowledge structure in the student, which allows him to decode 

the problem, namely the lack of a “reference storehouse” to which he can efficiently 

turn to in order to allow him to elaborate successful solutions. 

A second more cognitive component consists in the fact that while the teacher, 

thanks to his experience, passes automatically to the conceptual level 

and has the significant relationships clear, the student often stops at the perceptual 

level – failing to understand the sense of what the teacher proposes 

in the revision. 

In fact, as we have already seen, the teacher’s design process follows a typical multimodal 

perceptual design reasoning model, where one has the continuous transference 

of the project from the perceptive level to the conceptual one, to then go back 

to the first in order to define a detailed solution that successfully concretizes the 

concepts and reflects the mental images reached via the reference cases (Fig. 4). 


2 

Compared to the teachers, the students, fail to synthetically elaborate the stimulus 

offered by the initial elaborates and they fail to read the reference cases according 

to these same stimulus. They cannot focalize the problem at the conceptual level. 

This results in unclear or incorrect solutions. This lack of clarity at the conceptual 

level results in the students not being fully reactive to the teachers’ comments and 

to the incomplete understanding of his suggestions. Once again this problem can be 

initially traced back to the students’ lack of an adequate knowledge framework that 

would allow him to decode the problem in a structured manner. It can also be traced 

back to the students’ lack of experience determining the fact that he does not usually 

activate via abstraction, association and instantiation processes. 

Still considering our example, Fig. 6 shows a comparison between the process that 

the student puts into practise (“observed process”) and the ideal process, which 

he should put into practise (“suggested process”). The ideal process can occur only 

through the scaffolding of the students’ activity and of the trail he pursued. 

Fig. 6: The figure shows a design problem regarding the formal definition of a building (p. 326). 

This is an example of the scaffolding protocol in tutorial dialogue. The teacher (who 

has addressed the problem at the conceptual level) points out the fact that the student’s 

design is missing coherence (bottom left) and proposes a solution schemata 

(top left). However, in this manner, he does not allow the student to follow through 

the conceptual level (“observed process”). In order for the ideal process to occur – 

the “suggested process” in the student – the teacher should provide him with eliciting 

questions (top right) to drive solution synthesis and instantiation (bottom right). 

scaffolding guidelines for design learning 

In order to define the instruments and procedures that are useful as “scaffolding” 

for the learning of design, two different types of operations are needed: 

› accompanying/guiding the student step-by-step in explicating the reasoning 

processes in order to lead him up to the conceptual level; 

› help him build the vastest interpretive code possible, that is, help him acquire 

a vast and flexible knowledge structure, so he will know how to visualize 

via reference cases. 

scaffolding procedure 

scaffolding tools 

For carrying out scaffolding we propose the following stages to lead the student 

through the process step-by-step: 

1. Abstraction: the teacher gives feedback on the students’ design project interpreting 

the students’ design through a set of relevant abstract schemata. 

2. Internalizing: the teacher asks the students to map the abstract schemata, 

requesting them to explicit the correspondences among elements of the schema and 

their design instantiation. In this way the students interiorize the teacher’s conceptual 

apparatus. 

3. Evaluation: the teacher points out strengths and weakness of the students’ design 

by criticizing the interpretation schemata. Errors and good solutions are identified at 

the abstract level. 

4. Solution: the teacher asks the students to synthesize a solution schema either by 

completely reformulating some of the interpretative schemata or partially correcting 

them. This is a complex phase and often requires a recursive activation of the entire 


59

design process. Students often get stuck in this phase. In this case, it is necessary to 

help the students by proposing a set of possible solution schemata and asking them 

to select the one they believe to be the best. 

5. Instantiation: the teacher asks the students to instantiate an abstract of the solution 

schemata into detailed design representations (i.e. drawings, paintings, etc.). 

As far as concerns the acquisition of a vast, flexible and visible knowledge structure 

it is fundamental that instruments providing students with vast repertories of reference 

cases be set up. These need to be indexed according to well structured class 

structures and critically articulated so that the examples can be easily traced and 

associated – at the conceptual level – with the problematic issues that the student 

must address. This is the very direction taken by the MACE project. 


2 

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a combined gene approach”. In Advances in formal design methods for CAD, eds. Gero, J. S., 

and F. Sudweeks. London: Chapman and Hall, 1996. 

Newell, A. On the Analysis of Human Problem Solving Protocols. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon 

University, Department of Computer Science, 1966. 

Oxman, R.E. “Precedents in Design: a Computational Model for the Organization of Precedent 

Knowledge”. Design Studies 15, no. 2 (1994): 141-157. 

Schon, D.A. The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books, 1983. 

Taeyol, P., and M. Valerian. “A Comparison of the Effectiveness of two Computer-Assisted Instruction 

Methods for Learning Architectural Concepts in Design Studio”. In 15th eCAADe – Conference 

Proceedings (University of Technology, Vienna, 17-20 September, 1997), 1997. 


61

› architecture 

› cam 

› content 

› harvesting 

› Interoperability 

› mace 

62 

3 

mace: 

Enabling Legacy Repositories 

› metadata 

› oai 

› repository 

› rss 

› winds 

In the domain of architecture, a huge amount of digital contents 

useful to academic and professional users are available online, 

which in principle are accessible from all over the world. 

However, the contents of locked in legacy systems are hard to 

find with traditional search engines. 

The MACE project aims to connect architectural repositories 

located all over Europe in order to make their contents more 

accessible, giving communities of architecture and design the 

possibility to use them. 

We show how digital content from legacy repositories can 

be made available through metadata harvesting and reuse, 

by using the examples of WINDS, an online learning system, 

and DYNAMO, a growing collection of architectural projects. 

From a WINDS perspective, we describe an OAI mapping 

approach for repositories that can be adapted to specific needs 

with small effort. As far as DYNAMO is concerned, we focus 

on the flexible approach we adopted to connect DYNAMO’s 

dynamic classification metadata with the constantly changing 

MACE taxonomy. We discuss the major problems encountered 

and solved in both WINDS and DYNAMO, and the lessons 

learnt. This paper sets out a starting point and also reports 

on the issues of implementation. It addresses repository 

owners with technical knowledge who want to open up their 

repositories to MACE, but are afraid of high efforts.

stefan apelt 


Bonn, Germany 


Stefan Apelt has a diploma in computer science in 

business obtained from the Technische Universität 

Dresden, Germany, in 2002 and has since worked 

on EU projects at Fraunhofer Gesellschaft. His main 

interests include the design of complex information 

systems, quality assurance procedures and technical 

project management. 

christian prause 


Bonn, Germany 


Christian Prause received his diploma in computer 

science from the University of Bonn (Germany) 

in 2006. Since then he is working in the research 

group “Information in Context” at Fraunhofer FIT. 

His research interests are in human aspects of 

software engineering and software quality assurance. 

mathias casaer 

k.u. leuven 


www.asro.kuleuven.be 

Mathias Casaer is Software Developer at the 

Architecture department of the K.U.Leuven, where 

he has been in charge of the technical side 

of DYNAMO since 2002. 

ann heylighen 

k.u. leuven 


www.asro.kuleuven.be 

Ann Heylighen has an MSc and PhD in engineering 

architecture from the K.U.Leuven. As a post-doc, 

she worked at K.U.Leuven, Harvard University 

and the University of California-Berkeley. Currently 

she is associate professor at the K.U.Leuven. 

Her research there is focusing on more 

knowledgeable ways of designing in architecture, 

especially in the context of inclusive design. 

63

mace 

harvesting 

mace application profile 

1 

metadata 

11 15 21 23 

oai 

1 11 13 

repository 

7 10 18 21 

23 26 

winds project 


1 10 

3 

preamble 

Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe (MACE 1 ) aims to connect architectural 

repositories located all over Europe in order to make their contents more accessible, 

enabling communities of architecture and design to use them. The MACE project 

is based on successful past projects and databases such as ARIADNE 2 , DYNAMO 3 , 

WINDS 4 and ICONDA 5 [Apelt et al. 2007]. 

MACE uses open formats and standards for structuring and exchanging metadata 

[Stefaner et al. 2007]. For delivery, information has to be encoded in a schema based 

on the LOM standard [IEEE 1484.12.1], which has been specifically designed for 

the domain of architectural education. This schema is called the MACE Application 

Profile (MACE-AP 6 ). The Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting 

(OAI-PMH 7 ) is then used for collecting metadata from remote repositories. 

This paper will show you how to enable your repository for metadata harvesting 

using the OAI-PMH protocol by loosely following the instructions laid out at the 

OAI website 8 . For repositories with a clear internal metadata structure, the Open 

Archives Initiative provides a number of free tools for exploring and harvesting these 

metadata 9 . We found, however, that none of these tools could help us enabling the 

WINDS and DYNAMO content repository, so we had to come up with and implement 

tailored solutions. Using the example of WINDS and DYNAMO, we show how 

to integrate these solutions into proprietary systems. 

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: we start by briefly introducing 

WINDS and DYNAMO, which will serve as example repositories in the context of this 

paper. 

Subsequently, we sketch the Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata 

Harvesting adopted by MACE. By way of example, we then zoom in on the specific 

challenges this adoption posed in the context of WINDS and DYNAMO, as well as 

on possible solutions to address them. The paper closes with lessons learned and 

directions for future work. 

introducing winds and dynamo 

The WINDS project has been a European Commission Fifth Framework-funded R&D 

project looking at electronic means of assisting design students. It started in 2000 

and created the pedagogic basis for a virtual online university and a large amount of 

digital learning materials [Specht et al. 2005]. Students can subscribe to the system 

and register for online courses about architecture and design. Even though the 

research project ended in 2003, the system is still online. 

Fig. 1: WINDS in action (p. 327). 

During project runtime, 43 courses with a total of 5530 learning objects and 10540 

content blocks were created. Since it should be possible to reuse contents internally 

for other courses or mashups, some efforts were undertaken to enrich these contents 

with metadata. The WINDS system (Fig. 1) features a rudimentary implementation 

of the LOM standard with proprietary extensions developed to project requirements. 

Metadata are managed with an object persistence framework and stored in a 

relational database in an optimised way, which makes exploration with standard database 

tools a challenging task [Kravcik et al. 2004]. Due to this difficulty we added 

harvesting at the business logic level, where full metadata records are available as 

objects (Fig. 2). 

Fig. 2: WINDS technical architecture (schema) and the OAI adaptor (p. 327). 

mace: enabling legacy repositories 

65

The Dynamic Architectural Memory Online (DYNAMO) is an interactive multimedia 

platform that aims to stimulate and support architects in sharing ideas, knowledge 

and insights in the form of concrete building projects. From a technical point of view, 

DYNAMO can be viewed as a learning-content management system, designed to 

support the creation, storage, use and reuse of learning content in the granular form 

of building projects [Heylighen and Neuckermans 2000]. 

Projects are documented with a combination of various media, ranging 

from sketches and drawings, over digital models and animation, to pictures, 

video and text (Fig. 3). 

vocabolary 

classification system 

20 21 

oai 

1 11 13 

Fig. 3: DYNAMO screenshot (p. 327). 

Various features such as project name, architect and location, as well as aspects of 

form and space, function, construction, physical and historical context label every 

building project. These metadata serve as filter criteria during retrieval and as links 

to projects with analogous characteristics. Metadata describing DYNAMO content 

are organised by means of a dynamic classification system, embodied by a relational 

database. 

The current version of DYNAMO distinguishes between three types of users. DY- 

NAMO users have limited privileges: they can consult the platform and feed it with 

new projects, project features or documentation. Monitors have extended privileges 

in that they can approve, alter or delete user-added materials, and create new categories 

or change the category structure. Administrators have access to all DYNAMO 

features, including user and monitor administration. 

At the time of writing, DYNAMO serves 1500 users with about 665 projects, documented 

by more than 12.000 files. In order to evaluate its performance, several case 

studies have been conducted in different contexts and at different stages of development. 

In the context of architectural education several experiments were set up. In 

addition, DYNAMO has been introduced to professional architects, so as to get an 

impression of its relevance and usefulness for architectural practice. A detailed account 

of all these case studies and their findings transcends the scope of this article, 

but is largely covered in Heylighen et al., 2004, 2007. 

the open archives initiative-protocol 

for metadata harvesting 

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) “attempts to build a “low-barrier interoperability 

framework” for archives… containing digital content” in order to “facilitate the efficient 

dissemination of content” [Dobratz and Matthaei 2003]. 

One of the projects of this initiative is the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH), 

which describes a process of collecting, or “harvesting”, metadata from digital 

repositories to metadata stores. Harvesting means to transfer new metadata or 

metadata updates to a central repository on a regular basis (Fig. 4). 

Note however, that in MACE only metadata describing the contents are transferred. 

The contents themselves are not copied during this process and remain under full 

control of their respective owners without having their access conditions changed 

[Prause et al. 2007]. A general description of the harvesting process can be found in 

Sompel et al. [2004]. 

Fig. 4: The OAI-PMH harvesting process (p. 328). 


3 

The following paragraphs zoom in on aspects in WINDS and DYNAMO that 

caused problems when we started using the OAI-PMH protocol and on the solutions 

implemented. 

No internal validation of metadata records to the LOM standard: the WINDS system 

allowed free text entry for some fields, which lead to a number of incorrect entries. 

As an example, the field describing the language of the content object contained 

the following values “de”, “german”, “German”, “deutsch” and “deu” – all meaning 

the same value “German”. Other examples included mandatory fields that had been 

left empty or fields containing values that are not allowed at that point. The WINDS 

system was quite lenient at that point, the philosophy being to capture as much 

metadata as possible even at the risk of having some incorrect values. However, a 

better strategy is to enforce validation right from the beginning. 

No clear and structured metadata in the database: this was the biggest issue and 

the reason for our implementation of the WINDS-OAI adaptor. If one wants to put 

OAI on top of a proprietary system, the creation of a mapping layer between existing 

structures and OAI is almost inevitable. In WINDS, the information necessary for a 

LOM record is stored in parts and different database tables all over the system for 

historical reasons. The mapping layer needs to take care of collecting the information 

and creating valid LOM records from it. 

What objects should be enriched and in what level of detail: WINDS provides 

several levels of granularity: a) whole course; b) a chapter in a course; c) a page in a 

chapter; d) a part of a page; e) a single object within a part (image or block of text). 

Reusability is usually greatest at the level of a single object (e), but enrichment took 

place at page level (c), with parts of metadata records copied down to object level 

(e). This can cause confusion for the OAI harvester, because he 

does not know which 

record the metadata was really intended for. 

DYNAMO versus MACE vocabulary: the major challenge in DYNAMO relates to the 

dynamic nature of its classification system. As mentioned before, DYNAMO’s projects 

are characterized by a dynamic vocabulary, which is structured using a category hierarchy, 

and both the vocabulary value space and the categorization can be modified 

and extended by DYNAMO users. 

This dynamic vocabulary is used to characterize various aspects of building projects. 

DYNAMO offers its vocabulary through various perspectives or windows, each 

window being a selection of the categories relevant to that perspective. The identification 

window contains static general information to identify each project, other 

content and domain metadata are isolated in the design, theory and construction 

window. 

MACE organizes part of its content and domain metadata through the use of 

its own classification vocabulary, which is the subject of constant debate and 

re-evaluation. Therefore the MACE vocabulary periodically changes as well. 

Here arises the main challenge in connecting DYNAMO’s vocabulary with the MACE 

vocabulary: this kind of connection cannot be implemented statically in the OAI-PMH 

framework. Each time a DYNAMO user adds a concept with relevancy for MACE, or 

the MACE vocabulary is updated, new connections need to be provided through the 

code. In addition, the number of vocabulary values, which have to be connected, 

largely exceeds the amount of reasonably manageable items to implement. 

An ongoing programming effort is not the intention of the MACE project. Moreover, 

this kind of effort cannot be justified for every repository that has a significant 

amount of classification metadata available. Therefore, as far as sharing our classification 

metadata with MACE is concerned, we had to adopt a flexible approach 

towards implementing OAI-PMH. 


67

Performance: a major performance problem we encountered in DYNAMO’s adaptation 

to OAI-PMH is the fact that gathering metadata of each single learning object, 

c.q. project, requires a combined query with various joins, resulting in many records 

from our original database. In other words, for each LOM-record of a DYNAMO project, 

many records have to be read and interpreted to assemble the result. In some 

cases this is even true for individual LOM-fields. We will describe the optimisation of 

this further in this paper when discussing performance and batch harvesting. 

the oai-pmh framework written in java 

Metadata from the repositories connected to MACE are brought to the central 

repository using a protocol based on the OAI-PMH standard. Out of the four metadata 

types available in MACE, three are harvested through OAI-PMH: Content and 

Domain Metadata, Competence and Process Metadata, and Context Metadata. 

However, only Content and Domain Metadata are implemented in WINDS, so only 

this type is harvested. 

The OAI-PMH protocol 10 is based on standard HTTP. The harvester encodes its harvesting 

parameters in GET or POST requests (HTTP client). Hence, on data provider 

side (HTTP server) a web application server can be used to do decoding of requests, 

which alleviates most of the basic implementation work for the data provider. Different 

OAI-PMH libraries for various providers’ platforms are available on the Internet 11 . 

Because metadata of DYNAMO are acquired through the use of (mysql-) queries we 

could easily start here with customizing a standard OAI-PMH Java framework. The 

problem we encountered with WINDS however was that it does not use a J2EE-compliant 

web server, but WebObjects 12 , which made using standard implementations 

relying on J2EE servlet architecture impossible. 

Because of that, we developed our own implementation 13 of the OAI-PMH protocol. 

Our framework can be used with J2EE as well as WebObjects servlets. Additionally, 

it features a set of OAI exceptions, and seven well-documented and rigid Java 

interfaces that allow abstraction from legacy data schemes and guide implementers 

in providing all necessary data. This increases comprehensibility of the adapter in 

comparison to any of the other implementations we tried, because a deeper understanding 

of the OAI-PMH protocol is no longer needed. The adapter sources also 

include an example dummy data provider. 

framework implementation in the winds system 

To make use of the framework in WINDS, we had to implement these interfaces: 

› IdentifyProvider: identifies the repository and gives a base URL for further requests, 

specifices the timestamp granularity and the handling of deleted contents; 

› ListMetadataFormatsProvider: specifies in which formats the repository will export 

its metadata. Since MACE uses the LOM standard, this provider specifies LOM; 

› ListIdentifiersProvider and ListRecordsProvider are responsible for creating a list of 

all content object identifiers; 

› RecordProvider: returns the metadata for a content object requested. 

Of the above providers, the ListIdentifiersProvider and the RecordProvider required 

the most effort – this is where the mapping from WINDS to OAI actually happens. 

The ListIdentifiersProvider needs to return a list of identifiers for all contents that 

should be possible to harvest. Since the WINDS system also contains courses not 

suited in the context of MACE, contents from these courses need to be filtered out 

first. Second, not all contents in a course are worth harvesting, for example simple 


3 

headlines are filtered out too. The end result is a list of filtered content identifiers 

that can be harvested. 

The RecordProvider is given the identifier of a specific content object and returns 

the properly formatted LOM record for the content. In this part, the mapping from 

proprietary values to the LOM standard happens. In WINDS, we query the Metadata 

object associated with the content for each value and map these to a LOM compliant 

XML output. 

performance and batch harvesting 

Attention needs to be paid to performance issues. Constructing LOM records with 

internal calls to database and business logic takes time, which is even more critical 

for large numbers of records and might lead to timeout errors on the harvester side. 

OAI allows for a technique called batch harvesting, where the harvester only asks for 

one subset of records at a time, specified by the content identifiers. 

The repository can enable batch harvesting by sending only a limited number 

of content identifiers (e.g. 500) during the first request, plus a so-called 

“resumption token”. The harvester will transmit the resumption token in the 

next request, allowing the repository to process the next batch and to generate 

a new resumption token 14. The format of this token is up to the repository, 

it can be anything that helps to identify the next batch, like an offset index, a 

session identifier etc. 

mapping tool 

In DYNAMO, we optimised time-consuming database operations by retrieving 

results for all our project objects at once with a single combined query. At runtime 

these results are stored in a Java vector object 15 , where they stay available in 

memory during all cycles of batch harvesting DYNAMO projects. 

dynamic mapping tool 

In response to DYNAMO’s major vocabulary challenge outlined above, we have 

conceived the vocabulary connection as a dynamic mapping process. To this end, 

we have created a tool that offers architects and domain experts the ability to 

modify and update the DYNAMO target without any programming efforts. With 

this tool they can provide the framework at all times with the necessary information 

about contextual correspondence between DYNAMO’s vocabulary and the MACE 

classification vocabulary, thus offering accessible management of a dynamic mapping 

process. 

To effectively implement this tool for DYNAMO, we have chosen to build it on top 

of DYNAMO’s PHP-function layer so as to reduce the programming effort (Fig. 5). 

The re-use of DYNAMO tools and functionality allowed for swift creation of a web 

interface making DYNAMO’s entire classification structure available for interaction. 

Making the MACE vocabulary available within this local web context was another 

challenge as the MACE Application Profile had not yet been given a standard information 

model to define the classification context. 

Therefore we created our own model and instantiated it in a local database. The 

MACE classification was then manually edited and read into this database, allowing 

the mapping tool to interact with the MACE classification structure as well. At 


69

this point the tool was enabled to provide the user with an interactive view on both 

the DYNAMO and MACE structure, and to establish links between their respective 

vocabulary values. The links made are then stored in our local MACE classification 

database. 

Fig. 5: Mapping DYNAMO’s metadata onto the MACE Application Profile (p. 328). 

oai-pmh filter 

In order to make this mapping available in the Java OAI-PMH framework we had to 

create a Java object that is capable of providing the necessary information about 

connections between both vocabularies at harvesting time. In OAI-PMH, repository 

metadata come in through a class called Catalog. After the repository metadata are 

retrieved from the repository database they are sent for translation through a Crosswalk 

class. It is in the Crosswalk that the filter has to provide its mapping information 

about the repository classification values while translating the metadata from the 

Catalog (Fig. 6). 

When given a DYNAMO value, our filter returns all MACE classification vocabulary 

values, which were linked in the mapping tool based on the information in our local 

mapping database. 

Fig. 6: OAI-PMH and DYNAMO mapping tool technical architecture (p. 328). 

lessons learned and future work 

Repositories with a historically grown data structure similar to WINDS can 

also profit from using our OAI-PMH adapter implementation. The necessary 

mapping from the adapter to the repository will have to be done for each 

repository. The efforts for this depend on the structure of the repository and 

can range from one or two days to a few weeks. 

The current approach of building the mapping tool on top of DYNAMO will hardly 

benefit other repositories. However, in the light of the upcoming centralisation of 

the MACE Application Profile (including the MACE classification vocabulary) we have 

plans to generalise the implementation of the mapping tool to an extent that it can 

update automatically when a new version of the Application Profile is released. 

Also, a PHP implementation for the mapping tool is not very usable for future partners, 

therefore, we consider developing a second version of the mapping tool which 

is written in Java, and able to derive the structure of any repository vocabulary from 

an XML document describing the vocabulary. This filter could be equipped to provide 

more general mapping information as well, even when dealing with more general 

Content and Domain metadata, providing flexible mapping for most LOM fields and 

significantly reducing programming efforts. 


3 

notes 

1 http://www.mace-project.eu. 

2 http://www.ariadne-eu.org. 

3 http://dynamo.asro.kuleuven.be. 

4 http://winds.fit.fraunhofer.de. 

5 http://www.irbdirekt.de/iconda. 

6 http://mace-project.eu/xsd/mace_v2.xsd. 

7 http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html. 

8 http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/guidelines-repository.htm. 

9 http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/tools/tools.php. 

10 http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html. 

11 A servlet and a ASP.NET implementation of the OAI-PMH 2.0 protocol can be found here: 

http://uilib-oai.sourceforge.net. 

12 http://developer.apple.com/tools/webobjects. 

13 Our OAI-PMH implementation is available for free download at http://www.mace-project.eu/ 

images/downloads/windsoai.zip. 

14 http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/english/page4.htm#section9. 

15 http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api. 

references 

Apelt, S., C. R. Prause, T. Nagel, M. Wolpers, M. Eisenhauer, P. N. J. Delgado, and P. Bellini, 

eds. 2007. Enriching E-Learning Contents for Architecture in the MACE Project – Activities 

and Outlook. In Proceedings of the Variazioni Workshop Held in Conjunction with the AXMEDIS 

Conference 2007, 94-97. Florence: University Press. 

Dobratz, S., and B. Matthaei. 2003. Open Archives Activities and Experiences in Europe: 

An Overview by the Open Archives Forum. D-Lib Magazine 9. 

Heylighen, A., and H. Neuckermans. 2000. DYNAMO: Dynamic Architectural Memory On-line. 

Educational Technology and Society 3, no. 2: 86-95. 

Heylighen, A., H. Neuckermans, and M. Casaer. ICT revisited – from information 

& communication to integrating curricula?. ITcon 9: 101-120. 

Heylighen, A., H. Neuckermans., M. Casaer, and G. Dewulf. 2007. Building Memories. 

Building, Research and Information 35 (January-February): 90-100. 

IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata 1484.12.1. 2002. 

http://ltsc.ieee.org/news/20021210-LOM.html. 

Kravcik, M., M. Specht, R. Oppermann, P. D. Bra, and W. Nejdl. 2004. Evaluation of WINDS 

Authoring Environment. In Proceedings of Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems, 

166-175. Springer. 

Prause, C.R., S. Ternier, T. de Jong, S. Apelt, M. Scholten, M. Wolpers, M. Eisenhauer, B. 

Vandeputte, M. Specht, and E. Duval. 2007. Unifying Learning Object Repositories in MACE. 

In Proceedings of the 1th International Workshop on Learning Object Discovery and Exchange – 

LODE (Sissi, Lassithi – Crete Greece, 18 September, 2007), eds. Massart, D., J.N. Colin, and F. Van 

Assche. 2007. http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-311. 

Sompel, H. V. D., M. Nelson, C. Lagoze, and S. Warner. 2004. Resource Harvesting within the OAI- 

PMH Framework. D-Lib Magazine 10. 

Specht, M., M. Kravcik, R. Klemke, L. Pesin, and R. Hüttenhain. 2002. Adaptive Learning Environment 

for Teaching and Learning in WINDS. In Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based 

Systems. Proceedings of the 2th International Conference, AH 2002 (Malaga, Spain, May 29-31, 

2002), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2347 (2002), 572-575. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. 

Stefaner, M., E. Dalla Vecchia, M. Condotta, M. Wolpers, M. Specht, S. Apelt, and E. Duval. 2007. 

MACE – Enriching Architectural Learning Objects for Experience Multiplication. In Proceedins 

of the 2th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, ECTEL (Crete, Greece, 

17-20 September, 2007), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4753 (2007), 322-336. Berlin/Heidelberg: 

Springer. 


71

› interaction design 

› mace 

› metadata 

72 

4 

everyville installation: 

mace at La Biennale 

of Architecture 

› tangible 

interface 

› user experience 

The MACE installation at La Biennale exhibition visualises 

the fabric connecting people, knowledge and artefacts 

in architecture. The installation transports the idea of a 

transformable, ever-changing interconnected mesh of contents, 

projects, people and media in an aesthetically pleasing way.

interaction design lab, 

university of applied sciences potsdam 


http://interface.fh-potsdam.de 

The installation team consist of researchers at the 

Interaction Design Lab and Interface Design students 

at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. 

Larissa Pschetz (FHP) 

Moritz Stefaner (FHP) 

Till Nagel (Project leader – FHP) 

Steffen Fiedler (FHP) 

Boris Müller (Supervision – FHP) 

Tina Deiml-Seibt (FHP) 

Stephan Thiel (FHP) 

Tomek Ness (FHP) 

Jonas Loh (FHP) 

Nick Rübesamen (Werk5) 

Alexander Warth (FHP) 

Nico Kaeding (FHP) 

73

introduction 

The MACE installation 1 at La Biennale exhibition visualises the fabric connecting 

people, knowledge and artefacts in architecture. 

The installation transports the idea of a transformable, ever-changing 

interconnected mesh of contents, projects, people and media in an aesthetically 

pleasing way. 

metadata 

5 11 16 26 25 

30 37 

The installation provides background information for the entries of the Everyville 2 

student competition. Selected entries are presented with media, descriptions, and 

metadata. Furthermore, the installation incorporates inspirational projects named 

by the winning groups; these are connected to MACE content and metadata. The 

installation now acts as amplifier, as the user can not only explore a project and 

its media in detail, but reveal the relations to other projects. 

The evolving structure allows the user to understand the connections between 

different resources, and recognize where clusters of interest emerge. 

The visualization aims to make spectators aware of how metadata can be 

utilised to interconnect architectural resources, and how the overall understanding 

benefits from these connections. 

tangible interface 

user experience 

application profile 

1 11 16 26 25 

installation 

Setup 

The interactive installation consists of an interactive table, three wall projections and 

multiple physical cards. 

On the high-definition interactive table surface a detailed portion of the mesh is 

presented and directly manipulable. The cards act as tangible interface to interact 

with the digital structure on screen. They can be placed, moved and rotated on the 

table, resulting in visible reactions, both on the table screen and the central wall 

projection. In this main projection area, the information recently viewed is displayed 

in an appealing and detailed manner, to attract visitors to come closer and try it out 

by themselves (Fig. 1). 

The installation will be exhibited at the Architecture Biennale 2008 in the Artiglierie. 

Here, the table and the central projection are accompanied by two lateral wall 

projections showing images of the Everyville competition entries in a slow sequential 

way, for users to view all selected projects in detail. 

Data and Metadata 

Each project has basic data like its title, its authors, or its location, and multiple 

media files (e.g. renderings, drawings, or sketches). Each Everyville item includes two 

images and descriptive texts submitted in the competition, which explain the idea 

and concept of its entry. 


Furthermore, all projects are classified by terms from the MACE Application 

Profile, an architectural and engineering taxonomy. 

taxonomy 

17 11 16 26 25 

4 

In addition, the students could choose freeform terms if more specific and appropriate 

to their work. These classification and conceptual metadata form the basis for 

the interconnections, and serve to create visual links between projects on the table. 

Interaction 

All the above-mentioned data will be displayed when a card is placed on the interactive 

table surface. Thus, the physical cards act as interaction starting points. 

Once a card is placed on the table, content, media, and metadata emerge 

on the table surface, floating around the physical card (Fig. 2 and 3). Related 

projects slowly arise, and connect to the project on the card. 

visual browsing 

17 11 

6 26 25 

Now the user can investigate the project by simply viewing all its surrounding material. 

The user can further explore the media by rotating the card to the thumbnail he 

is interested in. This media is enlarged and is shown on the central projection on the 

wall. 

When a second card is placed over the table, its content and metadata emerge on 

the table’s surface and connect to the content that is already displayed on the table 

forming a network (Fig. 4 and 5). This interaction leads to a playful experience of 

discovering projects by means of metadata. 

Each newly placed card and every interaction results in a new structure determined 

by several factors, such as how many cards are placed on the table, 

where they are positioned, how many images are shown, and mainly what 

kind of connections are shown simultaneously. 

The distance of cards has a big impact on the overall layout, for example intermediate 

projects can be explored by moving the related project card closer. 

implementation 

Cards and reactivision 

Each card represents either one of the ten Everyville winner projects, or an inspirational 

source, and each one has been printed many times. The cards have been 

distributed during the event, for visitors to view, collect and use in the installation. 

The front side of each card shows a picture of its respective project, its title, author 

names, and a URL to the MACE website, where further information on the project 

can be found. Thus, a visitor collecting the cards acquires not only Biennale memorabilia, 

but is also able to review the projects and relations at home, by visiting the 

MACE portal. 

everyville installation 

75

Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 

Fig. 4. Fig. 5. 


Fig. 1: Setup of the installation at the Artiglierie location. 

Fig. 6: Mock-up of the table visualization screen. 

4 everyville installation 

77

On the backside of each card a “fiducial” mark is printed which reflects an 

infrared light and is recognized by a high definition camera inside the table. 

Through these marks it is possible to recognize which card is placed on the 

table, its position and orientation. 

interface 

17 11 16 26 25 

interactive data explo 

ration and discovery 

1 11 16 26 25 

The complete tracking procedure of the cards on the table surface is realized by using 

the reacTIVision framework 3 , which has been released as an open source project 

by the Music Technology Group of the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain) 

in 2005. Its main use is to provide the core functionality for object based, collaborative 

audio interfaces. The organic appearance of the barcode allows a very precise 

recognition of position and rotation changes in comparison to common one-dimensional 

barcode or tracking systems. 

visualization 

At the heart of the installation is the table projection, which is an exclusively 

developed Processing 4 based Java application. Processing is a simplified programming 

toolkit that focuses on a sketch-workflow and allows artists and designers to 

prototype and to create visual orientated applications in a short amount of time. The 

Processing community has contributed software parts that have been implemented 

into the system, from managing the communication with the wall projections, to 

hardware-accelerated drawing by dint of OpenGL. 

The application attached to the tracking framework reacts to user interactions via 

the OSC 5 protocol and provides an intuitive way of exploring the projects of the 

cards and their metadata related neighbours that are displayed in the visualisation. 

User input, like positioning and rotating cards on the surface, is processed and translated 

into a visual representation of the links created by the MACE database. 

These abstract associations are displayed as a bundle of several spline 

curves, which pulsate with slow animations and by the use of typographic 

elements hint to the content (Fig. 6). 

interaction design 

17 11 16 26 25 

Complex card layout situations on the table and the amount of resulting virtual, 

descriptive content produce a mesh of intersecting curves. To improve the usability 

characteristics of the visualisation, one of the two crossing splines descents into the 

background while the other stays at the top. 

Each card on the table is surrounded by a particle system represented by a swarm 

of graphical elements floating around it. If the distance between two cards is low 

enough the particles jump from system A to system B and vi ce 

versa. The dynamic 

of the aura is related to the intensity that users’ interactions generates. Cards that 

haven’t been moved for a while have a much weaker particle system than cards that 

are currently in use. 

conclusion 

Our goal was not only to provide a unique, playful interactive experience, but also 

to broach the role of interaction with networked information in architecture and to 

promote a participatory culture of dialogue and knowledge sharing. 


The ad hoc community of visitors leaves their temporary mark as they scale, 

twist and warp its structure. The result is a virtual sculpture of data as material, 

and metadata as fabric, crafted by information architects and interaction 

designers, yet shaped by the general public. 

4 

In the future the installation can be exhibited at other venues and also be adapted to 

work with other architectural content. 

notes 

1 The MACE project (Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe) is a pan-European initiative 

to interconnect and enrich architectural contents across countries, websites and databases. 

2 http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/everyville. 

3 http://reactable.iua.upf.edu. 

4 http://processing.org. 

5 http://opensoundcontrol.org. 


Many people and institutions have been involved in the preparation of this installation. 

This project would not have been possible without the tremendous work of Furio Barzon 

and Matteo Zambelli, communicating with La Biennale, and all their professional and organizational 

support. We also would like to thank Elisa Dalla Vecchia and Massimiliano Condotta 

for contributing their expertise to creating a meaningful and understandable network of architectural 

contents, and for their efforts in classifying the material. Furthermore, we would like to 

thank all MACE partners for their support and ideas. Last but not least, we would like to thank 

La Biennale di Venezia, and all students who participated in the Everyville competition. 

This project of the Interaction Design Lab, University of Applied Sciences Potsdam was co-funded 

by MACE. The table, hardware and equipment were kindly supported by Werk5 Mangold Helmer 

GmbH. 

everyville installation 

79


5 

e-learning 

Education: 

Teaching Architecture 

in the Digital Age 

To a larger and larger extent learning objects become available via 

electronic means, in regular teaching environments as well as in learning 

modes, even and after graduation. Knowledge is often out of date in only 

five years and grows so fast that regular teaching in schools cannot cope 

with this knowledge boom in a comprehensive way. Therefore academic 

teaching evolves into teaching of principles, methods and attitudes, into 

a state of mind allowing lifelong learning (lll). Universities, practices and 

industry all produce subjects for lll. They are disseminated via conferences, 

short courses and more and more via e-learning formulas, as has been the 

case in a lot of universities for many years. 

Today materials for e-learning - called learning objects - are prepared 

by specialists, somewhere on earth, disseminated via a means of electronic 

communication and shared amongst distant users. E-repositories play a role 

of growing importance in this context and this session of the conference 

focuses on the role of e-repositories in lll in architecture. 

This book offers the opportunity to discuss experiences and research 

many topics including the following: 

› Teaching and learning architecture using e-learning tools 

and/or digital resources 

› Teaching and learning attitudes triggered by digital environments 

› E-repositories for e-learning and life long learning purposes: 

how to structure their contents 

› Tools for navigating e-repositories 

› Tools for e-learning purposes 

› User cases within the e-learning architectural environment 

textdidattica 

81

› facoltà Quaroni 

› information technology 

› it revolution in architecture 

82 

5 

textidattica: 

Saggio Teaches Information 

Technology in Latin 

› università 

La Sapienza 

› web 

The didactic position held by Antonino Saggio at La Sapienza, 

Rome, addresses a combination of theoretical and practical 

features. The theoretical features are slanted toward the 

relationships that exist between IT and architecture during 

this historical moment. From a theoretical point of view 

students are taught about specific information environments 

(from raster software to advanced 3D software). From a 

pragmatic point of view students are driven, by means 

of tutorials and attending the laboratory, toward the 

experimentation of different information environments 

and the theoretical and methodological understanding of the 

diverse operative possibilities. The learning path gradually 

develops through a series of steps. Each step is characterised 

by a specific theoretical and pragmatic environment and by a 

specific assignment to work out. All the assignments from the 

first to the last are steered by the same topic of research, which 

during the last few years is defined by the title: “Modernity, 

Crisis, and Information Technology”, whose features are 

gradually introduced to students starting from the initial 

introduction of the course.

antonino saggio 

University of Rome La Sapienza 

Rome, Italy 

http://www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio 

Antonino Saggio is founder and editor of the series 

of books entitled “IT Revolution In Architecture” 

and author of several books on architecture theory 

and criticism. His editorial activity includes the 

co-foundation of the magazine “Il Progetto” and the 

direction of the section “The Architects”. He holds 

a professional degree in Architecture (1979) and a 

diploma of Planning from the University of Rome La 

Sapienza, a Master of Science from Carnegie-Mellon 

and a PhD from the Italian Ministry of research. He 

has taught in several universities in Europe, Africa, 

the United States and Taiwan. 

83

information technology 


1 2 9 7 25 

information architect. 

17 

Obviously it’s not true! I don’t teach IT in Latin. The title of this essay only serves to 

tell you that this way of teaching is only viable for those capable of mixing the fields 

of dynamic architectural design, theory and history of architecture, and for those 

who have a twenty-five year experience of teaching Information Technology. It’s a 

combination that creates a special menu. Since the following text is long and dense, 

it’s important for you to start with some clear ideas. 

I assume that readers want to know how my teaching activity works in relation to 

Information Technology and thus I would like to proceed by telling you about some 

specific didactic experiences and then soon after pinpoint some theoretical features. 

As an example we can use a case study from the course I held in 2003, the title of the 

course: “Texpo. Mostra virtuale sul Tevere” (Texpo. Virtual Exhibition on the Tiber). 

The course takes place in La Sapienza, Rome, within the five years of the UE 

degree. It is not a compulsory course in the curriculum. In 2003 about eighty 

students completed the course. The course is split into eight sections. Each 

section treats a different topic but they all share the same structure and 

philosophy. Ingredients may change, but each section has a recursive frame. 

digital design 

19 

In order to simplify, I can say that each section has four “cylinders”, working together 

simultaneously. The first one (I) is simply a theoretical and cognitive introduction. 

Here we select a topic that can assume a valuable meaning in contemporary 

architectural research devoted to Information Technology. This topic is explored 

with a number of architectural examples, and also with references to fine arts and 

sociology. The second cylinder (II) is about a technological leap that the students 

are asked to tackle. For some students this leap is easy “like jumping beyond a 

puddle”, for some others it’s “an epochal modification of my being” (I’m quoting from 

memory). The third cylinder (III) contains one or more tutorials to assist students 

from a technical but also psychological point of view during their leap. The fourth 

one (IV) gives the classroom some theoretical concepts, bibliography and links. It 

also provides students with a partially self-sufficient mobile process of studying. 

So far so good, but now you may ask: we have seen the different elements, but how 

do these four cylinders pragmatically work and what are the main topics? 

Let’s see the first section in action. It focuses on the reason we call this contemporary 

architectural period the “Information Revolution in Architecture”. 

The title of this section is “The impact of informatics on cities and contemporary 

architectural research | The World Wide Web” and it deals with the 

fundamental role of Information in the present-day society. 

To teach this section we need at least six lessons of five hours each. Their titles are: 

1. The Web; 2. Information; 3. Mental panorama; 4. Marsupial Communication; 5. 

The long crisis of the Nineteenth Century; 6. The Catalyst. Throughout these lessons, 

which constitute Section 1.Theoretical and cognitive introduction, I convey the 

knowledge that is also contained in the first three chapters of my book “Introduction 

to Information Revolution in Architecture” (Carocci, 2007). 

As you may imagine, this is not the right moment to go into detail about these 

particular aspects. 


5 

Let’s now analyze the second cylinder (II.Technological leap). Students can enrol for 

the course only via e-mail. Just this simple requirement represents for some students 

a huge barrier, yet for others it is a real leap forward, a revolution. Trust me, in 2008 

some students still don’t use e-mails, even during their fifth year. 

In 1999 almost all the students weren’t used to writing e-mails and in 2003 

more than half of the enrolled students didn’t have an e-mail account. 

After this “transformation” of the relationship between teacher and student 

(I always answer e-mails), we usually produce a public mailing list so I can 

send students letters and explanations. 

To better understand the importance of this section you need to understand how the 

forth cylinder works (IV. Mobile studying). The Web is not replacing the traditional 

way of teaching, but it is intensifying it. The aforementioned lectures, even though 

they require a physical involvement between students and teacher (students need a 

face to face learning situation), are also available on the Internet. I put the lessons, 

links and images on the Internet (and after 2005 also lectures recorded during lessons). 

This has several consequences. Naturally the course can also have some virtual 

students, not enrolled and maybe for instance living in Brazil, however the main 

upshot for enrolled students is that they can “go back” to review lessons or to go into 

deeper detail, but above all to intervene: students can add their comments, bibliography 

and other information in a specific part of the web-page called “elaborations”. I 

then filter these elaborations and when they are of general interest publish them online, 

or I may choose to only send them as private e-mails responding to individuals. 

To better understand this next aspect, you need to pay attention to the third cylinder 

(III. Psychological tutorials) and the information and technological knowledge to be 

learned concretely. During the first section students learn how to write e-mails and 

manage a personal web page! This structure is the key-point that allows the course 

to proceed in the desired way. It also enables me to create links from the official 

website of the course to contents in some of the students’ web pages. 

At this point you can understand that this introductory part, as with all the 

other following ones, provides a set of mechanisms, motivations and theoretical 

and practical reasons aimed at the involvement of the students. 

I think the metaphor of the four cylinders enables you to get the point. Students are 

enthused by a machine that works on four different levels at the same time. In some 

cases, they can see its beauty, speed, power and pressure. In the great majority 

of the cases, students feel that they need to do something otherwise they will be 

overwhelmed. 

Later on, students refer to this phase as a moment of great crisis to be tackled 

head-on. Someone used the term “electroshock” or the sentence “breaking my mind 

to put new things into it”. These are surely strong images but really effective, from 

the students’ point of view. Of course some do leave the course, but the majority of 

them make the leap to the second section. 

As you may rightly imagine, within this space I cannot give details about all the 

materials, topics and structures of the second, third, forth, fifth, sixth, and seventh 

sections of the course. However, I can give you a vision about the main topics, which 

are mainly related to theoretical and practical aspects on CAAD tools. 

textdidattica 

85

The main themes: 

1. The impact of informatics on cities and contemporary architectural research | 

The World Wide Web (aforementioned in this essay). 

2. Pixel’s World, materiality and immateriality | Hardware and screens, digitalisation 

of images. The world of raster. 

3. Stratification and Superposition | The world of Vectors. Geometries and layers. 

4. Masses, collisions, and trajectories | The creation of three-dimensionality. Extrusions, 

Rotations, Boolean operations. 

5. Strategic projects, data driven | Organization of Information. Data-bases. 

6. Projects of modification | Dynamic interconnections. Hierarchical structures and 

intelligent models. 

7. New frontiers for research | Morphing, modifiers, poly-surfaces, attractors. 

Let’s look synthetically at some of these topics. Here’s what the second section 

involves: The students learn the role of the computer screen and bi-dimensionality 

in contemporary architectural culture, they see case studies of surface-architecture, 

which they can compare. Contemporaneously they learn how to work “with bits” by 

using different rastering software. They work out the key assignment of this phase: 

the self-portrait. This is an important and meaningful product; the self-portrait has 

been the subject of various exhibitions and publications. 

During the third section students learn how to work “vectorially” and understand 

the importance of research in contemporary design dealing with concepts 

such as layers, translations, movements, duplications and oscillations. 

With regards to the theoretical background, I usually talk a lot about Peter Eisenman. 

Students learn (some more easily than others) vectorial design with some 

Autocad tutorials (I personally haven’t ever used Autocad, but I understand that 

students need to know it for their professional future). 

The third cylinder in this phase requires a small project, usually preparatory to the 

main one. In 2003 the exercise was described as follows: 

“In a perfect semi-cube, 16.60 meters high and 33.20 meters large, work in the following 

way: 

› Define a keyword, a verb, or an action; 

› Think about the meaning of this action in the space; 

› Produce plans and sections in a 2D CAAD drawing; 

› Then produce a 3D CAAD; 

› Finally, a rendering. 

Present the assignment on your web site and send me its link. Deadline: 05 July, 2003”. 

After the deadline, I collect and publish the assignments (including the self-portraits) 

in “index pages” where I show a key picture for each one, linking it to the students’ 

personal web site. These index pages not only enable to share all the works among 

all the students, but also prompt the start of the negotiation for the creation of the 

working groups for the final part of the course. 

The other three sections, which I will not discuss in detail here, regard topics related 

to the progression that spans from three-dimensional awareness to the role of 

dynamic information and models (database, GIS, worksheet), from hierarchical 

structures to the presence of interactivity and generators of architectural forms. As 

you can probably imagine, I would like to delve deeper into these subjects, but I will 

now introduce you to the final part of the course. 


final work 

During the sixth section, students are introduced to the final work of the 

course. Each year I try to find a theme capable of gathering the widest interests 

of the students. It has to be stimulating (or better still exciting for the 

students), it has to produce a specific contribution to the cultural debate on 

Information Technology for architecture, and it has to present some possible 

operative repercussions for the students, for the Faculty and so on. 

5 

The theme of 2003 was focused on the creation of a big virtual exhibition on the river 

Tiber. The concept came from a visit I had to the Swiss Expo 2002, that was a crucial 

point for research in the field of Information Technology applied on architecture (I 

am referring especially to Ada Pavillion Blur, designed by Diller & Scofidio). So my 

idea was: “Good, since I don’t have a billion Swiss francs as Swiss Expo does, why 

can’t we have a similar Expo, but virtually?” The idea was also happily accepted by 

my collaborators, who were Francesco De Luca (curator of tutorials) and Italia Rossi 

(project manager of the final work in that year). To proceed we needed a site and an 

urban plan for the site. At that point it was really difficult to produce significant urban 

planning within the course, so I decided to work again on the site that several years 

before was studied in detail by Ilaria Benassi for her excellent graduation thesis. We 

also had a physical model of the urban site, which was clear and effective in showing 

the guidelines of the project. 

The site was the Ostiense, a classic post-industrial area in Rome. It was perfectly 

suitable for our Expo, because the Ostiense was undergoing a deep transformation 

from an industrial setting that characterised the last decades, to a new vital and 

mixed-use modern city of information. The site of the project was located along the 

Tiber River spanning from the landmark of the Gasometer to the Marconi Bridge. 

Ilaria Benassi’s master plan redesigned both banks of the river with some new platforms 

(each one with its own shape) hosting different functions and activities. Taking 

into account this master plan, we defined twenty-five specific areas, with particular 

urban designs and vocations. One area was around the Gasometer, another one 

connected the two opposite banks of Tiber with a new bridge, and another area was 

situated along a part of the riverbank and so on. We also defined some specifications 

concerning layouts and volumes, these rules stemmed directly from the master plan. 

Each group of students had to negotiate with the brief and identify the area best 

suited for their shared project. Then we started the design process. 

Here is the description of the project as it appeared in the official document 

of the course: “texpo proposes a large virtual exhibition on the banks of 

the Tiber River, in the Ostiense area, between the Gasometer to the north 

and Marconi Bridge to the south. 

The idea of TEXPO came about as a reply to the Swiss Expo 2002 and it is based on 

this assumption: if the Swiss exhibition represented a moment of high acceleration 

in these last years in the relation between information and architectural research, is 

it possible that also Italy can give a contribution toward this direction? One possible 

solution arrives in this work. 

textdidattica 

87

texpo is a virtual project only as far as its cost, that being zero, nevertheless 

the buildings are realistic and could be viable as real projects. 

TEXPO is organised around twenty-five projects/installations. Each installation is 

located in a specific location within the framework of a harmonic master plan that 

redesigns the banks of the Tiber as a series of emerging thresholds. Each threshold 

defines areas with various shapes and vocations. Each project/installation is characterised 

by a set of features, which can be outlined as follows. 

A. First, each project is based on a “theoretical and technological” issue, which is 

relevant for today’s information research (sensors, quanta, topological structures, 

innovative materials, projective or physical interactivity, etc.). 

B. Each issue generates a “story”, i.e. it finds a concrete application by means of an 

effort that links research to reality. Often functional facilities are designed in order to 

support the exhibition (a projection tower, a thermal facility, a baby-sitting area, a 

changeable skate track, metro stations, an arena for sport and shows, restaurants, 

cocktail bar, shopping areas, etc.) while sometimes they are just installations (event 

space on the water, moments of meditation and therapy, changeable configurations 

of landscape, etc.). 

C. Each project/installation is within an area of the TEXPO. Hence there is a specific 

design of the space, its surroundings and links with both the adjacent interventions 

and the project at a large scale. 

D. People can enter the Exhibition through the Web, where they can see the different 

projects. They can browse the projects by means of different ways: from textual 

indexes to geographic references. 

The work that led to such results (there were eighty students organised into twentyfive 

groups!) was developed between the first week of June (when lessons had finished) 

and the next-to-last week of July, in several personal meetings with students. 

Final works are presented during an oral examination and in occasion of a 

Public Symposium where each group illustrates to students of previous years 

and to a jury of national and, sometimes international, experts their projects. 

These Symposiums are relevant cultural events, because students not only 

present their projects but also the IT background that gave rise to their project. 

A lot of my friends have been coming to these symposiums for years and they 

consider the event an important occasion to get up to date with new trends and to 

open up their research toward new possibilities. Over the years I have invited about 

40 guests as jurors. 

Quite obviously all the projects are presented “directly” on the Internet. They are always 

available and indexed in a sort of book, which is all organised by the students. 

The book is the web site that summaries the works done by students and lets visitors 

access each presentation. Visitors can browse every single project on the Internet 

and evaluate the students’ results that are often brilliant with regards to research, 

use of technologies and design. 


exhibitions 

Thanks to Texpo, my course was invited to participate in a wonderful exhibition 

of architecture held in December 2003. The name of the exhibition was 

“Spot on Schools”. From the point of view of the curators it presented the 

best practices in the international scenario of digital research in architecture. 

collaborative work 

space 

19 

5 

On that occasion we set out an important installation to show and made accessible 

what we did during the course. My idea was to make a traditional installation, using 

only physical supports and avoiding any digital tools, even though the course was on 

Information Technology. 

I thought this was the best way to let the visitor feel the complexity and richness of 

the work. 

Here follows the description of the exhibition: “BEYOND MEDIA/OLTRE I MEDIA 

2003 edition, organised by Marco Brizzi and the University of Florence, is hosting for 

the very first time a significant exhibition devoted to some of the most distinguished 

schools of architecture in the world. The exhibit SPOT ON SCHOOLS – edited by 

Paola Giaconia – offers an initial survey of courses that have explored the topic of 

communication in architecture and, in particular the influence that the new media 

play in this field. 

Within this context, course Caad 2003 run by Prof. Antonino Saggio (Faculty of 

Architecture “L. Quaroni”, La Sapienza, Rome) presented “Texpo 2003”, a virtual exhibition 

on the banks of the Tiber River at Ostiense in Rome. With a detailed master 

plan and twenty-five projects/installations that investigate the relations between 

digital technologies and architectural projects. 

Texpo that was presented at the festival Beyond Media (“Intimacy” was the 

main topic and name for that edition) presents a collaborative installation, 

just as the course at the university was collaborative. 

In the corridor along the small balcony on the first floor at Leopolda Station in Florence 

were four big waving panels showing images of the Expo site on the Tiber, summarising 

purposes and giving web addresses where one could see the projects. In the 

middle of the installation, facing a void of three stories, there was a web of coloured 

fabric designed by Italia Rossi, with Alessandra Proietti and Claudio Ampolo. 

Pinned on the fabric was a set of postcards that depicted the projects and that were 

actually sent out by the students. On the front they had an image of one of the 25 

projects and on the back there were the students and designers’ web addresses. 

Besides these, the visitor could also find postcards connected with the experiences 

of the students who attended the courses between 1999 and 2002. These postcards 

featured digital self-portraits, substances, the word-project, “L” shape houses, semicubes 

and much more. 

From an organisational point of view, the installation had two parts: one being a 

specialised task force that conceived and designed the collaborative exhibition, the 

other being all the students that were requested to participate by sending through 

snail-mail postcards of their projects, and thus taking part and contributing to the 

installation. 

textdidattica 

89

other experiences 

I have used the 2003 course as an example for this essay. However, we held a 

2004 course following a similar approach as for the methodology, but dealing 

with a completely different topic. The topic was “Terragni futuro (Future Terragni)”, 

because we wanted to remember Terragni’s centenary and because 

we were able to count on the support of the National Committee for the 

Celebration, of which I was part. 

The course was organised around the same eight cycles of lessons, although in 

parallel I gave several long lessons on Terragni’s architecture. Each lesson was 

based upon several keywords, which enabled students to look at his oeuvre under a 

diagonal and problematic light. Following the titles: 1.Word, Text, Hypertext, 2.River, 

Stream, Life, 3.Saints, Fathers, Brothers and Sisters, 4.The motif of the three, 5.The 

history of the loom. An ongoing liberation, 6.The tower. A masterpiece: the kindergarten, 

7.All about Terragni. 

Each final assignment investigated Terragni’s architecture, deepening one specific 

project by the architect from Como, in a very critical way, while at the same time 

transposing the work from the past into the future and affronting the work with the 

reality of Information Technology research issues, such as interactivity, morphing, 

critical animations, hierarchical structures and databases. What comes from these 

studies is a spatial action whose main purpose is to give meaning to the whole operation: 

today’s young people are able to study architecture by any famous architect, 

they can inquire into its historic relevance, and at the same time examine it through 

the lenses of the conceptual frame that the new technologies suggest. When this 

recipe works, we face a synthesis as simple as it is emotionally and intellectually 

unpredictable. 

The work with Terragni’s architecture was also showed in Florence in 2005 by 

means of an exhibition, which involved all the students. It was described as: 

“The exhibition at the Stazione Leopolda in Florence, in part presenting again 

and in part reinventing the spaces and contents of the “Terragni Futuro” exhibition, 

which was held at La Casa dell’Architettura in Rome in order 

to celebrate Giuseppe Terragni’s centenary – Meda 1904 – Como 1943. 

A large map was hung from the balcony of the first floor of the old railway station of 

Florence. The large map summarised the general design of the exhibition, the locations 

and the 25 installations’ websites. The exhibition space was characterised by a 

board, 3 meters high and 4 meters large, and by a second ambit where the film, that 

features students’ assignments and a brief overview on Terragni, was projected on 

curtains visible from all over the station. 

The exhibition space was characterised by 30 strips of drawings hung on wires and 

several critical models by the students and teaching staff. As visitors made their way 

through these drawings and models they were directly plunged into the world of 

architecture. 


5 

the tool 

The 2005 course was dedicated to the theme “the tool” and was titled “Non 

neutral relationships among knowledge, artistic creation and tools”. Students 

who proposed the best results took part in the elaboration of proposals and 

ideas for the Zeche Zollversein (a large industrial area in Ruhr) in collaboration 

with Urban Drift, which is a cultural association with its headquarters in Berlin. 

Students’ proposals investigated new ways of using the ex industrial German facility 

by means of nine diverse designs for the exhibition spaces devised for the factory 

space. Each project searched for the knowledge of a tool rooted in the productive 

events of the large factory (a gear wheel, a conveyor belt, a drill, the railway, etc.), 

but its history was disarticulated in order to transport visitors from the traces of an 

industrial memory to the promises of the information age. 

The course was characterised by a series of ten conferences with one musician, one 

chemist, two engineers, one designer, two architects, one astronomer, two artists 

and one curator of exhibitions who spoke about their experiences starting from the 

tool, from slide-rule to notebook, things which define the job of any lecturer. 

The 2006 and 2007 courses were organised in parallel with a session of the Athens 

International Meeting devoted to the same topic: “Modernity, Crisis, Information 

Technology”. These two last courses did not offer any general topic (Texpo, Terragni 

Futuro, or the Tool), but students were set free to identify the fields, in design, architectural 

and urban design domains, where Information Technology is not a gadget 

for affluent peoples’ houses, but a field of actions and technologies capable of 

tackling, on the one hand, an objective situation of difficulty and, on the other hand, 

a research aimed at the necessity of a new aesthetics. 

The title of the course, “Modernity, Crisis, Information Technology”, echoes 

the idea according to which modernity transforms the crisis into value, a contradictory 

moral, and engenders aesthetics of rupture (Zevi, Baudrillard). 

During the final conference projects were presented in order to tackle the following 

issues: urban noise by means of protective and spatial systems; the separation 

of the two Tiber’s riverbanks with mobile devices filled with useful social events; 

the Umberto I Polyclinic’s internal and external connections, which were treated 

as a neuronal net that creeps into the hospital fabric; an active strategy for several 

socially and ecologically innovative playgrounds; finally, new possibilities for intermodal 

places nowadays debased and poorly designed. 

During the final presentations of the 2007 course devoted to the same issue, projects 

were presented on the following topics: the abandonment of San Lorenzo’s overpass 

and the proposal to modify the nearby buildings into houses for cinema lovers; new 

relationships between spaces and activities for the new faculty of via Gianturco; an 

interactive and “environmental” game capable of awakening the feeling of social cohesion 

in a reality such as Aprilia. New aesthetics can provide places with “life”, filling 

these residual locations with new spaces for living, spaces that are mutable and 

not classifiable. One project looks at the areas around Rome’s metro and transforms 

them from city wounds into areas capable of enriching urban experiences. Another 

assignment deals with the abandonment of small towns. For Cellano a proposal for 

arts and shows was chosen in order to bring life to the old place again. Finally, there 

is a study on the “Muraglioni” along the Tiber River. 

textdidattica 

91

teacher 

cognitive models 

2 2 9 7 25 

education theory 

2 

The effort of each assignment, in both 2006 and 2007, was to detect an objective 

and evident situation of crisis and tackle the situation coupling the right designing 

action with an innovative and creative use of Information Technology. A search for 

technologies effective for each project that support the design. 

summarising concepts 

Obviously it is not easy to comment on this work, above all for the author. Some 

consequences should be already evident to the reader, but as a type of summary I 

will briefly elaborate a few concepts. 

Density and pressure. Electroshock 

When I teach it’s fundamental for me to try to create the right intellectual pressure 

toward students. Only this charge will autonomously trigger them to challenge 

themselves and, finally, to learn. 

Thus it is possible to learn because there is a deep need, a real necessity. 

Learning how to use the web (or create a 3D model or use morphing) is not an 

exercise, it’s a necessity – and that’s the point! A fundamental base of this pressure 

is provided by means of my lessons. There is no technology capable of substituting a 

professors’ word or gesture. 

Collaboration and flat-fat net 

Working in a public fashion (from web pages to Web 2.0, blog and You Tube) is 

aimed at creating nets and links among people and at obtaining collaborative working 

environments. 

The exchanges of complex operations and common actions, as occurs in our exhibitions 

and presentations, would have otherwise been impossible. At the same time 

e-mails trigger a personal and direct relationship between professors and students. 

Students are not used to this, but they really appreciate it: “Teacher replies to 

e-mails!” 

Four Cylinders. An engine in action 

A key feature of the work developed during this course is that part of the actual 

architectural research is considered in relation with the IT evolution. This happens 

at different levels. From those more superficial, which are related to “the vision of 

the world”, to those more structural, which are focused on the concepts of “model”, 

“mental landscape”, and “reification”. All these issues have been set out in the aforementioned 

paragraphs. 

Hypothesis – Verification 

The approach of each student is deductive. Students hypothesize a field of possible 

designing actions and verify them by means of a set of information and discussions 

with my assistant and me. If their hypothesis is interesting and viable we go on, otherwise 

we start again. Obviously I continuously propose and suggest creative cues 

for the evolution these projects. I play four or five different roles at the same time. 

Self-learning and technical lessons 

The base of the work of teaching in the field of information technology is founded on 

self-learning. This is true in every field, also in theoretical ones, and this is even more 

true when you are learning how to use software. Therefore, a really important task 

as far as teaching is concerned is to provide the major motivations (pressure has to 

push the student to understand the personal necessity of learning) and, in the case 

of software, the general settings and main operative keys. This is done within the 


5 

framework given during my lessons and also provided by finalised tutorials that have 

been held by my assistant Francesco De Luca for many years. The tutorials have an 

instructive, but also psychological purpose, as being part of a group and having a 

guide to start a process of learning is really important. 

Black holes 

Naturally, I talk about a lot of things with my students and I often politely refer to 

things as “black holes”. If 23 years old (and sometimes older) has never heard about 

Cezanne (whom I talk about for twenty minutes during one lesson), then it’s a black 

hole. You don’t need to tell anyone you don’t know about Cezanne, but my goodness, 

with the Internet it is so easy to inform yourself. The black holes have to be 

filled – always! 

Publication, advertisement, authorship 

One of the leitmotivs of the course is the respect of the sources, at every level. 

Sources deserve the same respect and completeness whether information derives 

from a colleague or from a super cited expert. On the one hand the respect of the 

source is a symptom of professionalism, on the other it’s a solid base on which to 

construct future buildings. 

Also the ability to talk in public is particularly stimulated during the course and 

checked on at least four occasions. 

IT Revolution 

Obviously, this way of teaching the presence of informatics in the architectural domain 

is like the way the IT Revolution book series (Birkhäuser since 1999, Edilstampa 

since 2005) is outlined. There is a devaluation of the very technological, aimed at 

favouring a focus towards moments of conceptualisation and design. This approach 

comes from, on the one hand my choice, and on the other hand the situation. In fact, 

the University of La Sapienza doesn’t have any well-equipped laboratories as many 

other university do. 

Since I have taught with this approach also abroad, I can confirm that this way of 

considering the subject works very well and is appreciated even in a hyper-technological 

context, where the harvesting of ideas, conceptualization, design and further 

key aspects, promoted by this didactic, enable a collection of energies and ideas, 

which contribute to the development of the students’ and the Schools’ research. 

textdidattica 

93

› e-learning 

› indices 

› matrix of terms 

94 

6 

indexed and browsed: 

a New Didactic Approach 

Towards the Orders of Columns 

› media-database 

› orders of columns 

› visual browsing 

The “Index-Browser” is a digital tool that supports a visual 

access to a thematic collection of images in a database. 

Its strong didactic potential can be demonstrated for instance 

by its practical application in the E-Learning Project “Orders 

of Columns”. In this context the Index-Browser helps to gather, 

share, order and understand images related to the topic of the 

orders of the columns. Supported by a five parted index that 

covers five perspectives on a thematic field, the Index-Browser 

enables a novel approach to the collection of image material: 

Firstly, it makes digitally stored images visible for quick and 

direct access. Secondly, it generates unexpected connections 

between images with respect to the content through visual 

browsing. Thirdly, it offers the procedure of concept formation 

in detail, because it creates a comparison between the abstract 

meaning of a term and its visual expression. 

The Index-Browser is part of the media-database developed 

at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). The e-learning 

project “Orders of Columns” is located at the University 

of Zurich (UZh) in the Institute of Art History.

susanne schumacher 

Zurich University of the Arts 

Zurich, Switzerland 

www.zhdk.ch/pages/en/home 

Susanne Schumacher M.A. has researched, teached 

and developed for 10 years in the field of “Art History 

and Information Technologies”. Currently located 

in Zurich, Switzerland, she lectures at the Zurich 

University of the Arts and the University of Zurich 

and is completing a PhD at the ETH Zurich. 

For details and publications see: 

http://people.zhdk.ch/susanne.schumacher 

95

indices 

history of architecture 

browsing led by images 

1 17 19 21 

22 26 

index-browser – concept and idea 

The "Index-Browser" is a tool that creates an intuitive system for working with 

images in the media-database of the Zurich University of the Arts. It offers a visual 

access to the content of the image collections by means of browsing led by images. 

This novel interface is enabled by the use of specific indices; one such index is parted 

into five categories of terms, which offer a matrix of words for tagging images. In 

the context of the E-Learning Project "Orders of Columns", located at the University 

of Zurich, Institute of Art History, the Index-Browser has adapted this fundamental 

system for the topic the history of architecture. A "Column-Index" presents the 

categories "Order", "Epochs of Art History", "Elements", "Context" and "Media" with 

the relevant terms. 

This Index, like others in the media-database, is a mix between a scientific 

thesaurus and the idea of social tagging. On the one hand, it includes the 

top-down conceptualization by an expert in the field, but on the other, it 

adopts the bottom-up principle of participation by all proficient users. In this 

way attentive users can help to create a thoroughly considered index during 

the process of application. 

interface 

1 3 11 22 24 

media-database 

19 20 21 23 

metadata 

1 8 10 15 

17 19 21 

social tagging 

8 11 17 

the index 0rders of columns 

The five categories of the Index cover five important perspectives on the topic of 

the orders of columns. The first category ("Order") obviously picks up the canonical 

distinction between the five orders (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composita), 

but additionally, the principle arrangement of an order is mentioned (superimposition 

of columns, colossal order, etc.). The next category ("Epochs of Art History") 

relates the examples roughly to a specific epoch like ancient Egypt, the Gothicism 

or Neoclassicism. In contrast to this, the third category ("Elements") goes into detail, 

because the definition of the orders is strongly connected to a regulated arrangement 

of clearly defined elements. Even in ancient times a convention regulating the 

form and name of elements existed, such as capital, pedestal and plinth, which are 

listed in this row. The fourth category ("Context") tries to identify in which context 

the shown image appears. This could be an archaeological find, a treatise on architecture, 

or a triumphal arch. The terms in the last category ("Media") are also very 

varied. In this category the user can select between building materials like stone or 

stucco, or between techniques like etching, cutting or rendering (Tab. 1). 

Obviously these index-data differ from normal metadata. Metadata cover information 

like author, title, place and year. This data common to all historical databases 

is also collected in the database. In addition to this, we try to accumulate more 

categorical information with the index-data. When focusing on one object this data 

may seem quite vague, yet to a certain degree the data allow the user to cluster the 

images according to their content. 

This structure allows two novel ways of representing images in the interface of the 

database. One is an image-based browser and the other is a matrix of terms. Both 

the Index-Browser and the Index-Matrix enable an alternative access to the content 

of the media-database. 

Before describing how these Index-Tools work and what the didactic effect is, let me 

introduce the specific context of its application. 


computer-based 

presentation 

e-learning 

9 10 11 

6 

Ordnung Stil-Epoche Elemente Kontext Medien 

Alle Ordnungen 20. Jhdt Andere Andere Andere 

Andere Altes Ägypten Atlant Archäolog. Fundstück Animation 

Dorika Andere Basis Architekturtheorie Film 

Gemischt Barock Dienst Architekturtraktat Fotografie 

Ionika Byzantinisch Gebälk Dekoration Glas 

Kolossalordnung Etruskisch Halbsäule Geografische Karte Grafik 

Komposita Gotik Intervall Konstruktionsanweisung Holz 

Korinthia Griechische Antike Kapitell Kunsthandwerk Keramik 

Supraposition Klassizismus Karyatide Möbelbau Klang / Ton 

Toskana Mesopotamien Krepis Modell Malerei 

Mittelalter Modul Monument Metall 

Moderne Palladiomotiv Musterbuch Rendering 

Postmoderne Pfeiler Nachschlagewerk Stein 

Renaissance Pilaster Öffentliche Architektur Stich 

Rokoko Plinthe Palast Stuck / Gips 

Romanik Postament Plan Text 

Römische Antike Säule Privatbau Vasenbild 

Seit 1990 Schaft Profanbau Zeichnung 

Spätantike Stele Rekonstruktion 

Unbekannt Stütze Repräsentationsbau 

Travée Ruine 

Tympanon Sakrale Architektur 

Volute Säulenlehre 

Wandvorlage Skulptur 

Ziersäule Tempel 

Urhütte 

Wiss. Fachliteratur 

Tab. 1: The Index “Orders of Columns” arranges a matrix of terms. 

the e-learning project orders of columns 

Topic 

This e-learning project “Orders of Columns” originated from a students initiative 

at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich. They were searching for 

alternative ways to deal with questions around the morphology of columns and the 

context of their usage in the history of architecture. Indeed, this point of view offers 

a number of perspectives into the transcultural history of architecture. How were the 

renaissance architects able to interpret the books of Vitruvius by inspecting the ruins 

and spolia in Rome? What idea of the ancient world did they shape out of these 

relicts? And can the development of the antique temples even be seen as a reinterpretation 

of Mesopotamian or Egyptian rituals and forms? These enigmas questions 

have occured throughout history up until present times. Why does the concept of the 

orders of columns have such a normative power, not only with renaissance architecture, 

but also up until neoclassicism? And what kind of transformation can we 

rediscover in modernity and within postmodern comments? In conclusion, the investigation 

of the orders of columns means to question the impetus of architecture. 

The task of the project is to develop a visual form of a computer-based presentation 

indexed and browsed 

97

digital tools 

12 

following a vivid didactic concept that is close to the diverse material. It intends to 

broach the issue of columns by using a set of down-to-earth questions and practical 

thought. The content of the planned e-learning module is currently beeing developed 

by students. In a seminar they learn about the topic of the orders of columns, as well 

as how to use three different computer tools to present the work. In December 2008 

a prototype will be completed. 

Structure and tools 

Since e-learning projects mostly rely on a range of competencies the Column-Project 

is a cooperation between the Institute of Art History with the media-database of the 

Zurich University of the Arts and the e-science-network “HyperImage” (Humboldt 

University of Berlin and University of Lüneburg). This allows the use of three different 

digital tools that have all developed in the academic context to deal explicitly with 

the medium of text, the medium of images, and to combine both in an interactive 

presentation. 

1. tEXtMACHINA: a text-orientated web-based platform developed by University 

of Zurich / Germanic Faculty. 

In the context of the column-project, tEXtMACHINA is used to collect textual material 

and required reading lists. It also supports additional collaborative writing. 

Furthermore tEXtMACHINA assists the scientific and technical communication between 

the members of a group of students as well as the administrative needs 

of the course. 

http://www.textmachina.uzh.ch/khist/index.jsp (access only with login) 

Fig. 1: tEXtMACHINA, web-based platform to work collaboratively with texts. 

2. Media-Database of Zurich University of the Arts: a database with an intuitive 

interface that helps to organize visual materials. 

We use the media-database to collect images of columns of the different historical 

epochs and to group this data thematically for shared usage. In addition, the 

aforementioned index for the topic of orders of columns was developed. This index 

enables the use of a visual browsing tool to assist the concept formation. 

http://dilps.zhdk.ch (access only with login) 

Fig. 2: Media-Database of ZHdK provides a platform for saving, grouping and sharing 

of images. 

3. HyperImage: a digital tool that transfers the concept of hypertext to images in 

order to realize interactive e-science networks. HyperImage is currently beeing 

developed at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Lüneburg. 

The HyperImage Editor helps to realize the multimedia e-learning module. Within 

this program, visual arguments and elements of images can be linked in a collaborative 

workflow. The comparison of images, a strong art based historical method, is 

supported by the program up to the level of details of images. HyperImage allows 

the user to create linked and indexed networks of images and to publish them online 

or offline. 

http://www.hyperimage.org 

Fig. 3: HyperImage, an editor to compile interactive presentations. 


6 

The role of the Index-Browser in the Column-Project 

To precisely explain the title of the paper I’m now going to describe the method of 

the application of the Index-Browser in the thematic field of the e-learning project 

“Orders of Columns”. 

The “Column-Index” and the “Column-Browser” are the core tools in the 

phase of gathering, sharing, ordering and understanding the visual collection 

on the topic of the orders of columns. 

browsing 

1 

First, we will look at the Browsing-Tool based on the Column-Index; let us call it 

“Column-Browser”. Then we will investigate the matrix of terms in this field, in analogy 

the “Column-Matrix”. 

The Column-Browser 

The Column-Browser is the visual expression of the concept introduced at the 

beginning of this paper. This browsing tool offers, in relation to the five categories, 

five bands of images, which are linked to the topic of columns. The first selection of 

images is randomly generated. With the mouse pointer one can scroll these imagebands 

to the left and to the right in order to discover more image options. To start 

the browsing process the user selects one of the thumbnail images with a mouseclick. 

This action activates a new set of images that fills the bands. The selected 

image is displayed in each of the five bands at the same position as a reference for 

all other images. 

Fig. 4: Column-Browser, starting situation with randomly filled image-bands. 

In other words, after the browsing process has started with the first “query by image” 

the pictures in each band are sorted according to their contents. For example, with a 

mouse-click we can activate the thumbnail of Sebastiano Serlio’s plate from “Regola 

generali di architettura” (1537, book IV) leading to four possibilities of positioning 

a column in relation to a wall (freestanding or connected with a wall by different 

usages of a pilaster). As Serlio used the Dorica to show its systematic considerations, 

in the first line (“Order”) other illustrations of the Dorica are displayed. The examples 

are exclusively related to the topic Dorica; ranging from a colored reconstruction of 

the entablature of the Parthenon on the acropolis in Athens, to a photo of the palazzo 

Chiericati by Palladio in Vicenza, also encompassing other renaissance treatises 

discussing the construction of the Doric order, so within this band of images one can 

also see different formulations of the very old concept of the doric style. The second 

band presents examples related to “Epochs of Art History”. As Serlio’s treatise is a 

Renaissance book, all the other presented examples of built architecture, theoretical 

concepts, paintings or etchings in this line are also considered to belong to this 

epoch, so the user can broaden his or her view to find out how the orders of columns 

were formulated. In the next category (“Elements”) connections related to details are 

displayed. Here, elements like column, half column, pilaster and engaged pier are 

shown in a substantial range of pictures. This image band offers a wide selection of 

examples when looking for material to compare diffrent possible solutions in these 

architectural details. As previously mentioned, the fourth row is labelled “context”. 

Because Serlio’s plate belongs to the context of the theory of the architectural orders 

the other listed examples are mainly taken out of renaissance treatises. Finally, in the 

fifth image band (“Medium”) many other woodcut illustrations are presented, this 


99

fifth category allows an uncomplicated investigation into the illustration facilities 

of this technique.This detailed explanation makes the functionality of the Column- 

Browser clear. 

Fig. 5: Column-Browser: browsing situation: a reference image and related examples 

to the left and to the right. 

Based on the aforementioned principles the browsing-tool only reveals 

its full potential in the continued process of selecting a reference image with 

a mouse-click and the subsequent investigation of the new set of images. 

With this function the Column-Browser is conceived for endless browsing 

through the compilation of material for the e-learning project. This process 

of browsing is certainly not aimless nor finds its conclusion within itself. 

For the members of the e-learning project, this creates great stimulus in two 

main areas: the content and the workflow. 

facet 

1 17 20 

The content: browsing architecture! 

The inspiring combination of thumbnail-images in a line under the headline of one 

or more predefined terms has already been emphasized. This generates more than 

simply unexpected neighbourhoods of images; it also forces an active examination 

of the visual expression of a term. I will call this process “visual concept formation” 

and underline it as one of the additional benefits of the Index-Browser. 

Visual concept formation is an active confrontation of one term and several dedicated 

images. In order to precisely represent the term one may need to add or delete 

images, or one may prefer to find another term that better represents a particular 

compilation of images. This is a highly conceptual procedure that requires deep 

knowledge of the topic terminology as well as the visual material. 

To aid visual concept formation a tool called “basket” is provided to rearrange and to 

re-index images by drag and drop. 

The workflow 

A second facet of the Index-Browser is its a novel way of handling the content of the 

database. First of all there is the visual access to images. While in common databases 

the user has to start the query by typing specific words in a mask, the activated 

query in this database is a directed search where the user already knows what he or 

she is looking for. The result of this query is as appropriate and as accurate as the 

metadata in the database. In addition to this, the index-browser offers a visual, and 

thus more associative and more inspiring access to images. Consequently, the process 

of browsing is an undirected search that makes the content of image collections 

visible and supports the user with correlating images. The previously mentioned 

basket helps to collect, group and share images. 

Fig. 6: The metadata field opened out of the Index-Browser. Showing on the bottom 

of the screen a “basket” to collect and group images by drag and drop. 


matrix of terms 

term-based 

1 

6 

The Column-Matrix 

The Column-Matrix is a tool for a term-based exploration of collected material. In 

this modus, instead of five image-bands, the interface offers five columns of terms. 

Their names and contents have already described at the beginning of the paper. This 

matrix of terms supports the user in the process of a query. 

Similar to the Column-Browser, the reference term is visually selected by a highlight 

and correlated terms are coloured. The coloured terms signify the existence of images 

that are related to both the highlighted and the coloured term. The number after 

each term displays how many images are connected to this term. These discreet 

labels enable the user to estimate the result of their query. 

But while the Column-Browser always offers an open field of images for browsing, 

the query with the Column-Matrix is a successive process for narrowing down the 

scope of searching. 

Fig. 7: Column-Matrix: five columns of terms. Refinement of the search 

by marked terms. 

The didactic effects 

To sum up these new possibilities and to extract their didactic effects we return to 

the Column-Project. The participating students contribute their images to a joint 

collection. They develop a pool of images where everybody has to add images, 

but can also take advantage of everyone’s entries. As one can imagine, concepts 

where everybody has to share do not work in practice in the same way as in theory, 

but the overall outcome is definitively worthwhile. The field of terms, namely the 

Column-Matrix, helps the students to place their images in a field of meaning as well 

as in the overall context of the history of the orders of columns. Furthermore, only 

indexed images go into the Column-Browser producing a simple selection process 

that means only indexed images are viewable. It is very satisfying to see how the 

collection grows and consequently how the output of the Column-Browser gets more 

and more detailed and versatile. While compiling the definitive e-learning module in 

HyperImage, the browsing tool will constantly help to detect demanded images. 

Sustainability 

The collection of images of the orders of columns will be accessible for students 

even after their project is finished. Students will be able to use the Column-Browser 

to prepare for a typical art history examination, as the system randomly presents 

images thus a student can classify the objects to check his or her knowledge. Beyond 

this, the Column-Index is extendable for archaeologists for example; they can use 

and complete the term to describe for example temples. Additionally, other more 

general indices such as an Architecture Index will be installed and could intertwine 

with the Column-Index. 

So the application of the Index-Browser in the e-learning project “Orders of Columns” 

is not only a proof of concept, but also a starting point for further extensions 

in the field of the History of Art and Architecture. 

project team → 


101

project-team 

Index-Browser 

Idea and Concept: Susanne Schumacher. 

The Index-Browser is part of the media-database of Zurich University of the Arts developed 

by Departement of Design and Informationstechnologie-Zentrum (itz), http://dilps.zhdk.ch. 

E-Learning Project 

Scientific supervision: Prof. Dr. Hubertus Günther. 

Project-Management: Susanne Schumacher, Dr. Hanns Hubach. 

Initiative and tutors: Urs Baumberger, Elisabeth Geiger, Sabine Vass. 

This Project of the Institute of Art History/University of Zurich is supported by: 

› E-Learning Center der Universität Zürich, www.elc.uzh.ch; 

› Mediendatenbank Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, http://dilps.zhdk.ch; 

› HyperImage - Bildorientierte e-Science-Netzwerke, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg 

und Humboldt-Universität Berlin, www.hyperimage.org. 


6 


103

104 

7 

› digital repositories 

› housing studies 

housing@21.eu: 

Integrating Learning Spaces 

and Architectural Repositories 

› virtual design studios 

› web-based collaborative learning 

housing@21.eu (www.housing21eu.net) is a web-based 

learning platform consisting of a case repository and a design 

studio environment, developed in an Erasmus Intensive 

Programme between 2003 and 2006, with the participation of 

five schools of architecture from Belgium, Germany, Poland, 

Spain and United Kingdom. The purpose of the programme was 

twofold: one has to do with architecture - studying the forms 

of dwelling in contemporary European societies; the other 

with pedagogy – integrating innovative teaching methods with 

ICT. One of the results of the project is an on-line repository 

containing 300 cases of study, documented and analyzed using 

the learning platform specifically created for this project. 

The project is continuing through the Virtual Campus 

oikodomos (www.oikodomos.org), which is being carried out 

in the years 2007-2009 under the auspices of the Life Long 

Learning Programme.

leandro madrazo 

Universitat Ramon Llull 

Barcelona, Spain 

www.url.edu 

Since 1999, Professor at Arquitectura La Salle, and 

Director of the research group ARC (www.salle. 

url.edu/arc). Fulbright scholar 1986-88; M. Arch. 

UCLA, 1988; and Ph.D. ETH Zurich, 1995, where he 

was teaching and researching at the Department 

of Architecture, from 1990 to 1999. Coordinator 

of the European projects HOUSING@21.EU and 

OIKODOMOS; coordinator of the Spanish National 

R+D+I project BARCODE HOUSING SYSTEM. 

paul riddy 

KataliSys Limited 

Portsmouth, United Kingdom 

He is a part time Educational Technology Advisor 

and EU project coordinator at the University of 

Southampton. As a specialist in the use of learning 

technologies he has designed, authored and 

implemented computer based learning materials 

and contributed papers to international conferences 

on the application and evaluation of learning 

technologies. He is the project manager and 

researcher on the JISC EDIT4L project. As manager 

and coordinator of the EU funded NETTLE Thematic 

Network project (www.nettle.soton.ac.uk:8082/) 

he brings partners from across Europe together to 

investigate models for developing the educational 

skills of teaching staff. 

luca botturi 

University of Lugano 

Lugano, Switzerland 

www.unisi.ch 

He holds a Ph.D. in Communication Sciences 

and Instructional Design from the University of 

Lugano, Switzerland. He is currently instructional 

designer at the eLearning Lab, and researcher 

for the NewMinELab at the same institution. His 

research interests focus on creative instructional 

design, design languages and team communication. 

He is active as trainer and consultant, and has 

founded seed, a nonprofit organization promoting 

the development of a culture of educational 

technologies in international development. 

105

106

housing@21.eu is the name of a learning platform developed with funding 

from the Erasmus Intensive programme, whose goal was to study 

contemporary dwelling in Europe. It represents one more step in a pedagogic 

line of work aimed at integrating web-based learning environments 

into architectural education, which began in 1996 with the project aalto 

[Madrazo and Weder 2001]. 

housing studies 

web-based collaborative 

learning 

7 

The pedagogic goals of the HOUSING@21.EU project were twofold: 

1. To learn to grasp the complexities and interdependencies of the factors transforming 

the way of life in European societies, in order to respond to these challenges with 

new forms of housing. 

2. To design and implement learning strategies to be integrated with a web-based 

learning platform especially created for this project. 

The transforming factors affecting living conditions were considered on three 

different levels: social, economic and technological. Three different spatial 

dimensions of dwelling were analyzed: individual, communal and urban. 

This three-by-three structure enabled students and faculty to grasp the complexity 

of the issues involved in the conception and production of housing 

in contemporary European societies. 

constructivist pedagogy 

8 9 11 

From a pedagogical viewpoint, the most innovative aspect in this project was the 

development of a methodology associated with a web-based environment created 

especially for the project by the research group ARC Enginyeria i Arquitectura La 

Salle [Madrazo 2006]. The web-based platform HOUSING@21.EU consists of two 

distinct parts: a case repository to collect and study housing precedents (Fig. 1), 

and an environment to present housing projects created by students in the design 

workshops (Fig. 2). This web platform allowed students and faculty from the five participating 

institutions to carry out joint research on study cases across the Internet. 

Fig. 1: Website to collect and study housing examples – www.housing21eu.net (p. 333). 

Fig. 2: Website of the Design Workshop – www.housing21eu.net/workshop1 (p. 333). 

constructivist learning 

using web-based platforms 

One of the main objectives of HOUSING@21.EU was to create an integrated learning 

environment supported by an architectural case repository. This repository was 

not meant to be an information system, to collect and retrieve information about 

housing cases. Rather, its goal was to enable learners from the five participating 

schools to interact with each other both in the virtual space of the web and in the 

physical space of the classroom in order to elicit knowledge from the collected 

information. 

The distinction between collecting information in the web repository and 

eliciting knowledge from it is a critical one. In fact, the gathered information 

already carries within it some conceptual structures. As Van House has 

housing@21.eu 

107

contended: “Information artifacts, including texts and images, are not simply 

reflections or carriers of knowledge. They shape and reflect practice and are 

instrumental in creating and re-creating knowledge as well as coordinating 

work across space and time” [Van House 2003]. Therefore, in order to design 

efficient digital repositories, it is important to understand how these processes 

of knowledge construction using data collected in a repository work. 

digital repositories 

8 10 11 14 

16 21 26 

In HOUSING@21.EU tools were included which allowed further organization of the 

information. These supported students adding items to other’s cases, assigning keywords 

to cases and grouping cases, activities which allowed them to not only derive 

knowledge from the digital repository, but also to add new knowledge to it (Fig. 3, 

Fig. 4). Working in this context, the educators’ role is to act as a mediator, helping to 

bring the knowledge back and forth between the web and the classroom, through 

the medium of web-based discussions. 

This building up of knowledge through interacting with a digital repository 

is a typical example of constructivist pedagogy. According to constructivism, 

meaning is not implicit in the structured information. Rather, learners – students 

and teachers – should assign meaning to it. 

role of the educator 

2 12 

Retrieving information from the case library is a fundamental activity, since this is 

what ultimately gives sense to the way in which the information has been categorized 

and organized. Furthermore, for learners to carry out this constructive 

process collaboratively in a web-based environment they must have some “shared 

understanding” of the tool, the context of the learning and the role of the educator 

[Puntambekar and Young 2003]. 

Fig. 3: Case repository collaborative tools: Keywords mode (p. 334). 

Fig. 4: Case repository collaborative tools: Grouping mode (p. 334). 

housing@21.eu’s learning activities 

The programme’s yearly activities were organized into two major blocks: analysis of 

relevant housing precedents, and design of new housing. A seminar approach was 

used for the analysis of precedents, conducted asynchronously at each participant 

institution, within a 3-6 month period. The two-week design workshop was carried 

out at the end of the academic year, with the participation of all teachers and 

students. 

The learning activities were carried out both in the shared web-based learning 

environments specifically created for this project and in courses at each institution. 

It was necessary to implement an ad hoc approach to interweave the diversity of 

activities taking place at the five institutions which were running different academic 

programmes. 

The work conducted in the case repository contributed to the exchange of ideas 

between teachers and students from all the participating institutions. Through this 


vocabulary of 

keywords 

13 15 17 21 

7 

interaction, it was possible to identify different approaches towards housing in different 

European countries, while at the same time discovering some common themes. 

Some of the topics identified in the web were then further discussed at the start of 

the joint Design Workshop, where all participants gathered for two weeks to continue 

reflecting about housing, but this time designing new housing projects. 

case study analysis 

In the analysis stage, students are requested to select three to five examples of their 

choice, to study them and to explain them in the web environment. 

This work is done at each institution under the supervision of a teacher. The work 

performed in a classroom environment, which precedes the task of inserting a case 

in the repository, is fundamental to ensure a subsequent meaningful learning using a 

web-based environment. 

A case study documentation consists of graphics (plans, sections, photographs) and 

texts to describe the case, as well as to reflect on its most relevant characteristics: 

morphological, spatial, social, and technological. 

These reflections, after having been discussed in the class with their teacher, are 

introduced in the repository using the conceptual structure of spatial dimensions 

and transforming factors described earlier. Also, the construction of a vocabulary 

of keywords is an effective way to illustrate the reflections of the learners. 

Once the cases have been submitted, the collaborative tasks start 

at the repository, including: 

› Adding information to another student’s study case (images; keywords); 

› Adding comments to the study case forums; 

› Searching for relations among study cases (grouping cases); 

› Participating in the forum discussions about particular cases and about 

generic housing topics. 

Following submission, the pedagogic challenge both for students and teachers 

is to elicit knowledge by using the case descriptions. This is a fundamental 

difference between an information system that facilitates access to images 

and texts, and a learning environment, which promotes the collaborative 

construction of knowledge. 

Case descriptions and their manipulation are used to embed the knowledge that the 

students have acquired through their study and become the knowledge blocks with 

which learners can subsequently build knowledge, collaboratively interacting in the 

web system. 

The following table summarizes the content that the students have submitted to the 

case study library in the three years of the programme: 

housing@21.eu 

109

case of study 

images 

keywords 

bibliographic entries 

url references 

groups 

discussion forum entries 

case study forum entries 

e-mails 

03-04 


71 

796 

87 

100 

54 

14 

n/a 

36 

190 

04-05 

110 

1,623 

196 

58 

31 

9 

7 

20 

179 

05-06 

119 

195 

128 

68 

87 

11 

15 

50 

558 

total 

300 

4,369 

411 

226 

172 

34 

22 

106 

937 

Tab. 1: Summary of the data collected during the three-year HOUSING@21.eu project. 

design workshops 

The joint Design Workshop is the concluding work, following the study of cases on 

the web. Three workshops took place each summer during the years 2004, 2005 and 

2006. Sites were selected in the city of Barcelona to carry out projects for innovative 

housing, addressing different scales: domestic, urban and metropolitan. 

Descriptions of the design tasks (sites and briefs) were published in a website created 

especially for the workshop (please see: www.housing21eu.net/workshop1; 

www.housing21eu.net/workshop2; www.housing21eu.net/workshop3). This website 

was also used during the workshop, to record the ideas that were being discussed in 

the meetings and to present the design proposals. 

At the start of a workshop, each student exposed his or her personal reflections 

about housing summarized in a multimedia presentation. This helped students to 

get to know each other in advance, so that they could select the team members with 

whom they would work with on the design. Teams were composed of three students, 

each one from a different institution, with a mix of second or third year students 

working together with those who were about to complete their degrees. We considered 

that the mix of different cultures and different knowledge was a challenge that 

the students should face. 

The Design Workshop website allowed students and teachers to monitor 

the step-by-step development of an idea into a design schema, and from a 

schema into a design proposal. This was an important feature of the website, 

which needs to be further developed in order to facilitate the work of distant 

workshops across the web involving students from different universities. 

virtual design studios 

2 

oikodomos: a virtual campus to promote 

the study of dwelling in contemporary europe 

The experience gained with the HOUSING@21.EU intensive programmes, has been 

the motivation to create a new consortium to develop a more comprehensive virtual 

campus to study dwelling at a European scale named OIKODOMOS. The intention 

is that this new virtual campus will integrate on-line and off-line learning activities 

encompassing:

7 

1. Innovative pedagogic methods, which interweave on-line resources with traditional 

classroom activities to study housing from a multidisciplinary perspective by means 

of seminars and studio projects, analysis of cases, and joint design workshops. 

2. Multi-national and multi-professional activities planned in conjunction with community 

representatives and local authorities, to study the problems of dwelling and 

to propose solutions to it. 

3. Bologna compatible courses (ECTS credited) aimed at supporting the creation of 

future European Master’s programs, which combine physical and virtual mobility of 

both teachers and students. 

Collaborative activities will be reinforced in order to strengthen the collaboration 

of learners in the construction of knowledge. Moreover, the learning 

activities will be opened to other learners outside the universities. The design 

workshop environment will be enhanced into a full-fledged virtual design 

studio environment, which will enable different schools to carry out on-line 

design processes in collaboration. The designs produced by students will be collected 

in a project repository. 

The expected results of the project are: 

› An innovative pedagogic methodology integrating on-line activities with the curricula 

at each partner institution, implemented, tested and validated; 

› A critical analysis of e-learning methods and tools applied to architectural education 

(virtual design studios, repositories of cases of study); 

› Educational open resources stemming from the learning activities conforming to 

standards; 

› Innovative housing proposals embracing architectural, urban and environmental 

scale, developed collaboratively by the participating institutions in conjunction with 

social and professional organizations; 

› Assessment of the pedagogic methods and the learning technologies employed 

and the results obtained; 

› Reports of good and bad practices and recommendations for other partners to join 

the virtual campus in the future. 

evaluation of the pedagogic model 

of housing@21.eu 

The first task undertaken within the OIKODOMOS project has been to conduct an 

evaluation of the web-based platform and an assessment of the pedagogic methodology 

applied in the previous project, HOUSING@21.EU. The results of this study 

will help to redefine the contents, methods and tools of the future OIKODOMOS 

virtual campus. 

The following is a summary of the conclusions from this study. 

Evaluation of the existing web-based platform 

The evaluation of the web-based platform HOUSING@21.EU was conducted as a 

usability study [Oikodomos PR EP1 Report 2008]. The aim was to detect most of the 

problems, obstacles and breakdowns for the user when interacting with the web ap- 

housing@21.eu 

111

plication. Usability has been defined as “the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction 

with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments” 

[ISO 9241-11]. For e-learning environments and applications, usability is a necessary 

condition (although not sufficient, as discussed above) for effective on-line learning. 

Usability is the property of a mediated learning environment, which supports 

the users as transparently as possible in the accomplishment of their learning goals. 

Examples of the problems which users might encounter include: easily locating and 

accessing the needed content; orienting oneself in the maze of different paths and 

nested pages of a structured website; avoiding being overloaded by the information 

clustered in a page; and being able to use effectively the navigation architecture. 

The usability study was developed following the MiLE methodology [Triacca et al. 

2004] in its e-learning adapted version [Inversini, Botturi and Triacca 2006]. This 

method has already been extensively and successfully used in a variety of web application 

domains (e.g. educational institutions, cultural-heritage, public education, 

and e-government) [Matera et al. 2002; Bolchini et al., 2003; Triacca et al. 2003] 

and it has been used and tailored for e-learning web applications. The goal of the 

process is to provide course developers and instructional designers with a structured 

“kit” of guidelines and practical suggestions for a cost-effective usability evaluation 

of their on-line application. MiLE works through the definition of a custom usability 

framework, consisting of user profiles, usability variables and scenarios with tasks. 

This usability framework was constructed for HOUSING@21.EU and then used to 

train the project staff to collect data at their own locations. 

The study was carried out on 17 students from Barcelona, Bratislava and Lugano, 

and the results allowed the identification of both systematic breakdowns, i. e. 

issues that affect the overall application, and local problems. MiLE generates both 

quantitative outputs (rankings of issues) and qualitative ones (user comments). 

The results indicate that users perceive the HOUSING@21.EU as a generally good 

application. Problems identified were mainly in the predictability of user interactions 

and in the order of layout. The former included uploading pictures, lack of communication 

(e.g., the lack of error messages) or bugs in the program, which stopped the 

system (e.g., due to overload). More important design problems concerned the use 

of pop-up windows and the search interface. 

Assessment of pedagogic methodology 

The assessment [Oikodomos PR EP2 Report 2008] reported on the approaches to 

learning and teaching used in conjunction with the HOUSING@21.EU environment, 

the user’s perception of these approaches and the general usability of the platform. 

The retrospective nature of this evaluation was based on a combination of the analysis 

of end of year reports from HOUSING@21.EU combined with questionnaires 

completed by staff and students, and interviews with staff. 

Questionnaires based on previous work [Fill 2005; Riddy and Fill 2004] used 4 point 

Likert (A-D) scales plus a ‘don’t know’ category, open comment boxes and requested 

brief demographic information. As the project finished in 2006 it has proved difficult 

to contact and obtain responses from students and staff involved at that time, some 

having now left their institutions. To date we have received 11 responses from a total 

of 71 students contacted. Of 14 members of staff contacted one agreed to be interviewed, 

and the views expressed have been largely supported by anecdotal reports 

from others involved in the project. 


7 

Student responses on the use of the case study repository and associated tools were 

received from all five Partner institutions, but with only 1 response from 1 of the 

partners. The maximum scores for students in these 16 questions centered on level 

B (positive) indicating an overall positive response to using the system to support 

their learning. The greater spread for some of the responses raises questions on the 

usefulness of the on-line discussions, the success with which students were able to 

integrate the variety of information and the suitability of this approach for all learners. 

Students didn’t comment on the constructivist educational process in which 

they were engaged, but commented more on features of the system and its potential 

for interaction. These comments support the questions raised above. 

Staff found that this environment was useful for supporting learning, but raised a 

number of issues: 

› Different levels of access to editing resources for staff and students; 

› Speed of response of the system; 

› Better integration of discussion forums with the resources; 

› Use of the environment needed to be tightly integrated with institutional courses, 

to ensure engagement of the students. 

The majority of responses for the 10 questions on the design workshops fell into categories 

A & B indicating students were giving a significantly positive response to the 

use of the environment and the educational process. The two questions, which were 

exceptions, indicate dissatisfaction with the Design Workshop topics, and that language 

differences resulted in some communication problems between study group 

members. Staff responses suggested differences between institutions in their approach 

to assessment of student performance, and consequently in assessing their 

work. English language ability was recognized as restricting communication generally, 

and it was felt that group performance would have been effective more quickly 

if they had engaged in more activities at a distance in advance of the workshop. 

The main findings were: 

The case study repository and associated tools were found to provide a useful 

body of information with the potential to support interesting educational 

discussions between students and their tutors. Usability of tools and 

the response time of the system were impediments to full integration 

of the environment within some schools institutional programmes. 

The five institutions involved in the project, each took a different approach to using 

HOUSING@21.EU within their teaching, and different approaches to the allocation 

of credits for the students work in their regular courses and in conjunction with the 

design workshops. These inconsistencies need to be resolved if significant progress 

on collaborative development and provision of courses are to make progress. 

One of the great success of the design workshops was the mutual understanding 

gained from working in mixed nationality/cultural groups. 

Recommendations 

Alongside specific pedagogic and technical recommendations, we have a third 

category concerning general usability: 

housing@21.eu 

113

Pedagogic 

housing@21.eu was designed to support a constructivist model of education, 

and this has proven to be effective, and appreciated by the students. The 

future oikodomos platform should maintain the underlying design philosophy 

but refine the organization and access to resources, and integrate the discussion 

facilities to be more fluidly accessible from the other resources. More 

details on the technical requirements for these changes are given below. 

web 2.0 

8 22 

To move towards a collaborative provision of courses partners need: 

› To be more consistent in their use of the environment across the partnership, to 

facilitate collaborative interactions between students in advance of, and during, the 

design workshops; 

› To develop consistent documentation for courses and modules, which are to be 

made available across the partnership. To be in line with the Bologna Process recommendations, 

meaning the specification of competencies and learning outcomes, and 

ensuring that these are mapped through content, learning and teaching methods, to 

assess approaches. Consistency will be fundamental to any collaborative developments 

of courses and materials. This includes fully documenting and explaining the 

educational justification for allocation of credits for students work. 

Technical 

Recommendations are based on maintaining the functional design of the underlying 

structure and tools, but enhancing usability and integration: 

› Redesign to allow access and use of a range of Web2.0 resources to make use of 

the extra functionality within its own structure; 

› Provide facilities for multi-language user interface; 

› Redesign the menu structure to enhance ease of use and conform to accessibility 

guidelines; 

› Provide better integration of discussion facilities with working windows; 

› Blend the Case Study and Design Workshop working environments to allow transparent 

and integrated access to a working/development and main repositories; 

› Create facilities for different levels of user and access rights to the environment. 

General Usability recommendations 

› Include keyword category sets for classification of resources, but provide a process 

for suggestion and selection of additional keywords; 

› Provide facilities for a multi-language user interface. 

Social web applications 

Web 2.0 applications and the Open Educational Resources (OER) movements have 

created enormous potential for interaction and made available wide-ranging resources. 

These include open repository sites such as Flickr (still images) and YouTube 

(video), in which anyone who registers can deposit and make materials available. 

The well-known and extensive Wikipedia (on-line encyclopedia) has been collaboratively 

constructed by individual contributions, and is part of the Wikimedia suite of 

offerings. Open repositories of educational resources include MIT Open Courseware 

and Le Mill, with websites such as Great Buildings and Danda holding materials 

specifically for the architectural domain. Google Earth makes available plan views 

of locations anywhere on the planet at a variety of scales. Such extensive sharing of 

resources would quickly run into legal difficulties without a more “open” copyright 


7 

system such as Creative Commons, which is more or less consistently applied 

in the above examples. 

conclusions 

Following the prototype development of HOUSING@21.EU the evaluations described 

above have produced design guidelines that can help to produce a technically welldesigned 

application to serve the goal of fostering a pedagogic constructivist model. 

The work to be developed in the oikodomos project will make further progress 

in this integration of learning methodologies and digital repositories, 

which started with the housing@21.eu programme, in order to create 

an innovative pedagogic structure which takes advantage of the possibilities 

offered by the application of information and communication technologies 

in architectural education. 

references + acknowledgements → 

housing@21.eu 

115

eferences 

Bolchini, D., L. Triacca, and M. Speroni. 2003. MiLE: a Reuse-oriented Usability Evaluation Method 

for the Web. Paper presented at HCI International Conference (Crete, Greece, June, 2003). 

Fill, K. 2005. Student-focused Evaluation of e-Learning Activities. Short paper presented 

at the European Conference on Educational Research (University College Dublin, Ireland, 2005). 

Inversini, A., L. Botturi, and L. Triacca. 2006. Evaluating LMS Usability for Enhanced eLearning 

Experience. In Proceedings EDMEDIA 2006 (Orlando, Florida, USA, 26-30 June, 2006), 595-601. 

Madrazo, L. 2006. Housing@21.eu report. 

http://www.salle.url.edu/arc/housing21/reports/eu/housing21_web.pdf. 

Madrazo, L., and J. Massey. 2005. HOUSING@21.EU. A web-based pedagogic platform 

for the study of housing in Europe. In Proceedings 20th eCAADe Conference (Lisbon, Portugal, 

21-24 September, 2005). 

Madrazo, L. and A. Weder, A. 2001. Aalto on the Internet: Architectural Analysis and Concept 

Representation with Computer Media. Automation in Construction 10: 49-58. 

http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/aalto/. 

Matera, M. et al. 2002. SUE Inspection: An Effective Method for Systematic Usability Evaluation 

of Hypermedia”. IEEE Transaction 32, no 1. 

Puntambekar, S., and M. F. Young. 2003. Moving Toward a Theory of CSCL. In Designing for Change 

in Networked Learning Environments, eds. Wasson, B., S. Ludvigsen and U. Hoppe, 503-512. 


7 

London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 

Riddy, P., and K. Fill. 2004. Evaluating eLearning Resources. In Proceedings of the Networked Learning 

4th International Conference (Lancaster University, United Kingdom, 5-7 April, 2004), 630-636. 

Triacca, L., D. Bolchini, N. Di Blas, and P. Paolini. 2003. Wish you were Usable! How to improve 

the Quality of a Museum Website. International Conference on Electronic Imaging and the Visual 

Arts – EVA03 (Florence, Italy, 2003). 

Triacca, L., D. Bolchini, L. Botturi, and A. Inversini. 2004. MiLE: Systematic Usability Evaluation for 

E-learning Web Applications. AACE Journal 12, no. 4. 

Van House, N. A. 2003. Digital Libraries and Collaborative Knowledge Construction. In Digital Library 

Use, eds. Bishop A. P. , N. A. Van House, and B. P. Buttenfield, 271-295. Cambridge, Massachusetts: 

The MIT Press. 

acknowledgements 

OIKODOMOS is being carried out with a grant of the Life Long Learning Programme from the 

Education, Audiovisual, and Culture Executive Agency of the European Union, project number 

134370-LLP-1-2007-1-ES-ERASMUS-EVC. 

The content of this article is the sole responsibility of the authors and the Agency is not responsible 

for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. The three other partners participating 

in the project are: Hogeschool voor Wetenschap & Kunst, Brussels, Belgium; Université Pierre 

Mendès, Grenoble, France; and Faculty of Architecture, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, 

Slovakia. 

housing@21.eu 

117

118 

8 

beyond digital 

repositories: 

Architectural Information 

Presentation 

The discipline of architecture has far too long appeared 

to be overly protective of its knowledge. The use of highly 

interpretable abstractions to represent buildings allows insights 

really only to a ‘deserved’ few. Under the guise of explicit 

understanding of the field, some authors of such abstractions 

further create more data that results in an increasingly vague 

explanation of architecture. While there is an exponential 

growth of data about architecture available today, it is 

getting more difficult to decipher meanings to gain in-depth 

comprehension. It is even more challenging to piece data 

together as a coherent whole especially for researchers and 

students. Much work is currently being done in categorizing, 

tagging and devising modes of data retrieval. Significant as 

this work may be, a tremendous amount of effort still needs to 

be applied beyond creating systematic worldwide repositories. 

Disregarding the political motives of the discipline behind the 

use and insistence of loose abstractions, how architectural 

information is to be presented to augment clear understanding 

about architectural works is an urgent concern that should be 

addressed in this digital era. This paper highlights a prototype 

digital presentation of the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education 

Centre. The use of predominantly visual components and 

layering of media in the presentation are much emphasized 

to suggest a direction by which information could effectively 

be presented.

8 

beyond digital repositories 

verdy kwee 

The United Arab Emirates University, UAE 

Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates 

www.uaeu.ac.ae 

Verdy Kwee, with a research interest in information 

visualization, specializes in digital design and 

architectural presentation. A graduate of the Royal 

Melbourne Institute of Technology [B. Arch. (Hons)], 

the University of Adelaide [M. Arch. (Digital Media) 

and Ph.D], Dr. Kwee is now teaching in the United 

Arab Emirates University, UAE, advocating the 

rigorous use of digital tools in design processes 

and communication. 

119

digital platform 

1 

digitalisation 

1 13 14 15 19 

presentation 

11 23 

introduction 

Synergies between art and science have been recognized as important in the heightened 

creative use of digital instruments [Rafi 2000]. However, in the past decade, 

the re-convergence of science and arts in the area of digital architectural information 

presentation has been noticeably slow to evolve. It only takes a brief reflection of the 

popular tools that students and professionals in the discipline seem to have been 

gravitating towards in presenting their works. Apart from the increased qualities in 

shown images, a similar pattern of “slideshow” presentations has been recurring. 

Online presentations of architectural works such as “Great Buildings Online” have 

changed astoundingly little since 1997 in format and outlooks. We know this is not 

all that the digital platform could afford us in presenting architectural information. 

Are we clinging to tradition so much so that we tend to reject the new and unfamiliar 

too quickly? Prolonged stagnation like this may carry the danger of accustomed 

behaviour that will render it difficult to tap into vast opportunities that developing 

technologies provide – technologies that will act as catalysts towards architectural 

information clarity. 

What will it take to stimulate a change in perceptions and encourage a 

total revamp of how architectural information is presented on our computer 

screens? How urgent is this need for change? What are the implications? 

Throughout history printed publications of notable architectural works have been 

relied upon as the main secondary sources of architectural knowledge, since in reality 

physical buildings are less accessible. The effectiveness of these publications and 

their degree of information rigour are assumed, but not proven adequate in facilitating 

clear and in-depth learning. In this quick transitional phase to digitalisation, this 

regrettable trend continues unquestioned. In the digital realm, most architectural 

presentations take advantage only of the technology’s provision for speed and ease 

of information retrieval. 

Meanwhile, the computer technology continues to generate and collect more 

information than any human can possibly process. This leads to the paradox of 

today’s Information Age. Are we more knowledgeable when it comes to good 

design or just more adept in getting the information? The answer as hinted at 

by today’s building proposals and developments is, it seems, hardly “neither”. 

Students and professionals in the field do not appear to have produced more quality 

designs than their predecessors have. The amount of and access to architectural information 

does not necessarily contribute to the understanding of the field. It is now 

imperative that attention should also be given to the aspect of expanding digital 

presentation capabilities to leverage information clarity. This is in order to maximise 

the level of comprehension of architectural designs, especially those of quality. 

We are still at a media crossroad of the traditional and digital. It is an opportune 

time to reassess publications of architectural works in order to propose possible 

new dynamic directions for the future digital delivery of architectural information, especially 

for educational purposes. There is no denying that the existence of exciting 

state-of-the-art visualization and information delivery systems are available. How- 


ontology 

10 

repository 

10 11 14 16 

21 26 

8 

ever, the most common vehicle through which digital content is displayed today is 

still the computer screen; it seems the popularity of these easily accessible “flatland” 

instruments will continue for some time to come. Understanding the possibilities of 

digital visualisation from within and from outside the architectural field would help 

in the re-thinking and improvement of the presentation of architectural information. 

Which significant directions should be considered in order to capitalize upon the 

digital opportunities afforded within the limitations of the computer screen? 

information presentation 

Most projects have used the term “presentation” (of information) in its general 

sense. This loose definition could be streamlined further depending on the degree 

of accessibility (in terms of the archival/retrieval system) in showcasing or explicating 

data and analysis. This may be accomplished by classifying the presentations of 

information representations into three broad distinct orders (in some cases, intermixing 

may be found): 

› A common repository could be deemed as a presentation of information. This is 

frequently exercised in the traditional archiving system or electronic searchable 

database. This presentation method groups data/information only according to 

their broad general classifications often with keywords or indices used in its retrieval 

system; 

› A logical data structure organization that groups information according to particular 

rules of commonalities. Popular systems of online menu hyperlinks in the digital 

platform could be considered to fall in this category. In most cases, information 

“presentations” end here; 

› An organization based on analogical/referential reasoning. It structures interestbased 

selection of information-filled media into a visual web of inter-connected 

components according to correspondence of information substance or concept. Due 

to the some limitations of media and the lack of expertise conversant in both the 

field of architecture (art) and information technology (science), this has been poorly 

attempted and overlooked in current published monographs of architectural works – 

online or printed. 

It seems we need to shift our effort largely to the aforementioned third order of 

presentation: the delivery of architectural information to the general public and/or 

for academic teaching, specifically on the digital platform. 

A worldwide online survey was conducted in 2006 to gauge public perception of the 

current methods of architectural presentation [Kwee et al. 2006]. The results were 

analyzed, and it was proven that presentation of architectural information for the 

public at large and especially for those within the academic circle in this era requires 

attention. The comprehension of architectural information had not reached the 

general public’s expectation level. There was also a demand for the use of various 

media in explaining architectural works while “cohesiveness of information” also 

ranked highly. 

a digital presentation prototype 

The findings based on the aforementioned survey gave direction to the design of 

a digital prototype of the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre – a building 

designed by the renowned Glenn Murcutt in association with Wendy Lewin and Reg 


121

constructivist theory 

7 9 11 

communities on 

internet 

1 22 23 

co-operative tagging 

6 11 17 

Lark. This prototype uses an information layering system with an emphasis on the 

importance of visual media. 

The Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre is significant in the Australian architectural/cultural 

heritage climate. It conforms to the local Heritage Council of New 

South Wales authority’s assessment criteria for heritage status. Moreover, built on a 

land donated by the internationally well-known, late-Australian painter, Arthur Boyd, 

it was designed by an Australian Pritzker-prize winning architect, Glenn Murcutt in 

association with Wendy Lewin and Reg Lark. This architectural masterpiece symbolises 

the efforts by two important figures in the Australian cultural scene. It has won 

numerous architectural awards and is featured in “The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary 

World Architecture” [Phaidon 2004] as an example of a fine architectural work 

found in the world today. 

Due to its complexity and considering the varied strengths and weaknesses of 

abstractions or representations, architectural information often requires more than 

one media type to explain itself. However, in many instances where various abstractions 

are deployed, the relationships between these abstractions are overlooked. As 

highlighted by Scott Johnson, “choice of representations can affect limited cognitive 

resources like attention and short-term memory by forcing a person to try to utilise 

poorly organised information or perform “translations” from one representation to 

another” [Johnson 1997]. 

All media types have their own unique strengths. The prototype explores texts, 

sound, reconstructed moving images (two and three dimensional), video footages, 

still photographs and images, architectural drawings, sketches to explain the building 

(Fig. 1). It illustrates the contextualization of ideas. Each medium references and 

reinforces the information of another regardless of its media type. 

Fig. 1: Examples of the layering of texts, sketch, 2D and 3D animations, 

videos and drafted drawings with interactive navigation (p. 335). 

Providing an example of the re-convergence of science and arts in the presentation 

of the building shown above, aims to stimulate a re-thinking in the use of digital 

tools. How could technology assist the discipline in facilitating heightened information 

clarity and thus efficient architectural design knowledge transfers? How could 

the potentials of the data that global architectural repositories possess be maximized 

as truly effective learning tools? What should we foresee beyond the reduction 

of these data into searchable indices for ease of retrieval? What are the required 

conditions and premises for this to occur? 

direction and considerations 

Designing and creating an architectural presentation that is accessible to the masses, 

cannot or should not depend solely on individual authors. It requires a collective 

effort beyond co-operative tagging or metadata entries. Today, Web 2.0 has allowed 

users to build and/or alter contents solidifying the concept of a “many-to-many” 

platform. Although collectively piecing together architectural information is in principal 

similar to a multi-user jigsaw puzzle (Fig. 2), the reality may be more complex. 

The current movements of technologies provide a compelling insight into what may 

be in store. 

Fig. 2: A concept of piecing information through a multi-user, online jigsaw puzzle (p. 335). 


What we see as platforms for sharing digital images (e.g. Flickr), texts (e.g. 

Wikipedia), Videos (e.g. Youtube), to an extent and due to their popularity, 

are camouflaged repositories of architectural information. 

metadata 

1 6 10 15 

17 19 21 

web 2.0 

7 22 

8 

At present the media that they predominantly use stereotypes all of these sharing 

sites; however, Flickr has started to permit users to contextualize images by letting 

them add text. Photosynth (Fig. 3), an ongoing project by Microsoft Live Lab, 

automatically “re-creates” three-dimensional spaces of physical locations based on 

picture data mined from a large collection of photographs on the Internet, including 

those in Flickr. Although currently limited to the medium of still images, the potential 

of linking seamlessly to other related media and permitting them to be further edited 

for use in architectural contexts certainly could not be dismissed. Judging from 

the popular acceptance of online software applications such as online word-processors, 

spreadsheets, image editing, etc, it seems inevitable that a comprehensive 

media editing, manipulation and presentation tool will eventually be integrated 

online as well. 

A common platform where users are able to organize, edit and republish 

collected and/or processed mined data, would serve as an avenue, which 

would allow future presentations, especially of architecture, to flourish. 

Currently developing in tandem are touch-screen displays. Their application potentials, 

as suggested by Jeff Han [Han 2007], promise extended flexibility and ease in 

such digital editing and manipulation. 

Fig. 3: Screenshot of Microsoft Live Lab’s Photosynth allowing users to “navigate” 

through Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy (p. 336). 

Once the needed multi media editing and presentation infrastructure is established, 

there is of course, another consideration that questions the motivating aspect in 

sharing information through collective action. Howard Rheingold has observed the 

characteristics that have facilitated the success of the Internet’s content including 

social networking and merchandizing sites (Fig. 4). These factors are critical in creating 

co-operating and sharing communities on the Internet. 

Fig. 4: A screenshot of Rheingold’s slide presentation (p. 336). 

A BBC article reports Jakob Nielsen’s research into Internet user habits. The study 

observes that users are becoming impatient [BBC 2008]. For instance, searching information 

through the use of search engines and keywords, as opposed to following 

links from websites, has escalated. This clearly suggests that 

the demand for instant information necessarily calls for future online 

platforms to link or embed corresponding media information within pieces 

of information. 


123

conclusions 

Apart from the aspect of depth and breadth of architectural information, we must 

also acknowledge the importance of its presentation. There are vast improvement 

opportunities waiting to be tapped in this area. The understanding of architectural 

works has been impeded for far too long by their poor information presentations 

– most of which are reduced to independently interpretable textual and visual 

substitutes. A digital platform could provide more than simply the ability to tag 

information for ease of retrieval. Cohesion of various media could also be further 

enhanced through this platform, which has the potential to facilitate the power shift 

from authors to users. 

The clarity of Architectural information presentation could redefine the discipline in 

unprecedented ways. Heightened awareness of quality architectural designs may 

augment legitimate interest in the field. More significantly, beyond clarity and better 

understanding of architectural works, there is the promise of increased quality in the 

built environment. Such massive implications demand a timely re-thinking in true reconvergence 

of science and arts through the presentation of architectural information. 

This has to begin with the recognition of media strengths and their usability, as 

Marshall McLuhan aptly stated, “the medium is the message” [McLuhan 1964]. 


8 

references 

Ahmad Rafi, M.E., and P. Karboulonis. 2000. The Re-Convergence of Art and Science: A Vehicle for 

Creativity. In CAADRIA 2000. Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Computer Aided Architectural 

Design Research in Asia (Singapore, 18-19 May, 2000), 491-500. 

Han, J. 2007. Multi-Touch Sensing through LED Matrix Displays. 

http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ledtouch/index.html. 

Johnson, S. 1997. What’s in a Representation, Why Do We Care, and What Does It Mean? 

Examining Evidence from Psychology. Paper read at ACADIA ‘97: Conference – Design 

and Representation (Cincinatti, Ohio, USA, 3-5 October, 1997). 

Kwee, V., A. Radford, D. Bruton, and I. Roberts. 2006. Architecture | Media | Representation 

Survey – Exigencies at a Media Crossroad. In The Challenges for Architectural Science in Changing 

Climates. Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Architectural Science Association 

(Adelaide, Australia, 2006), eds. Susan, S., V. Soebarto, and T. Williamson, 225-232. 

McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 

Microsoft Live Lab. 2006. Photosynth. http://labs.live.com/photosynth. 

BBC . 2008. Web Users “Getting More Ruthless”. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7417496.stm. 

Phaidon Press. 2004 The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture. 

New York: Phaidon Press. 

Rheingold, H. 2005. Way-New Collaboration. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/216. 


The digital prototype presented here owes its life to many wonderful organisations and souls: 

› The University of Adelaide for funding the project. Prof. Antony Radford and Dr. Dean Bruton 

for their support and assistance in the collection of information pertaining to the Arthur and 

Yvonne Boyd Education Centre; 

› The Bundanon Trust for access to The Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Centre and the provision of accommodation 

to facilitate extensive onsite study, building/site measurement and recording; 

› Glenn Murcutt, Wendy Lewin, Reg Lark, James Taylor, Dr. Peter Bacon, Sue Barnsley, Jonko Berg 

and David Chalker who have been kind and generous with their time and patience in interviews. 


125


› collaborative work space 

› digital 

modeling systems 

› education 

126 

9 

towards using digital 

modeling systems: 

The Context of E-learning 

› e-learning 

› heritage 

› ict 

› multidisciplinarity 

› wiki 

The objective of this paper is to propose e-learning tools within 

the context of teaching and learning architecture using new 

information and communication technologies (ICT). It also 

uses a case on e-learning architectural environment through a 

number of experiments presenting digital devices as cognitive 

tools. These experiments contribute to create innovative 

e-learning tools that can help expert users and laypeople share 

knowledge and experience architectural environments. It also 

conveys approaches and research suggesting ways of organizing, 

classifying and understanding digital architectural contents that 

can be available through websites while using new approaches 

via electronic means. Our research follows contemporary trends 

that seek to broaden the use of today’s digital tools beyond 

simple techniques of representation. In fact, more and more 

studies are focusing on the use of digital tools as conceptual 

tools. It is therefore possible to consider digital tools with new 

considerations improving the teaching and learning process. 

Even though traditional learning tools are another key factor 

in teaching and learning architecture, they have not been 

considered in this work, which is mainly focused on the question 

of e-learning whereas the proposed digital modeling systems in 

this paper are perceived as learning objects, presented in regular 

teaching environments. The results we propose lead us to believe 

that we can rely on digital tools to understand architectural 

environments and furthermore to improve architectural design.

nada el-khoury 

GRCAO (CAD research group), Faculty of 

Environmental Design, University of Montreal 

Centre-ville Montréal (Québec) , Canada 

Nada El-Khoury is a researcher at the Faculty of 

Environmental design, University of Montreal. She 

is a member of the GRCAO (CAD and ICT research 

group) since 2000. She has a Ph.D. in CAD and 

environmental design (University of Montreal). She 

is also an interior architect (ALBA in Beyrouth). She 

published articles in the field of digital devices, 

architecture and environmental design and has 

taken part in the organization of international 

conferences. She is now in charge of an important 

project involving ICT and cultural Heritage. 

giovanni de paoli 

GRCAO (CAD research group), Faculty of 

Environmental Design, University of Montreal 

Centre-ville Montréal (Québec) , Canada 

Giovanni De Paoli is dean of the Faculty of 

Environmental Design, University of Montreal and 

researcher at the GRCAO (CAD and ICT research 

group). He has a Ph.D. in CAD and architecture 

design (University of Montreal) and a diploma of 

dottore in architettura (School of architecture of 

Florence and Polytechnic school of Turin). He is the 

author of a book on CAD systems and of several 

monographs in the field of the ICT. Its articles were 

presented in several international conferences. He 

is in charge of research projects in the field of the 

design in architecture and digital devices. 

127

ict 


collaborative work 

space 

1 

introduction 

The main purpose of the proposed paper is to offer a perspective on the learning and 

teaching of architectural environment, and the development of a deeper understanding 

of architecture in the context of a design process. It presents the results of 

a number of experiments performed within the context of education dealing with the 

understanding and interpretation of an architectural site as it considers its history 

and heritage value, using the new information and communication technologies 

(ICT) currently available. The subject of this research topic is the following: How 

does one, with the aid of ICT, learn about a particular type of architecture during the 

interpretation of architectural and heritage spaces? 

This study proposes models that contribute to the understanding of the role 

of the architectural aspects of a site in the learning process, whilst integrating 

themes related to the said architecture identified in the proposal. Those models 

are an example of classifying information and making it available through 

the use of digital architecture contents. 


2 

multidisciplinarity 

11 24 26 

wiki 

12 

world heritage 

26 

Based on these themes, we have selected a location which best meets the proposal’s 

requirements, whilst facilitating an understanding of its architecture. 

The site of which we speak is the historic city of Byblos in Lebanon. Located north 

of Beirut, the city of Byblos, which has been included on UNESCO’s World Heritage 

List since 1984, boasts a number of lively, ancient neighborhoods, as well as an archaeological 

site where excavation work has unearthed a succession of abandoned 

cities revealing long-vanished civilizations. Over the course of history, the site served 

as a quarry for successive civilizations. Such was the case with the Roman theatre, 

which was used as a source of stone by the Crusaders and whose origins date back 

to 218 A.D. Today, only the first five tiers and the stage remain. When it was first 

excavated, the theatre faced the setting sun. It was moved and rebuilt near the sea 

by archaeologists, and is now located at Early Bronze Age period levels [Dunand 

1973; Jidejian 2004]. In considering this case study, we have created models using 

digital simulation methods. These models are particularly useful in being able to 

integrate the specific architectural aspects of a site so as to respond to the demands 

of the site’s architectural and spatial observer. The digital models presented have a 

dynamic, interactive and renewable character and use a multidisciplinary approach. 

The experiences are then performed and tested within a collective workspace. 

Our approach allowed us to verify the research hypothesis, which claimed that it is 

possible to simulate digital models pertaining to the comprehension of a specific 

architecture so as to allow the observer to understand notions of architecture and 

its history. The results obtained demonstrate that ICT can contribute to the improvement 

and evolution of the process of understanding an architectural space as having 

heritage character. These results can serve as a basis for the initiation of other projects 

dealing with the spatial interpretation of a site, which requires that its architectural 

and heritage character be better understood [El-Khoury 2006; De Paoli 2002]. 

Complimenting existing knowledge, this research project contributes not only to 

the development of the latest comprehensive digital modeling systems, which aid 

researchers preoccupied with architectural concerns to understand their architectural 

spaces, but also to the development of new learning tools linked to ICT and 

the creation of places which facilitate an exchange of knowledge using a multidisciplinary 

approach. The results of this research project also allow for the development 

of tools geared towards educating youth on the importance of their heritage whilst 

simultaneously teaching them how to care for it. 


3d model 

10 21 24 

constructivist pedagogy 

4 7 

e-learning 

6 10 11 

on-line presentation 

of architectural data 

8 23 

teaching theories 

7 8 11 

9 

Making use of the latest evolutions in the Web – Web 2.0 and new approaches in 

the management of the Web’s content (such as wikis), this research provides the 

required knowledge needed to create new systems of architectural management 

through proposed collaborative work spaces using the new information and communication 

technologies (Fig. 1). 

Fig. 1: Digital modeling system (p. 337). 

background and e-learning 

With regard to techniques of representation used to teach and learn architecture, 

it should be noted that in the twentieth century architecture was illustrated by 

means of drawings, plans, cross-sections and elevations produced by architects and 

archaeologists. Three-dimensional reconstructions of spaces were often created as 

well. Graphic reconstitution in the form of drawings is still widely used today for the 

expression of architecture. The restoration of ancient monuments is another way in 

which architectural heritage can be expressed. [Gillot 2006] In this chronology of architecture 

expression, (from drawings, to restoration, to life-size reconstruction and 

scale models), the use of digital modeling systems through virtual spaces, becomes 

relevant. ICTs allow for an exploration involving the simultaneous use of simulation 

and experimentation, while respecting the integrity of an architectural space. During 

our work we have discovered that the roles of these new technologies are not limited 

to simple communication and representational tools. Information technologies progressively 

transform the methodologies adopted for information management in the 

fields of architecture and particularly influence the development of learning methods 

dedicated to the teaching of the history of architecture and its role in the design 

process to architectural design students. Digital 3D models are not often designed to 

be used in learning environments. However, we aim to illustrate through this paper 

that it is possible to involve digital models in the teaching of architecture (Fig. 2). 

Fig. 2: Understanding and interpretation of an architectural site (p. 337). 

Each learning method uses a different approach to accomplish a teaching task 

whose purpose, in this case, is to bridge the gap between past and present. According 

to researchers, communication is the process of transferring information from a 

sender to a receiver through a medium of transmission. Communication, according 

to Kalay [2004], is also the ability to share information between humans and computers. 

It is a process that relies on shared knowledge between the various actors 

who interpret information. “It is relatively easy to communicate information from 

computers to humans, who posses s 

the intelligence needed to understand textual, 

numerical, graphical, and auditory messages. But it is frustratingly difficult to communicate 

information from humans to computers, who lack the intelligence and the 

ability to interpret messages, unless they are coded in a completely unambiguous 

manner” [Kalay 2004]. 

In fact, research has shown that students encounter difficulties in understanding 

the sequence and the overlapping of events over the course of a site’s history when 

using traditional learning methods. Rather than finding traditional ways of communicating 

the past, which is often hard for students to memorize, we propose a means 

whereby the students can be integrated with, and part of, this past. Students would 

deal with new experiments that would enable the definition and validation of new 

methodologies whereby acquired knowledge about a given complex of monuments 

is understood, structured and transferred. 

New research fields concerning teaching theories tend to involve students in the 

towards using digital modeling systems 

129

creation of learning tools. Teachers and learners behave as a team while constructing 

a learning content. In fact, this process is being developed and analyzed by many 

researchers, such as Jonassen [2001] for instance. His theories meet our need to 

experience technology as a tool in order to understand the history of architecture by 

architectural design students. 

In identifying the potential of learning theories, an overview is presented which 

divides them into objective “traditional” and constructive “new” theories. Nowadays, 

the new theory being used to represent knowledge is constructivism. We will argue 

in this paper that constructivism, from the perspective of Jonassen [1992], “proposes 

that since learning is a process of actively constructing knowledge by integrating 

experiences into the learner’s existing schemata, learning environments should 

support that process by providing multiple perspectives or interpretations of reality 

and enable knowledge construction in the learner through providing context-rich, 

experience-based activities.” Jonassen describes the applications of technologies 

as cognitive learning tools rather than as instructional media. He argues that these 

tools should be taken from the instructional designers and given to the learners, as 

tools for knowledge construction rather than as media of conveyance and knowledge 

acquisition. 

Jonassen writes, based on Derry’s definition [1990]: “Cognitive tools are both mental 

and computational devices that support, guide, and extend the thinking process of 

their users”. Cognitive tools are not designed to reduce information processing, that 

is, make a task easier, but to provide an environment that often requires learners to 

think harder about the subject matter domain being studied. This process generates 

thoughts that would be impossible without the tool, which is one of cognitive reflection 

and amplification that helps learners to construct their own realities. Learning is 

a process in continual construction. The knowledge is in evolution since it is enriched 

by the experiment of the learner. The environments of training should provide many 

prospects and possibilities of interpretation of reality and more specifically the interpretation 

of architectural spaces and historical sites. 

organizing, classifying and understanding 

digital architectural contents 

The research project proposed in this paper, has four main goals: 1) to propose 

to expert users as well as laypeople new ways of understanding architecture 

and heritage spaces; 2) to find new ways of representing an architectural environment 

through the reorganisation of the space, based on modern methods 

that also take into account the know-how of former civilisations; 3) to find a 

way of developing simple digital programs that facilitate access to information 

for architects and architecture students regarding different digital methodologies 

adopted by architects and designers; 4) to take advantage of the digital 

technologies available nowadays and to integrate them with other approaches 

proposed to improve the design process of an architectural space. 

The learning method proposed is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and the 

understanding of architecture by students, using ICT. It typically employs complementary 

alternatives to traditional teaching methods, such as textbooks and classrooms; 

by using digital modeling systems based on interactive education techniques 


9 

together with audio-visual media. Increasing amounts of research have shown that 

they are also used as information tools during the learning process, thereby allowing 

the users to take into account a number of different factors during the interpretation 

of an architectural space. Therefore the research project attempts also to demonstrate 

that the appropriation of the architectural and heritage aspects of a site is 

possible during the learning process. 

As a first step, we organized and described approaches for the transfer of knowledge 

that allow us to exploit representations of spaces with the help of digital modeling 

software. We then developed the information structure necessary to validate strategies 

for defining an informative representation model, using software applications 

that enabled us to create web-based interactive digital devices. Starting with modeling 

a 3D space of the Byblos site, we try to tell the story of this space through the 

ages by adding text data and images. Experiments propose web content where the 

user can interact with the proposed model and find out in real time how the shape of 

a space can vary depending on the action selected. This experiment can display the 

evolution of a space showing different layers that illustrate different shapes of the 

site throughout each stage of its past. So the user can learn by interacting with the 

digital modeling systems by experiencing friendly interfaces [Zreik 2005]. 

The digital modeling system is used as a window to the past. The activity of 

comprehension and communication inside this dynamic virtual architectural 

and historical space is more intuitive and effective than only using abstract 

technical data for plans and orthogonal views. 

digital modeling 

systems 

Furthermore, with the ICT, the students were able to access these digital models 

remotely. It will also be possible to experience these digital models in an immersive 

way using projection systems, placing the participant directly into the past whilst 

respecting the user scale. In addition, sound effects may be added to improve the 

feeling of presence. 

This digital modeling system is also shared on-line within the students’ community. 

Today’s networks and new methods of communication favor online collaborations 

and exchanges and have become the means for representing and communicating 

the complex relationships between different pieces of information [Horan 2000; 

Mitchell 1999]. 

By publishing this modeling system, the potential of the virtual dimension is exploited 

and a cohabitation of virtual models and built spaces is ensured. The virtual 

dimension of architecture can be considered to be a space for information in constant 

evolution and a living memory. In addition to the pedagogic benefit, sharing 

this prototype ensures the active participation of new actors in studying architecture 

as well as the methods of restoring the man-made environment (Fig. 3). 

Fig. 3: Evolution of an architectural space as a learning tool (p. 338). 

using digital modeling systems in a design process 

Our new method aims to provide new architectural solutions by technological 

means, with an emphasis on information gathered on design process in architecture 

and how to understand it. By using this approach, understanding architecture 

through its evolution will no longer be seen as a constraint since it can be considered 

in the very first steps of the design process while using digital tools. During our 

research we have discovered that 


131

the roles of these new technologies are being transformed into those of 

e-learning tools. Increasing amounts of research has shown that they are 

also used as information tools during the conception process, thereby allowing 

the users to take into account a number of different factors during the 

creation of an architectural space. Therefore the research attempts to demonstrate 

that the appropriation of the architectural and heritage aspects 

of a site is possible during the conception process. 

Preceded by exploratory research, this study proposes models, which contribute 

to the understanding of the role of the architectural, and heritage aspects of a site 

in the creation process, whilst integrating themes related to the said architecture 

and heritage identified in the proposal. We conducted an historical and exploratory 

research prior to our study; this earlier research introduced a digital design tool that 

integrates variable aspects of architecture that should be identified throughout the 

design process of an architectural space. 

We therefore present a cognitive and interactive device whose characteristic is that 

it can be queried in such a way as to fulfill designers’ requirements at the earliest 

design phases. It has the advantage of giving information on the architectural and 

heritage aspects of a space and how to integrate them into digital models proposed 

in order to improve the design process. 

On the basis of our research results, we propose an initial digital model. This model 

allows the designer to clearly define the design objectives. Then, a final interface is 

proposed, using digital media tools; it meets the designer’s target requirements more 

adequately. The system provides real time information for changes in architectural 

spaces and their consequences. Subsequent research contributes to the development 

of digital devices that can help the designer in the planning of an architectural 

space while providing for architectural aspects, but it also contributes to the development 

of e-learning design tools. 

Our research process validates our preliminary hypothesis: 

“it is possible to simulate digital models pertaining to the comprehension 

of a specific architecture so as to allow the observer to understand notions 

of architecture and its history” (Fig. 4). 

Fig. 4: Models produced as e-learning tools (p. 338). 

conclusion 

These reflections pave the way for a new digital approach in architecture and education, 

in response to the evident challenge of preserving the aspects of an architectural 

space and the traces of the processes by which the space was built and to take 

into account regular teaching environments by transforming them into virtual ones 

with the aid of new information and communication technologies. It is also a contribution 

to the creation of thought, perception, action and communication processes, 

an enrichment of global digital memory that will lead students to acquire a better 

understanding of the relationship between architecture and culture. The project 

contributes to progress in the area of learning environments by providing avenues 

for reflection on how to best support and facilitate the interaction between students 


9 

and the material being learned. By using digital modeling systems, we also help the 

development of a dynamic virtual architectural history. In this case the virtual world 

connects students (present) to the historical site (past). 

It is not merely a question of proposing experiments to students for communicating 

a range of information such as that summarized in historical texts, 

but rather a means of experiencing the building in order to feel the memory 

of the place [Khayat 2001]. 

Through this work we explored different avenues to achieving the goals set forth 

in the research project. Our initial desire to understand architecture and heritage 

spaces led us to delve further into the concept of e-learning. This reflection process 

enabled us to define the themes for the Byblos site. We reflected on the types of 

solutions that could be brought to bear. 

Our conclusion is that research must not lead to the automatic generation 

of solutions. Rather, its aim is to provide a means of understanding spaces 

for the improvement of e-learning, using information and communication 

technologies. 

The reconstitution of a building facilitates not only the understanding of its ruins, 

but also the dialogue between professionals and non-experts. The creation of digital 

modeling systems provides a new opportunity for teachers, students and the public 

alike to better understand the tangible and intangible aspects of architectural spaces 

as well as the history of a site. 

The results of this research project could be used for pedagogical purposes. Teaching 

the history of vanished architectural sites could be made more accessible by means 

of models to aid in our understanding of these sites. It is in this direction that we 

continue our experimentation; our aim is also to contribute to the advancement 

of knowledge by integrating the expertise of the various disciplines involved in 

e-learning, which can only be enriched as a result. ITCs become a unifying element 

between these different fields and thereby help to facilitate the process of implementing 

a collaborative workspace. 

references → 


133

eferences 

De Paoli, G. 2000. Procedural Models and Intelligent Design Assistants in Architecture. 

In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Artificial Intelligence 

(Limoges,France, 14-15 May, 2002). 

Derry, S. J. 1990. Learning Strategies for Acquiring Useful Knowledge. In Dimensions of Thinking 

and Cognitive Instruction, eds. Jones, B. F. and L. Idol. New Jork: Erlbaum. 

Dunand, M. 1939-1973. Fouilles de Byblos, Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 

Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, Adrien Maisonneuve. 

El-Khoury, N., G. De Paoli, and T. Dorta. 2006. Digital Reconstruction as a Means of Understanding 

a Building’s History – Case Studies of a Multilayer Prototype. In Proceedings of the 24th Conference 

on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, eds. Bourdakis, 

V. and D. Charitos (Volos, Greece, 2006). 

El-Khoury, N., and G. De Paoli. 2006. The Backstage of Byblos’ Roman Theatre: New Digital Devices 

Using Information and Communications Technology (ICT). In Proceedings the 7th International 

Symposyum on Virtual reality, archaeology and Cultural heritage (VAST), eds. Ioannides,M., 

D. Arnold, F. Nicolucci, and K. Cyprus: Mania Éditeurs. 

Gillot, C. 2006. La restitution du patrimoine archéologique bâti, aux moyens des technologies 

de l’information et de la communication. État de l’art. In Rapport de recherche GRCAO, projet CRSH 

Contribution d’un moyen informatique à la validation d’hypothèses de restitution architecturale 


9 

dans le domaine du patrimoine bâti ancien. Montréal. 

Horan, T. 2000. Digital Places: Building Our City of Bits. Washington: ULI-the Urban Land Institute. 

Jidejian, N. 2004. Byblos à travers les âges. Beyrouth: Librairie Orientale. 

Jonnasen, D. H. 2001. Technology as Cognitive Tools: Learners as Designers. 

http://itech1.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper1/paper1.html. 

Duffy, T. M., and D. H. Jonnassen. 1992. Constructivism and the Technology of Instruction: 

a Conversation. Hillsdale, New Jork: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. 

Kalay, Y. 2004. Architecture’s New Media. Boston: The MIT Press. 

Khayat, G. 2001. Cultural Heritage and Tourism Development Project Urban Conservation 

Design Studies, Council of Development & Reconstruction, Republic of Lebanon, 

Urban Conservation Design Studies, CDR, AAA Atelier des Architectes Associés. 

In Final Preliminary Report. Beyrouth. 

Mitchell, W. J. 1999. E-topia: Urban life, Jim--But not as we know it. Cambridge: The MIT Press. 

Zreik, K., and B. Reza. 2005. Augmented Heritage: “A Sustainable ICT Challenge”. In Augmented 

Heritage, New Era for Architectural Design, Civil Engineering and Urban Planning, eds. Zreik, K., R. 

Beheshti, and O. Fakouch. France: Europia. 


135

10 

› digital graphics 

representation for architecture 

@gd: Keeping a Record 

of Learning Paths on Digital 

Graphics Representation 

for Architecture 

› learning objects 

› learning paths 

This paper describes the experiences developed using a virtual 

environment, accessible on the Internet, @GD Repository 

(www.ufpel.tche.br/ifm/@gd). It illustrates the characteristics 

proposed for the environment and the phase of development 

and experimentation of the repository. The first part of this 

essay describes the context of work in which this repository is 

inserted, giving emphasis to the purpose of its implementation. 

Following the description of the context, the functional and 

technical characteristics, which are already implemented, are 

described to finally report the experiments which have outlined 

the methodology of production and which gave context to the 

didactic material through the register of the learning paths. 

136 

browsing architecture. metadata and beyond

10 

@gd 

adriane borda 

Universidade Federal de Pelotas 

Pelotas, Brazil 

www.ufpel.tche.br 

Graduated in Architecture – UFPEL, Brazil,1983; 

PhD in Education – Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain, 

2001; Master in Architecture – UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro, 

Brazil, 1991; Member of Research group of teaching/ 

learning of Digital Graphics (GEGRADI), lecturer at 

the Master in Architecture, UFPEL. 

neusa felix 




Graduated in Architecture – UFPEL, Brazil, 1979; PhD 

in Architecture – Strathclyde University, Glasgow, 

Scotland, 1996; Postdoctoral period-research 

in Virtual Architecture and VWorlds – Faculty of 

Architecture, University of Sydney, Australia, 2003. 

Member of Research group of teaching/learning 

of Digital Graphics (GEGRADI), Director of the 

Post-Graduation of Digital Graphics, lecturer at the 

Master in Architecture, UFPEL. 

luisa dalla vecchia 




Graduated in Architecture – UFPEL, Brazil, 2004; 

Specialist in Digital Graphics – UFPEL, Brazil, 2006; 

Master in Architecture – UFSC, Santa Catarina, 

Brazil, 2007. Member of Research group of teaching/ 

learning of Digital Graphics (GEGRADI), lecturer at 

the Faculty of Architecture, UNOESC, Brazil. 

janice pires 




Graduated in Architecture – UFPEL, Brazil, 1986; 

Specialist in Digital Graphics – UFPEL, Brazil, 2007; 

Member of Research group of teaching/learning of 

Digital Graphics (GEGRADI). 

137



1 3 

10 

the context of work in which this 

repository is inserted 

The context of the @GD is characterized by the experimentation of technologies 

capable of increasing the potential of teaching/learning processes in a public institution 

of higher education in the south of Brazil, namely the Universidade Federal de 

Pelotas. Most of the experiments to produce the learning objects and to use the 

repository are carried out in an educational environment, which involves research, 

post-graduation, distance learning and extracurricular activities. The main activities 

come from proposals from the Modela Pelotas 1 , developed by the research group 

GEGRADI, which involves under graduation and graduation students. It is important 

to point out that the researchers who take part in GEGRADI are all teachers in the 

Digital Graphics post-graduation course. This course has the objective of offering a 

specialized knowledge in Digital Graphics for professionals who need to use digital 

images and models to increase the potential of communication and information processes. 

The process of didactic material production in digital format, in the context 

of GEGRADI, was gradually established among the researchers of the group, in this 

context the collaborative construction was focused on the post-graduation course. 

Considering the research project Modela Pelotas, the students are motivated to 

choose an architectural element from the city of Pelotas, Brazil, to contribute to the 

project’s development and at the same time the production of the didactic material. 

With the aim of attending to the specific needs of the academic and scientific 

context in the area of Digital Graphics Representation for Architecture, the virtual 

learning environment is being developed with the main proposal of systemizing a 

collaborative process of didactic material production, supported by the concept of 

“Learning Objects” 2 . Experiments to structure different formats of learning objects 

are carried out in order to acquire the highest level of granularity possible, observing 

the need to reuse each of the objects. A course, a unit, a topic, a problem, a 

technique can determine a higher or lower potential of being associated to different 

educational contexts or to build up new learning objects depending on the way they 

are structured. 

the functional and technical characteristics 

The @GD Repository makes it possible to catalogue, to store and to have unlimited 

access to this didactic material. Furthermore, it proposes that each user can become 

a co-author of the used didactic material, either validating it or registering a contribution 

to improve it. However the collaborative process has not yet been established, 

it has only been experimented within the context of the mentioned course. 

Five main options of interaction with the system have been implemented: for 

the administration of the system; for the visualization of the didactic materials; 

for the insertion of these materials; for the exclusion and for editing these 

didactic materials. 

The Insertion option allows the registration and storage of the learning object 

through filling out 20 items referring to the metadata, which attempt to describe it. 

These items build up a smaller group of the metadata specified by the Dublin Core 

(www.dublincore.org) pattern. The selection of this smaller group seeks to consider 

the specific characteristics of the kinds of learning objects related to the @GD context. 

It is intended that the intensive use of the environment evaluate the pertinence 

of the metadata used, establishing a process of continuous improvement of the sys- 

@gd 

139

metadata 

1 6 8 15 

17 19 21 

repository 

8 11 14 16 

21 26 

tem. It is important to point out that the system and the objects are not structured 

for interaction with distance learning platforms, for example, as occurs with learning 

objects generated according to the SCORM standard (Sharable Content Object 

Reference Model) (http://www.cinted.ufrgs.br/files/tutoriais/scorm). 

The system allows four levels of access: 

User Level 1 – System Administrator: this is the highest level in which the user has 

total authority to manager the registered objects and the interaction possibilities 

of any user, including the admission of new users. 

User Level 2 – Objects Administrator: the user can manage all registered objects 

but he does not have permission to manage the system tools related to the users 

options, or include or change user level. 

User Level 3 – Collaborator Level: at this level the user can visualize all objects, 

download any of them and upload new objects. Changes or the exclusion of registered 

objects are not allowed. 

User Level 4 – Visitor Level: at this level the user can only visualize the learning objects. 

The technological resources used to the development of the @GD system 

are based on free software philosophy. 

e-learning 

6 9 11 

The web programming is constructed mainly using the language PHP and to the database 

connections uses MySQL. In order to manipulate the database PhpMyAdmin 

was used, which allowed visualization in table format, facilitating the data organization. 

Two data tables were structured: one related to the registered users data and 

another related to the learning objects and their metadata. 

the experiments 

The @GD environment was structured and is being evaluated in an educational 

context, which integrates teaching/learning activities, research activities and online 

extra-curricular courses directed to Architecture. The contents are delimited from 

the identification and systemization of knowledge structures capable to explore 

the computer graphics tools to support different phases of the architectural design. 

In this context the didactic materials are generated, in a digital format to support 

face to face and e-learning situations, based on autonomous learning the content is 

accessible to be re-used in multiple educational contexts. The research activities are 

concentrated on delimitation of knowledge structures and investigation related to 

the adequate methodologies to produce and store the learning objects. The focus of 

this work is directed towards the definition of an adequate methodology, describing 

the strategies of the @GD Project. The strategies have to establish a framework 

of the didactic material stored in the repository. Using the @GD Repository, in this 

experimental phase, enabled the research group to detect problems associated to 

the proposal of structuring the existing didactic material under the concept of learning 

objects, and their characteristics of granularity and usability. Considering the 

large amount of time used in the production of the learning objects associated to the 

human and technological resources necessary, the study is pointing to the attribution 

of high granularity for the learning objects, increasing the possibility of using these 

materials in many educational contexts. Thus, 

for each material, the possibility of breaking it up into smaller and self-sufficient 

contents is identified. The proposal is to optimize the storage system 

to avoid the use of information in a duplicated manner. 


concept map 

3d models 

9 10 21 24 

learning path 

8 

10 

The experimentation developed before this proposal registered the occurrence of 

didactic materials with similar parts connected in different ways, resulting in distinct 

learning objects. However, the division into small and specific objects can establish 

a complex registration effort, especially to define a specific type of metadata: the 

description of relationships with other learning objects. 

the methodology to register the learning paths 

In the current context, some specific learning paths are being outlined in Courses, 

Units of study and Activities, which associate learning objects in a particular manner 

in order to accomplish the defined objectives. Initially all this generated information 

was registered as learning objects that culminated in repeated data in the storage 

system. In order to avoid this problem the learning paths are being registered 

as another kind of metadata instead of as learning objects. This kind of metadata 

is structured as a “concept map”, graphically representing the relationship among 

groups of learning objects, which compose the mentioned learning paths. NOVAK 

and CAÑAS 3 point out that “concept maps” have the capability to explicit a cognitive 

structure in such a way to make evident the relations among groups of concepts 

from representations and links of them. These maps are associated with each one of 

these learning objects, allowing the addition of numerous paths, which are registered 

as these objects are used again. The “Cmap Tools” (IHMC – University of West 

Florida) are used in order to facilitate the map production. This tool allows the construction 

of maps by individuals or in a collaborative way. The maps are published 

on the Internet either for visualisation or to promote a collaborative process. Based 

on this open structure the maps can be freely enlarged without any rules previously 

established. Thus these maps are also used as an interface to the learning paths. 

The previously mentioned courses of Digital Graphics for Architecture are organised 

in a Virtual Learning Environment, based on learning paths. 

The learning path on figure 1 characterizes the Geometric Modelling class, offered 

regularly at the Digital Graphics Post-Graduation Course. The focus of the class is 

the methodology to produce 3D models, which defines the trajectories. These trajectories 

connect learning objects or even other specific trajectories, relative to each 

unit or topic. The trajectories are established by configured metadata pertaining to 

each individual object. 

Fig. 1: Learning path of a Geometric Modelling class of the Digital Graphics Post- 

Graduation Course (p. 339). 

In the trajectory in figure 1 the learning object “cyclic symmetry”, of higher granularity, 

is in the context of the topic “symmetry”, which is connected to the unit “analysis 

methodology of geometric form and composition”. If a user of the repository 

accesses the object of higher granularity, through this kind of metadata, they can 

understand the context in which this learning object can be applied and can still 

experiment the use of this object in different ways, creating new learning paths. 

The concept map showed in figure 2 demonstrates the learning path for studies 

of Symmetry used during the Geometric Modelling course for the chosen historical 

building located in the city centre of Pelotas. 

Fig. 2: Learning path of a specific activity of a discipline (p. 339). 

This trajectory in figure 2 becomes metadata associated to each one of the objects 

that the student used to carry out the study of symmetry. 

@gd 

141

The concept map showed in figure 3 demonstrates a specific learning path used 

during an extracurricular activity for the Geometric Modelling of the chosen historical 

building. The focus of the course is the methodology to produce and publish 3D 

historical models on the Internet using Google Earth and SketchUp. Several objects 

that build up this trajectory are common to the trajectory of the post-graduation 

course. With the characterization of the conceptual maps as metadata there is no 

need to configure a learning object for each course, avoiding the repetition of data in 

the repository. 

Fig. 3: The GPS_3D Course, an extracurricular activity (p. 340). 

the results 

One problem faced was related to the generation of learning objects with high 

granularity, which consequently increases the usability, allowing to build other 

objects based on combinations, to be used in different situations and in various 

educational contexts. 

In order to generate a metadata system able to indicate the relationships 

among objects, demonstrating the possibilities to compound learning objects 

with lower granularity responding to specific learning problems, the research 

group introduced the use of concept maps. 

It is important to point out that the use of concept maps facilitated the process to 

identify possibilities to break the didactic material into small contents, being established 

as a methodology to organize the learning objects. Moreover, the students 

were motivated to use concept maps to describe their own learning processes, the 

results have been contributing to the repository to keep a record of the learning 

paths. The experimentation based on the use of concept maps as an interface to 

visualize and access the learning objects during the courses suggested the aggregation 

of these maps as metadata in the @GD Repository. The use of concept maps 

as another type of metadata has been experimented, attempting to register the 

mentioned relationships, considering that these maps allow the visibility of associations 

among learning objects and at the same time keep a record of learning paths 

used on courses of Digital Graphics Representation for Architecture. 

Currently the proposal is to evaluate the results and to share the experience with 

the scientific community specific to the field of digital graphics, with the intention of 

expanding the users of the system. 


10 

notes 

1 Borda, F. N., A. B. A. S. Heidrich, F. Abad, G. Lucas, and A. L. Modela Pelotas. In Gráfica 2005. 

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Graphics Engineering for Arts and Design 

e XVII Simpósio Nacional de Geometria Descritiva e Desenho Técnico (Recife, Fundação Antônio 

dos Santos Abranches, 2005). 

2 Polsani, P. R. 2003. “Use and Abuse of Reusable Learning Objects. Journal of Digital Information”. 

http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/?vol=3&iss=4. 

3 Novak, J., and A. Canas. 2006. “The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct Them”. 

http://cmap.ihmc.us. 

@gd 

143

11 


› institutional repository 

144 

virtual studio: 

A Digital Repository in 

Architectural Education 

› social construction 

› studio 

The “virtual studio” is a project exploring the potential of virtual 

learning environments to augment conventional studio culture 

in the Lincoln School of Architecture. Staff saw an opportunity to 

bridge the long-acknowledged divide in learning between theory, 

technology and studio practice by linking a wide range of digital 

material and media from across the curriculum within a single 

virtual space, both formal learning objects created by staff and 

work produced by students. Early in its development the project 

was expanded to link with Lincoln’s JISC-funded Institutional 

Repository, which aims to establish a digital repository of teaching 

and learning objects and peer-reviewed research across the 

University. The School of Architecture was to be an initial test 

bed for the creation of a more generic, university-wide repository. 

However, architecture is an atypical discipline; its emphasis is 

more visual than literary, more practice than research-based and 

its approach to teaching and learning is more fluid and varied than 

either the sciences or the humanities. If we accept that it is social 

interests that underlie the development of technology rather 

than any inevitable or rational progress, the question arises as to 

what extent an institutional repository can reconcile architectural 

interests with the interests of other disciplines. Architecture 

and the design disciplines are marginal actors in the debate 

surrounding digital archive development and they bring problems 

to the table that are not easily resolved given available software 

and that lie outside the interests of most other actors in academia.

andy earl 

Lincoln School of Architecture, 

University of Lincoln 

Brayford Pool, Lincoln, England 

www.lincoln.ac.uk/architecture 

In practice as an architect, he has explored 

community, co-operative and design and build 

practice. In his academic career his consistent 

interests are in design processes and the integration 

of design and technology. The work is as much about 

process as product, exploring sustainable education, 

practice and technologies. 

carl o’coill 

Lincoln School of Architecture, 

University of Lincoln 


www.lincoln.ac.uk/architecture 

His research interests include the cultural politics of 

architectural design, the political economy of urban 

development, focusing on the UK context and East 

Africa, public participation in architecture and urban 

regeneration as well as architectural visualization 

and virtual reality as they relate to user involvement 

in the design process. 

joss winn 

Centre for Educational Research 

and Development (CERD) 


www.lincoln.ac.uk/cerd 

Joss has an MA in Film Archiving from the University 

of East Anglia and previously, he held posts as 

Audiovisual Archivist at Amnesty International, 

Project Manager for Amnesty’s Digital Asset 

Management system and worked in Collections 

Management as Moving Image Archivist at the BFI 

National Film and Television Archive. 

145

146

introduction 

Institutional repositories (IRs) are an increasingly widespread if relatively 

recent feature of the uk academic establishment. Their common precursor 

was the subject-based repository, the scope of which can be institutional, 

national or international. One could argue that it is the multidisciplinary 

nature of today’s IRs, rather than their geography, that places them in contrast 

to the digital archives of the past. 

presentation 

digital archive 

1 13 14 


9 24 26 

11 

The path to the present preoccupation with open-access, multidisciplinary IRs is well 

documented. Pickton & Barwick [2006], Ware [2004] and Lynch [2003] all argue that 

IRs offer significant benefits over single-discipline archives to a range of stakeholders: 

enhanced visibility and prestige for the higher-education institution; greater 

impact for academics concerned with publishing, as well as for funding bodies; 

improved learning opportunities for students; and the increasing dissemination of 

scholarly knowledge to the public at large. Potential pitfalls are identified, generally 

focusing around issues of content generation, rights management and long-term 

stewardship. For many authors, however, multidisciplinarity is a key step in the 

development of digital archives, part of the potential disaggregation of academic 

publishing and the enrichment of scholarly communication in general. Lynch in particular 

believes that “the scholarly enterprise is sufficiently diverse that... disciplinary 

repositories will never be fully comprehensive” [Lynch 2003]. 

However, the notion of a multidisciplinary archive inevitably raises the issue 

of disciplinary and professional boundaries and begs the question, can academics 

and students working in different disciplines be easily accommodated 

within the same archival space? 

As Katherine Arens points out, “the boundaries between academic disciplines are 

considerably less easily interrogated than the boundaries between geopolitical 

entities”, since they are defined not only by scholarly knowledge, but also by culture, 

that is, by values, norms, practices and modes of discourse [Arens 1996]. 

Implicit in many conventional interpretations of the development of new technologies 

is a notion of progress. Technical innovation is typically described as an orderly, 

linear process, subject to a continuous series of refinements and improvements as it 

moves from pure to applied research, to development and finally to maturity [Bijker 

and Law 1994: 17]. This is a utilitarian discourse where maturity represents a point of 

closure within which the technology has achieved optimum efficiency and offers the 

greatest benefit to the greatest number of potential end users. Such an interpretation, 

it could be argued, underlies Lynch’s views about the “the strategic importance 

of institutional repositories” and their wider benefits over earlier subject-based 

archives [Lynch 2003]. 

An alternative reading of the processes of technological development can be found 

in the theory of the social construction of technology or SCOT. 

SCOT shows us that the ultimate form of a technical artefact is not the result 

of simply selecting the “best” solution to a particular problem. Technological 

problems and solutions are constructed through negotiations within and 

virtual studio 

147

among relevant interest groups. The aim of a scot analysis is to unravel 

the identity and relative position of each constituent actor in this process 

of negotiation and explain the interests, alliances and exchanges that 

underlie the definition of such “problems” and “solutions”. 

constructivist theory 

7 8 9 13 

It is not within the scope of this brief paper to undertake a full SCOT analysis of the 

historical development of institutional repositories. The aim here is merely to place 

the difficulties the University of Lincoln has experienced in attempting to create an 

IR fit for use by architectural students and tutors within the context of the wider 

interests at play in the creation of archival software in general. 

the virtual studio and the lirolem project 

The Virtual Studio project was established in 2006-07 and was initially supported 

and funded by the University of Lincoln as a “Teaching Fellowship” initiative. Essentially 

it was conceived as a web-based teaching and learning resource for students 

and staff that would complement the practice-based activities that take place in the 

physical environment of the design studio. It has two principal aims. 

The first of these is to encourage peer-to-peer learning amongst students 

by permitting them to draw upon a newly created digital archive of student 

design projects and written work from previous years. The second is to 

integrate students’ learning in technology, history and theory units with 

their understanding of design practice. 

web-based teaching 

6 9 10 

LIROLEM, or the Lincoln Repository of On-line Learning Materials, is a separate but 

linked project funded by the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) under 

its Repositories and Preservation Programme. JISC provided funding to support the 

University’s efforts in developing an institution-wide repository. The Department 

of Architecture and the Virtual Studio were to be used as an initial test-bed for the 

creation of this repository, prior to its rollout across other departments. 

To begin, let us examine the circumstances that led to the creation of Virtual Studio. 

The Virtual Studio was intended to address a very practical problem related to peerto-peer 

learning. 

Previously, there was no systematic way for students or staff at the Lincoln 

School of Architecture to access examples of high-quality student work from 

previous years. Hard copies of written theses, paper-based presentations 

and physical models are inherently difficult to store due to their bulk and their 

tendency to deteriorate over time. 

While individual staff did habitually maintain examples of student work for teaching 

purposes, and students did regularly ask to see earlier work, management of and 

access to these materials was necessarily ad hoc. The Virtual Studio was intended 

to provide a visual tool for architecture students to self-archive their work in digital 


11 

formats, to comment on this material themselves as well as commenting on work 

deposited by other students. Such comments would complement tutors’ appraisals 

recorded during assessments, to form unified digital case studies of student projects 

which could be made available to all. 

Beyond the practical problems of storage, the web offers a facility to draw 

links between diverse materials and for the user to determine what links they 

themselves will make in accessing the material. 

This presented an opportunity to disaggregate teaching and learning. At present, as 

in many schools of architecture, the teaching of architecture at Lincoln is still quite 

compartmentalised. Design teaching takes place in small tutorial groups in a studio 

environment where learning is assessed through the drawings students produce. 

History and theory is taught to large numbers of students in a lecture setting and has 

traditionally been assessed through written work, essays and dissertations. Technology 

is taught in a lecture setting and, while integrated in design work, is most 

systematically assessed in separate written assignments. 

Understandably, students’ learning has tended to reflect the compartmentalised nature 

of teaching and assessment. One rarely sees references to historical precedents 

or debate in the design work that is produced. Equally, the depth of investigation 

one sees in written technology assignments sometimes does not find a parallel in the 

strategies employed in the detail design of studio projects. 

Ideally the design studio should closely resemble the new learning environments 

that are being developed under the banner of “blended learning”. The 

studio project is the focus for investigations of both theoretical and technical 

propositions and it should naturally evolve towards an integrated design. 

The Virtual Studio was conceived as a comprehensive collection of web-based digital 

resources – staff research papers, lecture slides and notes, links to off-site material 

in history, theory and technology, student design work and written work, images 

of physical models, video “fly-throughs” of student visualisations, video clips of 

key buildings and places – that would encourage students to think about scholarly 

enquiry as something that can happen across all areas of study. It was to support 

wider efforts in the School to establish a culture of “designerly research” where intellectual 

activities that have traditionally taken place outside the studio are equally 

embedded in design projects. 

For example, a student becoming interested in the idea of “transparency” in architecture 

could begin research by finding material on the subject in the Virtual Studio with 

resources on or links to: 

› Texts from the heroic age of modernism extolling a crystalline architecture; 

› Technical details for glazing from manufacturers’ catalogues ; 

› A video clip of Philip Johnson’s Glass House; 

› Related design work of students from previous years; 

› Websites of architectural practices known for their exploitation of transparency; 

› A student dissertation on the topic; 

› A staff research paper examining the semiotics of Norman Foster’s Reichstag 

conversion. 


149

The student would then be able to bring back into the design studio their 

own analysis, blending cultural, environmental, constructional and designerly 

ways of thinking. They would have something to contribute to an on-line 

discussion group preparing an exhibition on the subject. 

They would also be accumulating technical details ready for the detailed design of 

their own building. One of the outcomes of their project could be a computer-generated 

fly-through demonstrating the spatial qualities of their proposal, while another 

might be a rigorously researched design-support document. 

Thus the Virtual Studio would complement the physical studio by encouraging 

students to de-compartmentalise their thinking and draw upon a more 

diverse range of resources within the design process. 

Recognition of the need for a digital repository of some form and related hardware 

emerged early in the project when the staff leading the Virtual Studio were confronted 

with the limited storage capacity available within the constraints of the 

University’s existing IT systems. Equally, it was recognised that the University’s VLE 

software – Blackboard and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Portal Server – could not 

easily support a complex self-indexing and cataloguing system for stored resources. 

The University’s Teaching and Learning Development Office was composing an application 

to JISC for funding to support an institution-wide repository and a decision 

was made to include the aims of the Virtual Studio within the broader application. 

JISC responded with an offer of funding and suggested that the Virtual Studio should 

be an initial test bed for the creation of a more generic, university-wide repository. 

This was the genesis of the LIROLEM project. At the time, the general consensus 

amongst all staff involved was that a repository that could meet the exacting 

demands of architecture would invariably be capable of meeting the less demanding 

requirements of other departments. 

A project officer was appointed and a process of consultation began. In order to 

identify user requirements and inform any necessary, future software development 

“user stories” were gathered from architecture staff and students. EPrints 3 was 

finally selected as the preferred software solution because of its capabilities for storage, 

retrieval and display of multimedia resources, such as high-resolution images 

and video clips, alongside textual material. 

To meet wider institutional and funding requirements, the Virtual Studio was 

now envisioned as part of a larger Open Access (OA) service allowing users 

to develop content on a personal, departmental and institutional basis, and 

to manage that content so that it could not only be easily retrieved but made 

available to the broader HE community. 

It was also to follow the aims of the wider repository movement, specifically to demonstrate 

the interconnectedness of the processes of research design and practical 

resolution and to make ideas, information and illustrations more widely accessible. 

While the period of funding from JISC is now over, both the repository and Virtual 

Studio projects are still ongoing and some fundamental problems are yet to be 


11 

resolved. In many ways, the difficulties the Lincoln team have been experiencing 

in attempting to combine the aims of the Virtual Studio with the wider aims of the 

LIROLEM project emerge out of the historical and disciplinary interests that are 

embedded in the present-day technologies of digital archives. As will be discussed 

below, these interests diverge significantly from the culture that defines the discipline 

of architectural design. 

institutional repositories, virtual studios 

and conflicting disciplinary interests 

Academic repositories have largely grown out of the scientific community 

wishing to make their research available to peers. One of the earliest repositories 

of this kind is http://arxiv.org, a subject-based repository initially 

tailored to the interests of physics researchers, but now catering to a wider 

scientific community including mathematicians, computer scientists and 

biologists. 

institutional repository 

tagging 

user interface 

1 3 6 22 24 

Academics in the humanities were slower to take up digital technologies. In part, 

this can be attributed to the lower levels of funding available to support activities in 

the humanities, but it is also a reflection of differing publishing regimes and research 

cultures. Scientists typically publish in periodicals while monographs play a more 

central role in the humanities [Johnson 2004]. The greater drive to disseminate in 

the sciences, one could argue, is also attributable to a more firmly embedded peer 

review process, as scientific method is concerned with the replication or refutation of 

research results through repeated experiment. 

Historically, scholarly communication in both the sciences and the humanities 

has been based upon engagement with published literature. There are still 

arguments continuing for and against subject-based and institutional repositories, 

and about the relative benefits of digital archives to researchers in the 

sciences and the humanities. 

oai 

1 3 13 

However, it is clear that the software that has emerged to support both academic 

communities closely follows a text-based publishing model, a means of making 

digital versions of pre-print or published texts more widely available to peers. This 

trajectory of technological development does not reflect the interests of the many 

design disciplines existing in academia, or the interests of architectural academics 

and students. 

As Gary Stevens points out, architecture occupies a fundamentally different place 

within academia than that of pure science or the humanities. Obviously, communication 

in the design disciplines has been based as much if not more on design practice 

than on the textual interpretation of designed objects, and on the dissemination of 

drawings and images as much as on engagement with published papers. Moreover, 

knowledge creation in architecture does not follow the same pathways as most 

other disciplines where research is a “primary mission, systematically carried out by 

most staff and upper-level students, and expected to filter down into teaching”. 


151

Innovation and knowledge creation by architects within the professional 

arena external to the universities arguably holds a greater importance for 

students and for many staff in architecture schools [Stevens 1998: 182]. 

It is only now that the text-based publishing model of IRs has reached a level of 

maturity that development efforts are beginning to turn to meet the expectations 

of more marginal groups. Most significantly for the design disciplines, mainstream 

developers of archival systems have recently begun to integrate capabilities for the 

storage, retrieval and display of multimedia resources into their software solutions. 

Multimedia capabilities, such as provided by EPrints 3, are vital to the creation of 

any design-based teaching and learning archive and without them Lincoln’s Virtual 

Studio and LIROLEM project would not have been possible in any form. 

However, notwithstanding recent explorations in multimedia, it is clear that 

preferences of designers remain a marginal concern for the interest groups 

that dominate the development of institutional repositories. 

The partial closure of current technical “solutions” around dominant interests is 

evident in the restricted list of “problems” most commonly identified with the shift 

from subject-based to institutional repositories, converging as they do around issues 

of content generation, rights management and long-term stewardship. This presents 

continuing difficulties for the architect or the designer for whom actual conflicts 

between competing disciplinary cultures are clearly a significant problem. Indeed, 

without the intervention of JISC in setting the parameters of the LIROLEM project 

around the requirements of architecture staff and students, it is likely that the needs 

of designers and all of the aims of the Virtual Studio would have been forgotten 

within the consensus emerging from actors with coincident interests in other departments. 

This dynamic is clearly evident in the negotiations that took place over the 

appearance and functionality of the repository’s user interface. 

A requirement for “visual thinking” in design represents another significant difference 

between architecture and the science and humanities disciplines. 

In order to design it is necessary to be visually aware and this visual skill is 

something that students learn both within and outside the design studio by 

engaging with design problems and designed environments in a creative, 

critical and often intuitive manner [Moore 2003: 25]. 

Equally, this is the way staff and students will engage with any web-based user interface 

presented as a teaching and learning tool. Staff and student criticism of tools 

like Blackboard and Lincoln’s “Virtual Campus”, an earlier incarnation of a similar 

tool, have most frequently focused on both the poor usability of interfaces and their 

poor aesthetic quality. 

Within the LIROLEM project, it quickly became clear from the “user stories” that 

were generated in initial consultations with architecture staff and students that a 

“designerly”, dynamic user interface that encourages participation is really the key 

to the success of the Virtual Studio. Although the repository/archive functionality is 

central to requirements, rather than being the primary focus of the Studio, the actual 

repository should be invisible to the architect who has little interest, patience or time 

for the publishing workflow that EPrints requires. 


However, the distance between what was required in terms of a user interface 

and what is offered in existing software solutions based on the textbased 

publishing model was so great that the costs of software development 

would have been prohibitive. 

11 

The project officer describes the choice that was made: 

“So at this point, I suggested that we shift the emphasis of the project. I felt that it 

would be a waste of resources to chase user requirements that we had little chance 

of meeting within the resources of the JISC Project. So I concentrated on ensuring 

the long-term sustainability of the repository, as we really needed a repository, which 

would attract continued and wider Institutional support”. 

The consequence is a typical institutional compromise, a repository that has been 

adapted to accommodate multimedia resources effectively but with an interface that 

is largely text based, rather than visual, and that is unattractive and cumbersome 

to use. It will take a student a full 17 steps to upload one piece of design work, evidently 

several steps too far judging by the fact that only a handful of students have 

so far elected to upload their work. 

An issue closely related to concerns about the user interface is the need to develop 

a sense of “community” within the Virtual Studio to promote greater participation. 

Unlike researchers in other disciplines using subject-based repositories who may 

well identify with peers through the text based materials they collectively produce, 

understandably, architects tend to identify closely with communicative environments 

that are consciously and purposely designed for their aesthetic appeal. 

Thus the absence of a graphically appealing interface between the user 

and the repository constitutes a barrier to the creation of a vibrant webbased 

community. 

Finally, there is the issue of metadata creation, the systems of cataloguing, indexing 

and searching that students will use to identify and retrieve material from the archive/Virtual 

Studio. Traditional repositories are generally quite rigid in the way that 

they demand adherence to a consistent and coherent set of standards for metadata. 

This rigidity reflects the rational and objective processes of knowledge creation upon 

which research in the sciences rests. As previously discussed, designerly enquiry in 

architecture is intuitive and subjective, as well as rational and objective. 

Anthony Antoniades describes the process thus, “Fantasy is the catalyst 

of imagination, while imagination is the filter through which fantasy must 

pass in order to become an ingredient of reality” [Antoniades 1990: 11]. 

The process behind the creation of an architectural design might easily 

be driven by common links originally drawn between a piece of poetry, 

an image of a texture and a philosophical argument. In this context conventional 

cataloguing systems break down. 

Being aware of the multidimensional nature of the creative process, the Virtual Studio 

was originally envisaged as a fluid environment where students could describe 


153

and link resources incrementally, effectively creating their own indexing system 

by commenting on their work and the work of others and by tagging resources. 

The funding received from JISC was what ultimately allowed the Virtual studio to 

progress, but this also placed an onus upon project participants to create an archive 

that could achieve some level of interoperability. LIROLEM was designed to comply 

with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) protocol for metadata harvesting and use of 

recognised metadata standards. However, the team did decide to use some project 

funding to develop EPrints capacity for user tagging, creating a fluid indexing system 

that could work alongside the more rigid standards. This tagging facility has yet to 

be tested with a significant body of users. 

conclusion 

When confronted by the reality of dominant interests embedded in existing technologies, 

the shortest route and sometimes the only route to a project conclusion is 

to fall in line with those interests. On one level, the aims of the Virtual Studio were 

far too ambitious to sit easily within the budget and time constraints of the JISCfunded 

LIROLEM project. On another level, the difficulties the Architecture Department 

experienced in attempting to negotiate its interests within the context of a 

programme to develop an institution-wide repository, merely served to highlight the 

marginal status of the design disciplines in debates about this technology in general. 

As the theorists behind SCOT tell us, scenarios taking place in a micro-situation often 

reflect the interests at play amongst actors operating at a much wider scale. 


11 

references 

Antoniades, A. 1990. The Poetics of Architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. 

Arens, K. 1996. Austria and Other Margins: Reading Culture. Columbia, Sc: Camden House. 

Bijker, W., and J. Law. 1997. Shaping Technology/Building Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: 

The MIT Press. 

Bijker, W. 1989. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology 

and History of Technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 

Clifford, A. L. 2003. Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship 

in the Digital Age. ARL Bimonthly Report 226 (February). 

http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml. 

Johnson, R. 2004. The Future of Scholarly Communication in the Humanities: Adaptation 

or Transformation? http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00007608/01/SPARC_CELJ_paper_2004.pdf. 

Lynch, C. 2003. Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship. 

In Overlooking the Visual, Moore, K. The Journal of Architecture 8, no. 1 (March): 25-40. 

Pickton, M. J., and Barwick, J. 2006. A Librarian’s Guide to Institutional Repositories. eLucidate, 

3(2). http://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2134/1122. 

Stevens, G. 2002. The Favored Circle: the Social Origins of Architectural Distinction. Cambridge, 

Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 

Ware, M. 2004. Institutional Repositories and Scholarly Publishing. Learned Publishing 17: 115–124. 


155

12 

› integration 

of digital tools with 

traditional approaches 

156 

going digital 

in the classroom: 

Lessons from the Integration 

of Wikis in an Architectural 

History Course 

› architectural history 

› team-based project 

› wikis 

This paper explores one experiment, which began in the Fall of 

2007, employing Wikis in a course on architectural and urban 

history. A Wiki is a collaborative website that can be directly 

edited by anyone with access to it – in this case the students 

– while enabling the tracking of individual contributions. In 

this course, Wikis were employed in a team-based project, in 

which students worked in small groups to build an on-line travel 

guide to Europe, focused on urban history. The Wiki project 

complemented more traditional course work, which emphasized 

historical analysis and interpretation. To reduce the need for 

technical know-how and external support, an inexpensive, 

publicly available, user-friendly Wiki platform was selected. 

The goal of the project was to capitalize on the fascination 

beautiful buildings and cities hold for students, while putting at 

their fingertips the complex material the Web offers: scholarly 

articles and archival databases but also more informal sources, 

from blogs to photo collections; text, but also different media, 

including film, music and a wide array of visual material. We 

wanted students to use these various forms of documentation 

to understand and creatively represent the context of the 

cities’ transformation while also obliging them to deal critically 

with the Internet as a source of information. The observations 

gathered from this pedagogical experiment suggest that Wikis 

can play a valuable role in teaching by supporting student 

motivation, facilitating collaboration, and fostering creativity.

francesca torello 

Carnegie Mellon University 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA 

www.cmu.edu 

Architectural and Urban Historian, registered 

Architect, in 2003 she earned a PhD in History and 

Heritage Preservation from the Politecnico di Torino 

(Italy), where she has been working until 2007. She 

currently teaches History of Architecture and Urban 

History at the School of Architecture of the Carnegie 

Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Her research 

work is focused on the role of Architecture, Urban 

Culture and Heritage Preservation policies in the 

cultural debate of the Nineteenth and Twentieth 

century. 

marie norman 

Carnegie Mellon University 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA 

www.cmu.edu 

As a teaching consultant at the Eberly Center for 

Teaching Excellence at Carnegie Mellon, Marie 

Norman works closely with faculty who wish 

to improve their teaching or try new teaching 

approaches. She is also involved with a number 

of research and writing projects, including studies 

investigating the impact of various technologies 

on teaching and learning. She earned her PhD 

in Anthropology in 1999 from the University of 

Pittsburgh and, in addition to her work at the Eberly 

Center, teaches courses on medical anthropology 

and South Asia in the Department of History and coedits 

the journal, Ethnology. 

157

architectural history 

team-based project 

digital (teaching) tools 

6 

The integration of digital teaching tools with traditional pedagogical approaches offers 

exciting possibilities for teaching. The Web provides easy access to an extremely 

rich array of visual and textual resources that were, until recently, difficult to reach 

even for trained researchers. Moreover, undergraduate students are already very 

comfortable with Web-based technologies, to which they devote large portions of 

their free time. For this reason, the incorporation of digital tools in the classroom 

holds the potential to increase student motivation and participation. 

However, simply using digital tools – no matter how novel and compelling 

they are – is not enough to enhance learning. Rather, the assignments and 

instructional activities that employ these tools must be carefully structured 

and focused on the goals of the course. 

wiki 

9 

educator’s role 

2 7 

To investigate these possibilities, we began employing Wikis in the context of a 

course on architectural and urban history in the Fall of 2007. Our collaboration 

began at a teaching workshop where Francesca, an architectural historian, who designed 

and taught the course, discussed with Marie, an educational researcher and 

teaching consultant, her ideas for using Wikis in her teaching. We have since worked 

closely together to evaluate and refine the Wiki project. This paper is in fact the first 

outcome of the collaboration, which continues to date. Thus, despite the fact that 

Francesca was the sole instructor of this course, we refer to the experiment below 

as a joint effort. 

We intend to relate here that first experience as a case study, in which we describe 

the objectives and parameters of the project and critique the outcomes. Our hope 

is that by providing insights from the context of this particular course, we can offer 

practical advice about integrating digital tools in teaching, contributing to a broader 

discussion about digital media in architectural education. 

what exactly is a wiki? 

A Wiki is a website, not very different from a normal webpage, which can 

be very easily and directly edited by anyone with access to it, through procedures 

more similar to those used normally to edit an MS Office document 

than to those that require specific languages (like HTML). 

For an example, think of Wikipedia, an on-line encyclopedia where entries are created, 

edited, and refined by a large number of authorized contributors. Like Wikipedia, 

a course Wiki can be edited collaboratively by members of the class, who can also 

embed active links to Web pages, visual material – from single pictures to slideshows 

and videos, music, and even a number of plug-ins, like a chat line reserved for Wiki 

members. The system allows students to post online documents and drafts in all the 

most common formats, like text documents, and pdfs, pictures etc. The resulting 

page is immediately available on-line, where another authorized user can modify it 

or make comments. All these actions are accessible to average web users, lacking 

specialist technical knowledge, with the help of ready-to-use platforms similar to 

those available for blogs or networking. 


12 

the context of our experiment 

The course, “History of European Cities in the Nineteenth Century”, was designed for 

the School of Architecture of Carnegie Mellon University in the Fall semester of 2007. 

Of the 34 students, the majority were 3rd, 4th and 5th year architecture students, 

with a smaller number of students from other humanities programs. 

The course explored the most significant urban transformations of Nineteenth 

century Europe, in relation to the major political and economic issues of the 

era. The introduction of selected episodes of the debate on planning, architecture 

and preservation had the purpose of helping the students identify different 

points of view and interpret a complex and multi-faceted historical situation. 

The ultimate aim of the course was to help students see how profoundly modern-day 

cities have been shaped by Nineteenth-century urban transformations. Instructional 

strategies consisted of lectures, discussion of assigned reading material and short 

writing exercises, integrated with our “experimental” assignment: a “Eurocities Wiki” 

that the class would construct together. 

why are wikis an appropriate tool in our case? 

Our choice of Wikis for the “Eurocities” project was motivated by several factors. 

First, an on-line tool would invite exploration of a richer variety of media and 

resources than traditional research tools. Moreover, students could work together on 

a Wiki in a way they could not on a blog or discussion board, since the Wiki allows 

students not only to see one another’s work and comment on it, but also to actively 

edit it and produce content together. For these reasons, a Wiki seems to be an ideal 

tool to foster an environment of rich and diverse collaboration. 

The course Wiki was conceived of as “a modern traveler’s guide to 19th century 

European cities”. Each student had to choose a city in Europe that had 

not been presented in class, write a short research paper on its transformation 

in the Nineteenth century, then create a Wiki page for that city. 

To build their Wikis, students were asked to explore both the “formal” sources they 

had employed in their research paper (e.g., historical explanations, bibliographic 

references, maps, photographs, links to archival or press databases) and “informal” 

sources (web links, slideshows, videos or film clips, tourist information pages and 

even entries from personal blogs). They were then asked to organize and integrate 

the two, creating a guide that would help modern travelers read the “signs” of the 

Nineteenth century in contemporary cities. 

We wanted students to employ popular, as well as academic, sources for several 

reasons. First, we did not want them constrained in their freedom to explore the Web 

and use the best documentation they could find, no matter the source. Second, we 

believed that tacking back and forth from academic to non-academic sources would, 

with proper structuring, help students develop better skills at differentiating between 

the two, i.e. greater information literacy. Third, we wanted students to relate the 

academic material to knowledge, interests, experiences and skills they already pos- 


159

sessed. Our hope was that by orienting their thinking around modern cities (some 

of which they had already visited) and modern technologies like the Web, historical 

analysis would become integrated with, not removed from, their “real” lives and 

present-day reality. 

what worked, what did not, and why 

The Wiki proved to be an appropriate tool for the assignment we envisioned. 

It was simple to learn and operate, facilitated cooperation, and allowed for 

easy integration of Web resources. Yet despite this, we found that our expectations 

for the project were not fully met. First, the fact that students viewed 

the Wiki as an “informal” medium had an impact on their perception of its 

importance, as students did not consider their work on the Wiki as high a 

priority as traditional homework and formal papers. 

Also, the students did not bring all the skills developed throughout the course to 

bear on the Wiki project. It seemed that they perceived the Wiki as so fundamentally 

distinct from traditional academic work that it made the transfer of competences 

and analytical skills difficult, or at least awkward, in their eyes. 

Ironically, though, this failure to integrate formal academic elements did not 

result in greater creativity in the informal arena. We found, rather, that students 

used the Wiki in a surprisingly cautious and conservative way, almost 

as if being creative and inventive could be dangerous in a history class. 

It should be pointed out, however, that these shortfalls in the project’s outcomes 

were not due to the Wiki itself. Rather the issues that arose stemmed from problems 

with the assignment, which did not take sufficient advantage of the collaborative 

and creative possibilities the Wiki afforded and was not structured adequately to 

promote consistent, high-quality student participation. In the section below we will 

address the three primary problems we encountered and then propose ideas for 

improving outcomes in the next iteration of the course. 

The assignment did not take sufficient advantage of the Wiki’s power to 

facilitate collaboration 

We assumed that students would be naturally motivated to collaborate on the 

“Eurocities” project, at least to the extent of viewing one another’s pages and 

contributing suggestions and links. In retrospect, this was a naïve assumption. 

Contrary to expectations, students did not investigate one another’s Wiki 

pages or share resources but rather worked almost exclusively by themselves. 

In most cases, thus, they did not exploit the Wiki’s collaborative potential. 

Perhaps this result should not have surprised us: most undergraduate students have 


12 

spent their school lives focused on individual achievement; they lack experience 

working in groups and thus tend to find it somewhat uncomfortable [Miller, Trimbull 

and Wilkes 1994]. When group work is not explicitly required, and reinforced by the 

structure of the assignment, there is little incentive to overcome this discomfort. 

The lack of collaboration in the Wiki project led us to ask ourselves whether collaboration 

should, in fact, be a goal at all. We concluded that it should. By requiring 

students not only to explore Web resources themselves but also to share what they 

found with peers and work together to interpret, synthesize, organize and communicate 

the information, group work would reinforce the objectives of the assignment 

more powerfully than individual work. For these reasons, we feel that the collaborative 

dimensions of the assignment have to be strengthened considerably. 

Students did not apply the analytical skills learned during the course 

The second problem we encountered was that students had trouble incorporating 

the intellectual perspectives from the larger course into their Wikis. Francesca had 

envisioned Wikis that combined film clips and images from architectural databases, 

woven together with text drawn from academic sources, all working together to 

illustrate – in both intellectually and aesthetically sophisticated ways – the influence 

of Nineteenth century transformations on modern European cities. Not only was 

this vision clear in her mind, she thought it was clear to students, who had seen the 

required kinds of analysis modeled over and over in class. The readings, lectures, and 

discussions from the course as a whole had brought out the key themes and ideas 

and provided students with all the intellectual tools they needed to do the job well – 

or so she thought. 

In fact, students did not connect their Wikis to the larger ideas from the course. 

When writing formal papers, they were able to analyze historical factors in the development 

of European cities, but they were not bringing these same analytical tools 

to bear in constructing their Wikis. 

This is not an unusual problem. Research has demonstrated that students have 

trouble transferring skills from one context to another if they have not had ample 

practice recognizing the contexts and conditions of proper application [Singley 

1989]. 

In this course, students had difficulty recognizing that, in fact, the Wiki project 

called for the same kinds of historical analyses they had been engaged 

in throughout the course. Because the context had shifted from a traditional 

classroom context of readings, lectures and writing assignments – the instructor’s 

turf, as it were – to the informal realm of the Internet – their home turf 

– they did not recognize that the skills required were the same. Additionally, 

they had difficulty combining formal analysis with informal source material. 

Eventually, much of students’ work fell into one of two categories: 1) Wikis which 

creatively enlisted a variety of informal sources but failed to incorporate sufficient 

historical analysis; and 2) Wikis that included formal historical analysis but which 

failed to incorporate informal sources or capitalize on the creative potential of the 

Wiki. 


161

Students did not explore the informal capabilities of the Wiki 

This second problem was, perhaps, the most disappointing. Francesca had incorporated 

the Wiki expressly so that students would have the freedom to explore and 

integrate the informal resources of the Web. To encourage originality, she had left 

the “Eurocities” assignment very open – even somewhat vague – assuming that with 

fewer constraints her students would be freer to experiment and create more original 

Wikis. She knew that her students spent hours on-line in their personal lives, tacking 

easily back and forth between YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, and other on-line 

resources, and she assumed that by offering students the chance to build a Wiki for 

a class project, they would bring to bear the same kind of creativity they employed 

on their Facebook pages. 

She found that, with a few exceptions, they did not. In fact, the lack of structure in 

the assignment had the opposite effect of what she had intended: because it was 

not sufficiently clear to students what they were supposed to produce, they were 

cautious more than experimental and failed to use all the Wiki’s capabilities. 

At the same time, students were not told that creativity (in particular, the 

novel integration of popular and academic sources) was a required element 

of the assignment. As a result, they were not motivated enough by extrinsic 

factors to overcome their caution, and their contributions to the Wiki remained 

fairly conventional. In fact, a number of them used the Wiki much as 

they would a Word document, incorporating standard research-paper writing, 

a few standard images, and little else. 

what could be done to make wikis work better 

in the frameworkof this project? 

Our experience from the “Eurocities” project has taught us some important lessons: 

in future semesters, we will clarify better the expectations regarding the assignment; 

structure it to foster collaboration; scaffold preliminary assignments to build 

research and teamwork skills; articulate performance criteria, including both formal 

and informal dimensions; and require individual accountability. We will briefly outline 

these aspects one-by-one below. 

Clarify the expectations regarding the assignment 

While the assignment was clear in our minds, in retrospect we realized that 

it was not sufficiently articulated and clearly explained for the students. This 

was resulting in a measure of confusion that was stifling student motivation 

and risk-taking. We concluded that the task had to be spelled out more clearly. 

Students need to know, for example, what form their Wiki should take and what audience 

it should address, just as scholars writing a grant proposal or research article 

need to know their purpose, audience, and genre to work effectively. They need to be 

informed of which elements are considered required for all student Wikis (a map, for 

example, is necessary, not optional) but also be invited explicitly to produce original 

and creative work. 


12 

Structure the assignment to foster more productive collaboration 

To build collaboration into the project, we will change the assignment, so 

that small groups of 3 or 4 students will be responsible for the same city. 

Because students will share responsibility for researching and producing the same 

Wiki, for which they would receive a group grade, they would have to coordinate 

their efforts and make decisions jointly. We would also increase the interdependence 

[Johnson, Johnson and Smith 1991] of group members by expanding the scope of the 

project, so that it was larger than a single individual could handle on his own, thus 

necessitating that members of each group work together to break down the task, 

delegate responsibilities, and communicate. 

Scaffold preliminary assignments to build research and team-building skills 

We realized it was important to break down the component skills needed for the 

“Eurocities” project and give students practice developing these skills one by one, 

providing feedback, and integrating more complexity and synthesis over time. It 

became apparent to us that if students were going to integrate the formal ideas 

and perspectives from lectures and readings into the less structured, more informal 

context of their Wikis, they were going to need explicit practice and feedback. 

To provide this opportunity, we plan to institute a number of smaller assignments, 

to be completed earlier in the semester. These assignments will be 

designed to give students practice developing particular research skills or 

organizing specific materials for later integration into their Wiki pages. 

Clarify performance criteria 

To help students transfer skills from lectures and readings to the Wiki assignment, 

we will also clarify our expectations and performance criteria and articulate them in 

a performance rubric. As everyone who has taught knows, identifying the features 

of excellent work is not always easy. When grading, many instructors employ an “I 

know good work when I see it” approach, but cannot always articulate the criteria 

they are using in their heads. Rubrics compel instructors not only to think about 

the features they want in student work, but also to inform students about them in 

advance. When the performance criteria are not only clear but also challenging, students 

see what is expected of them and what to strive for. They also see that grading 

criteria is rational, not subjective. The rubric will also clarify that a portion of each 

group’s grade will depend on the creativity with which they approach the assignment; 

with more explicit goals and parameters, students will have a structure within 

which they not only can be, but will have to be, creative. 

Require individual accountability 

One of the perennial complaints from students about group work is that 

some group members do not pull their own weight. To avoid the “free rider” 


163

phenomenon and ensure that the effort truly is collaborative, we will build 

individual accountability [Johnson, Johnson and Smith 1991] into the assignment: 

we will hold every individual responsible for contributing regularly, by 

checking each group’s Wiki periodically. 

We will also require individuals to submit a separate report at the end of the project, 

in which they describe the group’s goals and strategies, as well as their own contributions. 

It is important here to point out that a number of issues that commonly 

arise with group projects – such as coordinating schedules and finding time to meet 

– are addressed by the Wiki itself, as it allows students to collaborate virtually and 

thus not have to coordinate their schedules for face-to-face meetings. 

Even more interesting, the habit to refer to the Wiki for information, to edit it, to 

communicate through it, making it an essential tool of the classroom activity from 

the very beginning of the course, can make the Wiki a familiar environment which 

fosters interaction and exploration of each students work. 

what lessons did we learn about digital tools? 

Wikis can be effective and versatile teaching tools, but they are just tools. 

They should only be employed when they can really advance the objectives of 

the assignment and the course. The learning objectives in turn must be clear 

and the assignment must be designed carefully to focus on them. 

Additionally, the parameters of the task must be clear: structure, rather than stifling 

originality, enhances creativity by defining both the necessary features and the scope 

for innovation. 

The instructor should also provide clear performance criteria, so that 

students understand the difference between high and low-quality work 

and have a high standard to aim for. 

Finally, if collaboration among students is desired, interdependence and individual 

accountability must be built into the project and groups must learn and practice 

teamwork skills. Because teamwork adds dimensions and complications beyond 

individual work, group projects require extra planning and support [Johnson, Johnson 

and Smith 1991; Bosworth 1994; McGregor 1994]. 

The fundamentals of effective teaching remain the same, regardless of whether 

digital tools are involved. This does not, however, imply that the use of digital tools is 

incidental to education or that instructors should eschew emerging media. In fact, as 

the world, and more specifically the field of architecture, becomes more dependent 

on digital technologies [Willey 2005] and as architectural resources are consolidated 

in on-line archives and databases, it will become increasingly important for architecture 

faculty to incorporate Web-based media into their teaching. 

However, the case study presented here suggests that for digital teaching 

tools to fulfill their educational promise, they must be chosen thoughtfully 


and employed intelligently to serve specific teaching goals. This first experiment 

with Wikis provides some preliminary insights into the issues that should 

be considered before introducing the use of digital media into teaching. 

12 

references 

Bosworth, K. 1994. Developing Collaborative Skills in College Students. In Collaborative learning: 

Underlying Processes and Effective Techniques, eds. Bosworth K., and S.J. Hamilton. New Directions 

in Teaching and Learning 59. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Johnson, D. W., R. T. Johnson, and K. A. Smith. 1991. Active Learning: Cooperation in the College 

Classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. 

Kadel, S., and J. Keehner, eds. 1994. Collaborative learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, 

Volume II. Syracuse University: National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, 

& Assessment. 

Miller, J. E., J. Trimbur, and J. M. Wilkes. 1994. Group Dynamics: Understanding Group Success 

and Failure in Collaborative Learning. In Collaborative learning: Underlying processes and effective 

techniques, eds. Bosworth, K., and S.J. Hamilton. New Directions in Teaching and Learning 59. 

San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Singley, M. K., and J. R. Anderson. 1989. The Transfer of Cognitive Skill. Cambridge, 

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 

Willey, D. S. 2005. Architectural Education in the Digital Environment. In Writings in Architectural 

Education. EAAE Transaction on Architectural Education 26. 

MacGregor, J. 1994. Collaborative Learning: Reframing the Classroom. In Collaborative Learning: a 

Sourcebook for Higher Education, eds. Goodsell, A. and others. University Park, PA: National Center 

on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, & Assessment. 


165

archives 

Digital Architectural Archives: 

Preservation, 

Dissemination and Use 

There are two kinds of digital archives: spontaneous archives, provided 

by contemporary architectural firms, which use computers throughout the 

whole design process, and the “old” paper archives, which are gradually 

being transferred to digital media in order to preserve them and to enhance 

their diffusion. Both these archive types may provide useful first hand 

information that has to be improved and opened to a large public 

of scholars, archivists, and professionals. Yet, opening these archives 

to the general public poses some problems. In spontaneous archives, each 

document (presentation, 2d - 3d drawings, animations, renderings, pictures, 

videos, texts, etc.) has its own format, which requires a specific program 

to open it; information contained in each document is frequently layered, 

in fact each file can contain texts, images, animations, pictures, hyperlinks, 

etc., all at the same time. Paper archives raise the following questions: 

the dilemma of which file format has to be used when transferring the 

information contained in the original paper document to the digital one; 

the problem of how to make the chosen file formats sustainable knowing 

that each year new ones blossom. 

Finally, nowadays, neither paper or digital archives have any standards, 

or shared recommendations in order to classify and tag documents,nor 

advanced and powerful search tools capable of guiding users through 

a great deal of resources and information. 

This book addresses the following topics: 

› Archiving standards 

› Navigation tools 

› Interfaces, searching and browsing tools 

› Interoperability 

› Dissemination and use of digital archives 

› User cases

13 

› collection information system 

› digital collections 

› digitisation 

168 

building up digital 

collections: 

From Policy to Implementation 

For any architectural archive, life is getting complicated. While 

the traditional paper archives continue to be acquired and have 

yet to be processed, more and more digital files accompany the 

paper ones. Furthermore, collections are digitised retrospectively. 

Digital materials require much attention to detail when they are 

handled and described. They need to be stored in a consistent, 

secure and persistent way. The first question that arises in 

such a situation is how to establish a policy that matches the 

requirements for both conservation and for future use. We also 

need to think about the justification of the rather extensive 

investment of time and money: should we digitise complete 

archives or parts of it retrospectively, and should we collect 

born digital materials and describe them in the same way as 

our paper archives? What will be the extra value for the users of 

digitised materials compared to the inventory list? How will the 

organizational workflow change in a hybrid environment? The 

NAI is now fully involved in these processes and wants to present 

the preliminary results of research in implementing a Collection 

Information System (CIS), which is an integrated system that aims 

at comprehensive search possibilities through the NAI-collections. 

At the same time the NAI attempts to make this CIS the interface 

for all the digital materials by connecting it to an OAIS repository. 

This paper will focus on the selection policy for acquiring digital 

files, the description in the CIS, the ingest procedures, the 

connection between the CIS and long-term storage facilities.

patricia alkhoven 

Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) 

Rotterdam, Netherlands 

www.nai.nl 

Patricia Alkhoven took her PhD degree in 

Architectural History at Utrecht University, 

Netherlands in 1993 with a dissertation on 

visualization techniques in architectural historical 

research. She worked from 1994-2006 in different 

functions in the National Library of the Netherlands. 

From 2006 - July 2007 she was Director of Universal 

Decimal Classification Consortium. Currently she 

is Head of the Department of Collections in the 

Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). She 

lectures about digitization, collection development, 

representation in art, architecture and cartography, 

application of computer visualization techniques, 

and online presentation of collections. 

169

introduction 

There is no denying that from now on all archives are hybrid in nature. Next to the 

paper archives and books, there are objects and other carriers such as film, microfilm, 

slides, etc. 

Archives that were built up from the eighties of the last century also contain 

digital files. These consist first of all of digital documentation such as correspondence 

and other documents, but simultaneously the design process 

went digital as well. 

Drawings and perspectives, presentation drawings in 2D and 3D with or without animations, 

are built up in Computer Aided Design (CAD). Programs such as AutoCAD 

contain many levels of information that can only be made visible using the original 

interface. 

As a consequence, especially architectural archives are now facing the problems of 

how to handle, select and store these digital files. 

The core business of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) is to collect, study 

and present Dutch Cultural Heritage as it is set down in architecture and the built 

environment, and to stimulate debate on the future of architecture both nationally 

and internationally. 

At the moment the NAI has 18 kilometres of archive space (800 architects, mainly 

19th and 20th century architects), more than 1200 models and a library of 42000 

books and magazines. 

As a national institute the Netherlands Architecture Institute has the obligation 

to collect archives from architects. Using these archives, consisting of drawings, 

models, correspondence, personal items and documentation, the complete 

design process of an architect can be studied in a comprehensive way. 

archival management 

data collecting 

activities 

14 15 

building up a significant digital archive 

The first question that arises is how to establish a policy for collecting digital files 

that matches the requirements for both conservation and future use. As with any 

acquisition policy it is hard to image what will be of interest in the future, what part 

of our national architectural heritage we should keep and what part is acceptable 

to lose. We also need to think about justification of the rather extensive investment 

of time and money: should we digitise complete archives or only parts of them 

retrospectively, and should we collect born digital materials and describe them in the 

same way as our paper archives? 

So far the nai has concentrated on acquiring archives from architects that 

ceased trading. The advantage of this collection policy is that in most cases 

complete archives can be collected. 



11 14 

13 

The tradition to collect complete archives dates from the 19th century and was 

recorded in the statutes and mission statement of the NAI in 1988. The acquisition 

policy is aimed at acquiring the archives of prominent Dutch architects, urban designers 

and landscape architects. Even in this age of changing architectural practice 

in which project developers and huge infrastructure enterprises are increasingly 

influencing the design process, the archives of individual architectural companies 

continue to reflect the involvement and influence of the architect on the design process. 

To provide the context in which architecture is created, important for a better 

understanding of the value of the architecture, the NAI also collects the records of 

relevant professional associations for architecture and urban design and educational 

institutions. Up to now the NAI has collected a limited number of contemporary 

models of prominent projects and, where possible, the accompanying project files. 

As a rule, archives from architects that have only constructed at a local level are 

collected in the local or city archives, architects that have a regional influence are 

collected in regional or provincial archives and national architectural projects are 

collected by the National Archives. 

The NAI collects private archives from architects and their businesses. Only architects 

that are nationally well known, and have had much influence on other architects 

in building or in theory, whose work has significant cultural or unique value, 

are actively collected. 

In order to keep the volume of these archives manageable, a strict selection policy 

needs to be defined. 

For paper files, this policy of collecting complete files seems logical and has 

proven its worth in the past decades. In the age of digitisation of existing 

materials and collecting born digital materials, which increasingly accompany 

the paper files, this process may not be so simple. 

selection criteria 

14 15 


1 8 15 19 25 

Selection criteria – retrospectively digitised materials 

Relatively few architectural materials have been digitised so far. There are multiple 

solutions for what to digitise, such as: 

› Complete archives; 

› Drawings (presentation); 

› High-lights of the collection; 

› A cross section of all the archives, but very basic; 

› Only top-architects that are frequently consulted; 

› Context information; 

› Documentations; 

› Digitisation on demand. 

When considering digitization as a structural task of a cultural heritage institution 

we need to find a way to justify the huge investments needed for retrospectively 

digitising collections. 

It is clear that it will be impossible to digitise just everything. The demand 

for certain digitised materials may be a good starting point. Further it is 

possible to digitise at least the high-lights in order to increase the content 

for users. 

building up digital collections 

171

Selection criteria – Born digital materials 

For the collection development of born digital files a strict selection procedure is 

needed as well. Even if it is technically possible to acquire, manage and store the 

digital files, the sheer volume and complexity make it impossible to just accept 

everything. 

› Communication correspondence and documentation (when not available in paper); 

› Design development, drawings, sketches, etc.; 

› Construction drawings and documents; 

› Presentation (docs and drawings). 

collection information system (cis) 

In order to record, maintain and present information about its collections, the 

NAI is currently developing a Collection Information System (CIS), which is 

an integrated system that aims at comprehensive search possibilities through 

the NAI-collections: archive, library, models and working processes. 

The main software was purchased from the Canadian company MINISIS, and has 

been adapted and customized according to the NAI requests with regard to functionality. 

At the time, the software of MINISIS appeared to be the only product that 

could handle archives, libraries and museums in one single application. MINISIS is 

used by several cultural heritage institutions and the software is listed on UNESCO’s 

Library Portal and Archive Portal and it is CHIN accredited. 

The initial requirements concentrated on integration of archive, library, models and 

working procedures; it should be flexible and extendable, bi-lingual (Dutch and English), 

with modules for preservation management and an interface for the public. 

cis project goals 

The CIS has a double goal: to automate the management of all collections in the NAI 

and to make the information accessible through the NAI website. As a consequence 

the current implicit working procedures need to be registered, documented and 

transported by the system. All knowledge about the collections can be added. Although 

the software used is not open source, it can be converted to other standards. 

Requested results: 

› All collection databases converted to CIS; 

› Authorities shared by all databases in CIS; 

› Collection related procedures are tuned to the CIS; 

› Collection related procedures are supported and documented by CIS; 

› All data are tuned to known standards. 

› Data will be made accessible via the Internet; 

The chosen system, MINISIS, could handle most of the requirements. The link 

between the working processes for the archive, the library and museum was better 

developed than any other product. The aim was to implement a system that was 

able to carry out the core business processes of the Collection Department. These 

core processes consisted of acquisition, description and giving access to archive – 


13 

and library materials and conservation of the museum objects at a high level. 

The functional working procedures for the archive, the library and museum, such as 

acquisition, cataloguing and inventorying, preservation and management had until 

then been carried out in multiple unconnected databases and systems. Much work 

to make the collections accessible was duplicated and a link between the different 

materials was lacking. Registration of the working procedures for preservation of 

the collection were in some cases not even automated at all, which slowed down 

research because all the paper files needed to be searched. 

It is a commonly understood fact that archival, bibliographic and curatorial items 

cannot be accessioned nor catalogued in the same application without sacrificing 

one item’s unique standards for documentation. 

As a museum tries to catalogue in detail every individual object, the archives – although 

they conduct some item level description – tend to describe their holdings in 

groups or series. It is clear that archives cannot possibly perform item level descriptions 

of their holdings. A library on the other hand, although it does perform item/ 

detailed book cataloguing, has a need to strictly conform to major bibliographic 

standards. 

Via the registration module, archival, bibliographical and curatorial objects/items 

can be accessioned together and the unique data push mechanism will transport the 

skeletal item or group details to M3 (MINISIS Management for Museums) and M2L 

(MINISIS Mgt for Libraries) or M2A (MINISIS Mgt for Archives) if it is archival material 

or bibliographic respectively. 

Once the data is pushed into M3, M2A and M2L the objects, books or manuscripts/ 

papers can then be described/catalogued according to Spectrum (the Museum 

Documentation Association’s Standard), RAD (and ISAD-G archival documentation 

standard) or MARC (or MIBUS international Bibliographic standards). 

The difference between the materials (documents, drawings, books etc.) 

disappears within the concept of the three modules used in the cis. Once the 

object/item/book has been accessioned via the registration module, the materials 

can be described in as much or little detail as desired or time permits. 

Fig. 1: Schematic drawing of the MINT module of MINISIS (p. 341). 

a single search request 

The NAI currently uses several different, non-related catalogues: there is a book 

catalogue, an archive overview, various databases for searching for magazine 

articles, as well as separate catalogues for posters and scale models. Supposing you 

need an overview of all the materials by and about H.P.Berlage, you would have to 

look through all these catalogues separately to find what you are looking for. The CIS 

links up all the information about the collection items so that just one search request 

for a particular architect yields a mass of information such as scale models, inventories, 

books and photographs. In fact, it will function as an internal portal to the NAI’s 

collections and can be exported to other formats such as XML. 

digitised files 

Keyword systems are essential for linking data. These systems are standardised lists 

of, for instance, names, buildings, countries and places and AAT terms (terms from 


173

keywords systems 

7 15 17 21 

the Art and Architecture Thesaurus). Each item in the collection is linked to one or 

more such keywords, making them accessible and searchable. That way, the user 

can interrelate information items. A list of personal names (often names of architects 

and artists) can be expanded into a database with biographies and lists of works 

and photographs. Lists such as these can then function independently and they gain 

in substance. With CIS, users can also link digitised files to descriptions of collection 

items. Examples include PDF files with the complete inventory of an archive, or 

digital reproductions of photographs and drawings that can be linked to a module 

for ordering copies. 

Fig. 2: Schematic drawing of the authorities (p. 341). 

Libraries and museums are all about individual objects, whereas archives 

are not. An archive is a collection of numerous interrelated objects. Libraries 

and archives essentially describe the content inherent in objects, whereas 

museums focus on the objects themselves. 

For museums and archives, the process of acquisition is complex, whereas that is 

not generally the case for libraries – most of the books are quite simply purchased 

in a bookshop. To date, there is little experience in the Netherlands and abroad of 

fully incorporating collections of that kind into a single system that facilitates both 

the management of and the access to the collection, and in which the objects in 

the collection are described both as museum objects and as archive objects. This is 

an ambitious project for the software supplier too, for which there are no standard 

solutions. Besides, the scope of the project is a factor of considerable importance. A 

further aspect alongside the size of the collection is that the enormous quantity of 

data that is in circulation for administrative and managerial purposes is often stored 

in separate databases. 

data cleaning and data mapping 

In addition, the collected data to be entered into the system also has to be adapted, 

as it cannot be simply converted. First of all, large-scale data cleaning is required, 

which entails cleaning up and standardising information. For example, keyword 

systems are created on the basis of various standards currently used for different 

parts of the collection. For example, the list of ‘persons’ will be made up of a list 

containing thousands of names of architects, the architects’ data containing information 

about more than five thousand architects, and the architects register from 

the book catalogue. All this information has to be combined, doubles removed and 

an unambiguous, standardised method created for how the names are to be written 

and printed. After that, a route has to be configured for transferring data from the 

old system to the new one. 

Data mapping means deciding which information is to be stored in which CIS 

fields. Some information that is now in a single file has to be unravelled and stored 

in fields in various sections of the new system. For instance, information from the 

scale model database about the museum object, namely the scale model, has to be 

separated from the information about the project or building to which it refers. That 

information is stored in the keyword list of ‘Buildings’. 

Because of the scope and complexity of the CIS, the NAI has opted for a phased 

introduction of the system. The first step will be to make the information in the book 

catalogue, the scale model catalogue and the archive overview available – these 


oai 

1 3 11 

13 

are the most frequently used and therefore the most important catalogues, which 

together open up the bulk of the collection. To be able to accomplish this, the design 

of the database system has to be complete and the keyword lists have to be ready. 

The system was customized according to specific NAI requirements: the system can 

now be used for inventorying complex archives; access is the same for all kinds of 

materials and collections and specific NAI tasks have been added. At this moment the 

first modules with data is converted into the CIS and is accessible via the Internet. 

cis and digital repository 

MINISIS offers functionality to manage digital objects, and provides support for 

managing a digital repository. However, the possibilities are limited since MINISIS 

is not an image database, digital asset management system or repository. For instance, 

there is no facility for adding preservation metadata, which is imperative for 

the management of digital files. 

At the moment it seems more logical to use CIS for the management of descriptive 

metadata and for the technical, administrative and preservation metadata to use a 

separate repository system such as DSpace, Fedora or DAArch. Research to linking 

CIS and an OAIS-repository system will take place from Autumn 2008. 

Fig. 3: Schematic drawing of the Collection Information System linked to the NAI repository 

and external repositories and interface of the Collection Management System (p. 341). 

expertise centre on dutch architecture, urban 

planning and landscape architecture 

In the age of virtuality, the location of cultural sources is becoming unimportant, 

but the richness and completeness of the sources themselves, and knowing 

where to find these sources, is becoming increasingly important. 

The Collection Information System will make it possible to inform users about all 

aspects of Dutch architecture, to disseminate knowledge to inspire researchers 

because it makes new research perspectives and viewpoints possible, and to support 

curators with the preparation of exhibitions in finding unexpected materials. 

Moreover: the CIS will give access to materials previously undiscovered! Apart from 

that, external databases and links to external websites and locations with relevant 

architectural content can be linked to the CIS. In turn, the CIS itself can be linked to 

other portals and databases. In other words, thanks to the CIS the NAI can make 

its main goal a reality: to serve as a national and international Expertise Centre for 

Dutch Architecture, Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture. 

references + acknowledgments → 


175

eferences 

Kowalski Dougherty, C. 2005. Implementing a Born-Digital Architecture and Design Archive 

at the Art Institue of Chicago. Conference paper. 

Beening, A. 2006. Tweesprong, een analyses en een toekomstplan voor het CIS. NAI, 

Rotterdam, October. 

Een CIS voor het NAI, Projectplan by Henk Vanstappen, project coordinator CIS, 15 May 2008. 

MINISIS website. http://www.minisis.com. 

Neggers, F. 2008. NAI op weg naar een digital depot [=NAI on its way to a digital repository]. 

Presentation at NAI (Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 9 May, 2008). 


I thank my colleagues Henk Vanstappen, Frans Neggers and Petra van der Ree for their 

contributions. 


13 


177

14 

› archival description 

› archival management 

› digital architectural record 

178 

the on-line catalogue 

of the giancarlo de carlo 

archives: 

An Attempt to Integrate 

Paper-Based and Digital-Born 

Documents 

› digital drawing 

› digital records 

reference 

In 1998 the Archivio Progetti received the archives of Giancarlo 

De Carlo. For the first time an archival of which part is made of 

digital-born objects entered the collections. These documents 

were originally 5,290 computer files, scattered here and there 

in the computers in the practice, without any logic or order. 

In the De Carlo practice, the production of records in digital 

format has never been set by specific procedures, there didn’t 

exist any rule for the coding and arrangement of records and 

no selection of records to be preserved had ever been made. 

The treatment of digital-born documents, for the first time 

carried out in the Archivio Progetti, has been directed towards 

three main goals: 

› to ascertain basic guidelines for managing selection; 

arrangement and description of the records; 

› to integrate them into their correct archives; 

› to be able to reference the archive and to assure 

their full protection. 

The action has been carried out focusing particularly on the 

need to preserve the relationship amongst digital-born and 

“traditional” documents, not only from an archival point of view, 

but also regarding the on-line catalogue. The approach to the 

management of these items has been extremely practical. The 

strategies determined for the adaptation of the Archivio Progetti 

on-line search tool, to the drawings in digital format, rise from 

reflections about users’ average behaviour and needs.

iccardo domenichini 

Università IUAV di Venezia 

Venezia, Italia 

www.iuav.it 

Graduate in History of architecture at the IUAV 

University, Riccardo Domenichini has been working 

in the Archivio Progetti since 1988. Not only a 

historical researcher, he has also worked on the 

development of the Archivio Progetti information 

retrieval system and the definition of an ISBD-based 

standard for architectural drawings. He is a member 

of the working group for the architectural archives of 

the Gau:di European Programme. 

179

Probably none of the people, who in 1987 collaborated to the creation of 

the Archivio Progetti, could have imagine that the small office under the roof 

of the house in Dorsoduro, which hosted the Fondazione Masieri, would 

become in twenty years one of the leading institutions in Europe in the field 

of architectural archives. 

digital format 


15 


11 13 

digitisation 

8 13 15 19 

online catalogue 

19 

photograph 

16 19 22 23 24 

repository 

8 10 11 16 

21 26 

rights of property 

22 


13 15 

Born as a repository of drawings for the architectural gallery, which had its premises 

on the floors below; in 1988 the Archivio Progetti received its first complete archival 

fund by the Venetian practice Studio Cappai e Mainardis. Other archives arrived in 

the following years, such as those of Eugenio Miozzi, Costantino Dardi, Giancarlo 

De Carlo, Giuseppe e Alberto Samonà. The Archivio Progetti today holds twenty 

five architecture-related funds: archives of architects and architectural practices, 

documentary funds coming from the Biennale di Venezia and the Università Iuav, the 

archives of the photographer Giorgio Casali and those of the artist enameller Paolo 

de Poli, a long-term collaborator of Gio Ponti. 

Any kind of object can belong to an architectural fund: papers, drawings, photographs, 

books and magazines, models, prototypes and digital-born objects. Dealing 

with the arrangement and the cataloguing of architectural archives, means to to face 

every day problems rising both from the particular and not standardized structure of 

each archive and from the greatest variety of documents they may contain. Working 

within the circle outlined by the international standards ISAD and ISBD and with the 

support of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, the Archivio Progetti produces 

multi-level catalographic descriptions of the funds, which in most cases go to the 

analytical description of single records, be they drawings, photographs or models 1 . 

The result of this work is a collection of printed inventories and the on-line catalogue, 

which can deliver descriptive information on documents and aggregations of 

documents, other than their reproductions in digital format 2 . 

As soon as the collection was started, the Archivio Progetti also began to create a 

parallel archive of reproductions of its documents. In the beginning, it consisted 

exclusively of photographs of drawings and models, made mainly for reproductions. 

When the Archivio Progetti on-line catalogue became available, reproductions in 

digital format became necessary to link images to the documents’ descriptions. 

For this reason, a large-scale campaign of digitisation was launched in the early 

Nineties and still goes on today. The archive of digital reproductions has now many 

thousands of high definition images and regularly receives new additions. They are 

currently delivered to researchers and publishers and, at a lower definition, can be 

retrieved and downloaded from the on-line catalogue. 

Items in digital format also exist in some archival funds, and their presence is 

doomed to increase more and more in the years to come. Digital technology had 

already entered the architectural practices in the Eighties, but it was from the next 

decade that it began its decisive development and expansion. The use of digital 

technology for the production of graphic materials is today the norm; furthermore, 

photographs, reports and documents are produced and often preserved only in 

digital format and the greatest part of a practices’ communication is committed to 

emails. 

This paper does not want to analyze the enormous archival problems that 

this new way of working produces, created by the lack of awareness that a 

digital object is a document as much as a paper-based item, and at the same 

time by the blind confidence that documents in digital format are by their 


nature doomed to be preserved forever. What is of interest to this paper is 

that architectural archives now contain items in both physical and digital 

form, the percentage of the latter being destined to increase more and more 

in the following years. 

14 

Naturally, the digital revolution had repercussions on traditional archives only after a 

delay of some years. The turning point for the Archivio Progetti can be precisely pin 

pointed to 1998, when they took charge of the archives of the Milanese architect Giancarlo 

De Carlo. When the fund was moved from Milan to Venice, we received 600 

dossiers of papers, 10,000 drawings, 35 models, a huge collection of photographs 

and 5,290 computer files. The most part of these drawings are in digital format, 

while there is a much smaller number of photographs and texts. The items belong to 

23 different projects, existing partly on paper-based documents and partly in digital 

format. The practice adopted the digital technology it in the early Nineties and 

has always used it within a rather traditional concept of the architectural graphic 

document, intended exclusively as a two-dimensional drawing. When the Archivio 

Progetti took charge of the archives, the computer files were casually scattered here 

and there in various hard disks in the studio. There never existed any rule for the 

production, coding and arrangement of records in digital format. The only homogeneous 

choice made by the practice was the software Autocad, which had always 

been the only one used by the people in the studio. The only option we had when we 

received the fund was to simply group the computer files together by project and to 

copy them as they were, postponing any deliberation about their archival treatment 

to a subsequent time. 

In a first stage of the organization of the work, the digital documents were 

set aside, as they required more careful thought. Then an opportunity arrived 

from the Gau:di European Programme, with which the Archivio Progetti has 

participated from the beginning. 

We choose the De Carlo archives as a case study to analyse thoroughly the topic of 

archival management of documents in digital format, and took advantage of this 

opportunity, to lay down a set of procedures intended to make the archive available 

to researchers in a context fully integrated to the whole archive to which the digital 

documents belong 3 . 

The problems we faced were basically in three categories related to: selection and 

arrangement, catalographic description and reference. 

The totally un-ruled production and management of the computer files in the 

practice had naturally produced a chaotic archival situation, in which many 

records were nothing else than copies of other items, sometimes identical, 

sometimes unfinished, sometimes modified. It was normal habit in the practice 

to copy the files from one computer to another, when at any time a different 

collaborator took them in charge. In the lack of any conscious need to 

follow standardized procedures for archiving and preserving computer files, 

the daily backups were the repositories where the studio collaborators hoped 

to find old files when needed. 

the on-line catalogue of the giancarlo de carlo archives 

181


29 

The disposal of superfluous items required a long and accurate work of analysis and 

comparison of the content of each single item. Even though only some of the digital 

records correspond to paper-based drawings, it was possible to refer to their organization 

and reproduce them in digital format. After selection and rearrangement, the 

aggregations of digital records looked much clearer and more logical. It was amazing 

to see how many records could be disposed of, being copies or unfinished versions of 

other records. The average reduction of a records’ number is around 50%. The selection 

of records to be preserved doesn’t depend on any evaluation of their supposed 

importance. The impartiality of the archivist is always mandatory: the only criteria 

considered for records’ disposal is their being identical copies or unfinished items. 

The existence of a corresponding paper-based drawing is not a good reason for the 

disposal of a digital record. Even though the Studio De Carlo has always considered 

the drawing in digital format simply as a technical preliminary step for the creation 

of a printed drawing, the archivist’s point of view must be to consider it a document 

in itself, rich with information, of which each one of the many possible printed drawings 

is only a partial expression. For that reason, it doesn’t appear so important that 

the practice never felt the need to preserve, together with the dwg files, the sets of 

information for printing. This concept of the drawing in digital format as a document 

“per se” has been important in the definition of the conditions for the reference, to 

break free from the idea that dwg files and prints have to be strictly connected, and 

by realizing at the same time that we hadn’t any of the information needed to get a 

paper-based document. A digital drawing doesn’t loose pregnancy and completeness 

of information by the lack of print information. 

The cataloguing of the arranged documents in a way which preserves the relationship 

of each item with its archival context and with other documents strictly connected 

to it, was an indispensable step to have this section of the De Carlo archives 

properly connected, in the on-line catalogue, with the other sections of the same 

archives. The general layout of the Archivio Progetti catalogue record is provided 

by the international description standards ISAD (International Standard of Archival 

Description) and ISBD (International Standard of Bibliographical Description). With 

the aid of ISBD(ER) and AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules) a specific set of 

rules to be used for the description of computer files was created. Catalogue records 

have been uploaded on the Archivio Progetti general database, arranged as groups 

of records, each one of which refers to a project, with the same organization the 

documents have. At a higher level, a record describes each group as a whole, and 

up another level, another record describes the whole section of documents in digital 

format of the De Carlo archives. Finally, these three levels of record sets are linked to 

the highest one, which describes the whole De Carlo archives. Non-hierarchical links 

have also been settled between catalogue records describing groups of items referring 

to the same project in the paper-based and in the digital sections of the archive, 

as well as between catalogue records of items in digital format and those of the derived 

paper-based drawings. This way, the whole net of logical links, which connects 

the catalogued records, reproduces the relationships, which connects all the items. 

The Archivio Progetti on-line catalogue allows the researcher to retrieve and 

download not only the descriptive catalogue records, but also documents 

in digital format. This option is extensively used to provide reproductions 

of documents on traditional media like drawings, models or photographs. 

One of the aims of our Gau:di research project was to explore the possibility 

to use it to also somehow make the long-distance reference of digital-born 

documents possible, above all that of drawings in digital format. 


14 

The range of users of the Archivio Progetti on-line catalogue is wide. It goes from 

university students to historical researchers, professionals and operators of museums, 

galleries and publishers all over the world. The loaning to museums and 

galleries of drawings and models for exhibitions and the delivering of photographs 

to publishers is a core activity of the Archivio Progetti. The largest category of users, 

however, and that more willing to consider the on-line catalogue as its main finding 

aid, is that of the university students, belonging both to the Iuav university and to 

other architecture faculties, mostly Italian. 

Different from historical researchers, who often seem to look suspiciously at 

on-line catalogues and clearly prefer the more traditional printed inventories, 

students are at their ease with on-line search engines, even though they use 

them in a rather superficial way. 

copyrights 

27 

Their needs are usually simple and clear: unless they are not working on their degree 

thesis, they are not interested in an archival approach to the documents. What they 

want is to find documentation materials to elaborate their examination papers. For 

this reason, amongst the wide range of documents they can look for in architectural 

archives, graphic materials are those in which they are most interested. For the same 

reason, they don’t particularly care to see the originals. Much more important for 

them is to have reproductions to work with. 

In the process of making documents in digital format available for reference, a mandatory 

condition is the preservation of the documents’ rights of property. Original 

drawings in digital format cannot be delivered as they are. If a photograph illegally 

published is recognizable, a dwg file illegally copied and abusively used and modified 

can become unrecognizable, so that nobody will be able to demonstrate that some 

tort has been committed. There are few doubts that nowadays only a very minimal 

portion of the large community of our users, need an in-depth reference of drawings 

in digital format. This coefficient is surely doomed to increase significantly in the 

long-term future, when historical research will have to deal with greater continuity 

with these kind of documents and will be able to set up more sophisticated methodologies 

for their analysis. 

Currently, from a point of view of the documents security, it is extremely difficult 

to manage the on-line reference. A hypothesis was an automatic procedure 

for a protected reference, letting viewers open files but not modify them, 

but it was soon discarded. Everyday experience demonstrates that an average 

expert user can easily overcome protection tools of this kind. 

To be opened in a viewer, a computer file must be downloaded in a temporary directory, 

where it can be easily found and copied to the user’s archives. When the project 

of the IUAV digital library is eventually complete, we will surely have the ability to 

take advantage of a sophisticated technology to provide an on-line reference service, 

but with the greatest security for its contents. The present situation, however, 

doesn’t call for special efforts in this direction, given that there are no chances that 

the requested investment would be justified at this time. For now, requests from 

highly specialized users can be met by allowing them to reference the documents 

inside the Archivio Progetti or, when their access rights make it possible, directly by 

emailing them a copy of the computer file. 

What students and average users need and ask for is a totally free: an automatic 


183

procedure of on-line reference. The only chance to offer them a meaningful piece 

of information, capable to meet their low-profile requests and, at the same time, 

to guarantee the document’s security, is to supply still pictures of the document’s 

content. A close collaboration with the LAR (Laboratorio di ricerca in progettazione 

architettonica) of the Department of architectural design of the Università IUAV has 

allowed us to set up a procedure to extract from each dwg file a pdf image. Other 

than being a format currently accepted for the files’ preservation, pdf also guarantees 

the lowest loss of quality in comparison to tif and png formats normally used for 

the on-line images delivery. Reproductions are intended as plain information of the 

computer file’s content. Another feature produced by the totally un-ruled production 

of the De Carlo digital records is that they often contain more than one drawing, or 

parts of them. Refusing the idea of an arbitrary discretion in choosing one significant 

part to be represented, each file is “photographed” exactly as it is. 

Pdf’s are printable in a3 format, which we think, allows a student to read 

a good deal of basic information without permitting them to use the original 

document for anything else other than studying. 

The average time needed to make a pdf from a dwg file is nearly 2 mins, which we 

think is affordable by a medium average archive, also when it has to deal with large 

numbers of documents. 

With a practical approach we have tried to solve the double-sided problem of making 

a new category of documents available to our users, but at the same time from an 

archival point of view, collecting as much accurate information as possible. There is 

no doubt that we have to go further, developing techniques and services side by side 

with the development of the researchers’ awareness that drawings in digital format 

are documents worthy to be studied just as much as the traditional printed ones. 

There are no alternatives, as drawing tables have completely disappeared 

from architectural practices and the very idea of a graphic item as a 2d object 

is quickly vanishing from everyday practice. Soon, the percentage of digitalborn 

documents in comparison with those in the paper-based world will be 

completely reversed. 

The preservation of these documents is the great challenge for the archival science 

of the 21st Century. The experience of the Archivio Progetti with the De Carlo 

archives is nothing more than a starting point, a minimal step, which we hope, will 

bring us the confidence to face the much more difficult problems that the future has 

in store for us. 


14 

notes 

1 For the description of architectural drawings, within the Archivio Progetti was also laid down 

a specific set of rules, which is now widely used. Cfr. Domenichini, R., and Tonicello, A. Il disegno 

di architettura. Guida alla descrizione. Venice-Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2004. 

2 http://www.iuav.it/archivioprogetti. 

3 The working group on architectural archives of the Gau:di European Programme has always 

focused its research on topics related mainly to the management of records in digital format. 

The results of the second three-year working programme (2005-2008) have been presented in the 

European conference held in Paris in November 2007, whose proceedings are in press. Information 

can be found in the website realized by the working group during the first three-year working 

programme, at the url: http://www.architecturearchives.org. 


185

15 

› best practice for preservation 

› de facto standard format for preservation 

› electronic records in an architectural practice 

› file naming 

› identification and retrieval 

of electronic records 

› identity metadata 

› integrity of electronic records 

186 

electronic documents in 

an architectural practice: 

Graphics Creation, Maintenance, 

Selection and Preservation 

› longevity of removable media and hard-drive 

› migration of media 

› monitor electronic records and profiles 

› record management 

› reliability and authenticity 

of electronic records 

› selection of hardware and software 

› stability of electronic records 

This paper addresses some issues arising from studies 

undertaken as part of a Master’s Degree in Electronic Archives 

and Records Management, and from research undertaken by the 

Archivio del Moderno in Mendrisio in an architectural practice 

in Italian-speaking Switzerland as part of the Gaudi Program 1 

and 2 (Governance, Architecture and Urbanism: a Democratic 

Interaction). The aim of the research, which highlights some 

critical points relating to the management of electronic records 

during their life-cycle in an architectural practice, was to 

provide some proposals for the creation and storage of current 

records, as well as indicating the most appropriate strategies 

for non-current record preservation. A number of considerations 

arose from this research. On the one hand, the features of the 

“new” documents were examined, as digital documents are now 

a substantial part of the records accumulated by the architect 

during his/her activities. In addition, terms such as “reliability” 

and “authenticity” as essential requirements were investigated. 

On the other, a detailed management scheme was drawn up, 

in relation to electronic record preservation and above all 

when compared to the handling of paper-based records, which 

requires the use of expert technical knowledge and skills. Lastly, 

this research provides the basis for a thorough investigation 

into the issue of archival preservation and handling of electronic 

documents when the records themselves become an important 

source for historical research purposes.

adriane elena triunveri borda 

Universidade Fondazione Archivio Federal del de Moderno Pelotas, Professor 

Mendrisio, Rua Lobo da Switzerland Costa, 447 Pelotas, Brazil 

www.arch.unisi.ch/index/archmoderno.htm 

adribord@hotmail.com 

Graduated in Architecture at - UFPEL,Brazil-1983 the Polytechnic ; PhD 

Institute in Education of Milan – Universidad in 1994. She de Zaragoza, has been an Spain archivist – 

at 2001; the Master Archivio in del Architecture Moderno in _ Mendrisio UFRJ, Rio de since Janeiro, 2003, 

where Brazil, 1991; she is in Member charge of Research the reorganization group of teaching/ and 

cataloguing learning of Digital of the Graphics archives of (GEGRADI), the works by lecturer Milanese at 

architect the Master Giulio in Architecture, Minoletti and UFPEL the cataloguing 

of the Franco Albini archives. She has contributed 

to the Gaudi (Governance, Architecture and 

Urbanism: Democratic Interaction) program a2, 

with a research project on the management of 

electronic records in an architectural practice. 

In 2006 she completed a Master’s Degree in 

Electronic Archives and Records Management 

at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. 

187

electronic documents 

organization of archives 

14 


13 14 

The archives housed in an architectural practice comprise “all” the documents 

produced during the course of an architect’s activities, or by the organisation of the 

practice that the architect belongs to. They include various types of documents, 

ranging from sketches, drawings and watercolours to project reports, budget estimates, 

models, correspondence and photographs. All architectural archives, regardless 

of the size or amount of work undertaken in the practice, are wholly different as 

a result of the exceptional and unexpected variety of documents present, compared 

to those housed in other professional sectors. 

Electronic documents now represent the most important part of an architect’s 

archives. Yet, despite the prevalence of electronic records over conventional ones, 

there is still no kind of specific policy or set of guidelines for the creation and storage 

of some types of records, such as drawings, which have always represented much 

of the collection relating to the architect’s professional activities. Similarly, terms 

borrowed from diplomatics, and applied to these “new” records in recent research, 

such as “reliability” (relating to the completeness of the document and control over 

its creation) or “authenticity” (which determines whether a document is genuine and 

has maintained its identity and integrity after its transmission) are not considered as 

essential requirements in order to evaluate a record’s bona fide. 

The absence of concrete proposals in the case of electronic preservation and also the 

lack of shared policies regarding the long and short-term management of electronically 

created documents calls for special care in their treatment. In addition, issues of 

long-term preservation should be fully explored. 

creation, maintenance 

and selection of current electronic records 

Organisation of current records and selection of hardware and software 

Although an architectural practice is not subject to record management legislation, 

nevertheless the creation and organisation of archives should be carefully planned. 

The clearer and better defined the principles are for governing record creation, use 

and maintenance, especially as regards electronic records, the more reliable the 

system. 

The adoption of centuries-old archive practices, such as the use of classification 

schemes, provides a solid foundation for the appropriate management of records. 

digitisation 

1 8 13 14 19 

This system, whereby material is organised into a few large groups divided up into 

folders and subfolders to facilitate document retrieval, ensures that the documents 

are collected and grouped in a logical manner. It is recommended that the collection 

be divided up into folders that correspond to the highest hierarchical level (the 

project), and subfolders, each one identifying the main stages of the project (rough 

layout, sketch project, agreed project) or designed to group together uniform material 

created outside the main project, or when the project is concluded (for instance, 

specifications or reports and photographs or press cuttings). 

Assigning separate tasks for record management to specific members of the 

architectural practice at each stage of the project, namely at each stage of 

the classification scheme, contributes to a rational and efficient organization 

of records in an architectural practice. 


The choice of the most appropriate software and hardware, which also require 

regular updating, undoubtedly facilitates electronic record accessibility, 

thereby limiting the risk of illegibility or data loss. 

back-ups of records 

15 

It is recommended that sound removable media and hard-drives produced by 

reliable manufacturers always be used. Reliability often means good quality, and a 

good-quality medium ensures bitstream preservation over time. Software applications 

should also be chosen with care. The use of widely adopted software, particularly 

for graphic material, enables document exchange and sharing without data loss 

and reduces the risks arising from document migration. Particular attention should 

be paid to the system’s security, by providing daily back-ups of records. 

Denomination and criteria for electronic record creation 

Record denomination, in particular of digital drawings that comprise the 

most important section of the archives in an architectural practice, which 

adopts set standards and the use of metadata, ensures record accessibility, 

thereby facilitating data and information exchange and sharing. 

archive standards 

keywords system 

7 13 17 21 

The latter is extremely important, above all if one considers the state of modern architectural 

practices that employ personnel having different technical competences, 

where responsibility for entire stages of projects (for instance, construction overseeing 

or agreed project implementation) is often shared with occasional partners. 

Although the denomination of electronically-created records is often the result of 

individual work methods, the adoption of consolidated archive standards, such as 

a call number where to indicate the project’s code, expresses the archival bond that 

links together the records created for the same project, facilitating the collection of 

digital items that bear uniform denominational features, which will always be recognisable 

at a higher hierarchical level (the project). 

The application of metadata (literally “data about data”) enables electronic 

record retrieval and identification and ensures that the record’s reliability 

and identity is maintained intact. 

metadata 

1 6 8 10 

17 19 21 

Descriptive metadata of the record (such as author’s name, title, purpose, record 

format, date and record context) comprise its profile, an electronic “form” that is 

created together with the record, accompanying the record throughout its life cycle. 

It is advisable to include in the profile all descriptive information that the system 

does not automatically store, in order to ensure accurate electronic record identification. 

Absence of metadata and thus the lack of detailed information about the 

record above all affects the record when administration work on the project has been 

completed and the record has become inactive, thereby making it extremely difficult, 

if not impossible, to trace each record’s creation in its context, creating enormous 

difficulties. Metadata registers may be used for some document types, such as 

photographs or digital surrogates (pre-existing material in analogue form which is 

converted to an electronic format through digitisation), which architectural practices 

produce as documentary evidence for the project. These are files that are external 

to the record and linked to it, where administrative metadata and more technical 

information is stored (such as indication of document migration as well as the type of 

electronic documents in an architectural practice 

189

electronic preservation 

16 19 26 

software from and to which the document has migrated), designed to provide data on 

record management and use. It is advisable to use standard terms, such as thesauri or 

controlled vocabularies in order to maintain consistency in record description. 

Selection of electronic records for long-term preservation 

The selection of records for long-term preservation, whether created on analogue or 

digital media, is the last phase in the life cycle of an active record. When a project is 

about to be completed, many documents no longer have an administrative function 

and thus assume another role partly assigned by the creator, when the principal of 

the practice is aware of the value of his/her work, and partly established by legislation 

that governs both the architectural profession and the construction process. In 

order to avoid data overload of the system and proliferation of paper-based copies 

resulting from the use of new technologies, the most appropriate approach is to 

intervene as soon as the document is no longer required for “practical and immediate 

use”, hence at the conclusion of a project. 

Setting aside policies regarding preservation and disposal determined 

by monitoring the transmission state of the record (original, drafts, copy), 

technical expertise is required to monitor the condition of the documents 

and their profiles after each migration as well as to gain knowledge of the 

architectural project’s progress, assessing whether the document should 

be retained or disposed of in case of substantial data loss. 

In an architectural practice the selection of electronic records for long-term preservation 

is governed by several criteria. The identification of corrupt and thus no longer 

accessible records is the first step towards selection. Further selection may be based 

on the appraisal of computerised drafts, or rather the drafts of records that are 

considered perfect only on paper from a formal point of view. In addition, numerous 

photocopies of paper-based documents should be selected for disposal, especially 

where a digital surrogate also exists, and the plots of drawings created electronically, 

bearing in mind that the archival bond (the “link” that enables all the documents in 

the same project to be connected) links together only the originals. E-mail printouts 

may also be eliminated and the electronic originals stored. Source files of digital 

photographs must be preserved and the duplicates and paper-based copies discarded. 

Files in formats that are not compatible with long-term preservation should 

be deleted (for instance, JPEG file format used for photographs that uses lossy data 

compression leading to irreversible resolution loss, and PDF or EPS used for designs), 

since the need to check the document and its profile for authenticity after each 

migration would mean monitoring a vast number of files, hence time-consuming and 

certainly not cost-effective, to be avoided as far as possible. 

preservation of non-current electronic records 

Strategies and procedures for the preservation of non-current electronic records 

Whereas conventional records remain stable over time (namely, that they maintain 

the ability to communicate the purpose of their creation) and as a result the author 

or specific group of similar documents are easily traceable, also thanks to the archival 

bond which is clear and remains intact over time, digital records are unstable, 


15 

prone to technological obsolescence and physical deterioration of hardware and 

software, hence considered as ephemeral, subject to a rapid succession of diverse 

formats. Nevertheless, these records are still to be regarded as a res., an “object”, 

since they document the creator’s activity, are legally valid and provide a valuable 

source for scholars. Any electronic record, compared to a conventional one, passes 

through different dynamic stages, characterised by a continuous process of conversion 

into new file formats or to updated platforms, during which the form (configuration 

and logical organisation of the document’s content) and content (message 

transmitted by the document) may change, thereby challenging the document’s 

authenticity. 

Electronic record migration to new file formats or to updated platforms, even 

when the record is stored as a current or semi-current record in the creator’s 

archive, represents the only possible means to safeguard the record’s preservation 

in the long term. 

For “in the strictest sense it is not possible to preserve an electronic record”, but 

it is only possible to preserve the capacity to reproduce it, through a “continuous 

sequence of migration” of the bitstream. However, if on the one hand procedures 

for transfer to new media are virtually standardised in “reassuring” directives, which 

recommend the transfer of a digital record from an obsolete medium to one that 

is more stable, on the other choosing how to migrate the records requires careful 

assessment based on empirical criteria rather than on directives or formal guidelines. 

For instance, the standard choice of migrating data to open formats, regardless of 

the technology (such as PDF/A and XML), as laid down by European legislation for 

record storage in public administration, does not appear feasible in architectural 

practices, where work procedures are going in another direction. On the contrary, 

wherever files produced with proprietary software proliferate, such as 

AutoCAD for digital drawings, the most appropriate solution appears 

to be precisely the migration of data to platforms that support more updated 

versions of the original software that produced the document. 

Indeed, drawings produced with AutoCAD are complex documents, consisting of 

many files, and migration to platforms that ensure backward compatibility of digital 

files is the most appropriate solution, since it enables the “whole” record to migrate 

without data loss. This solution may appear unorthodox, contrary to the principles of 

“public use” by the cultural heritage community, as it shifts the problem of preservation 

to software manufacturers. However, at present it is the only practical solution 

in order to achieve electronic record accessibility, at least in the short term, when the 

records are still housed in the practices where they were created. 

File format selection 

File format selection plays a vital role in long-term electronic record preservation. It 

should be part of a decision-making process that should begin prior to the document’s 

creation, when the organisation of the practice, aware that each document 

will later migrate, chooses the formats that best enable the preservation of a record’s 

integrity, namely of complete and uncorrupted records. 


191

One of the main obstacles to bitstream longevity is format obsolescence. 

Apart from this issue, there are some other essential requirements, such 

as portability, which measures the format’s independence from hardware 

and software platforms, cost-effectiveness, flexibility and efficiency in electronic 

exchange. 

These are all features common to open standard formats (for example, XML, TXT, 

HTML, PDF/A and TIFF) that maximise document access over time, which are not 

generally present in most proprietary formats used by professional architects for 

drawings and other various types of documents. 

It is recommended that well-known and widely adopted software be used for such 

records, that are also frequently “reused” over time, according to the principle that 

in the short term it is the manufacturer who ensures to a feasible extent that the 

document is converted from an obsolete format into a more updated version without 

data loss. 

Hence, the choice of a well-known format means reducing as far as possible 

the risks involved in document migration and also ensuring that the document 

remains intact, at least throughout its period of activity. 

hardware selection 

19 

Although the DWG file format is a proprietary format (software technical information 

has not been divulged), the most widely adopted in architectural practices for 

the creation of automated designs, especially in the architectural practice where the 

Archivio del Moderno undertook its research for Gau:di, it is sufficiently widespread 

and may be defined as “well-known”. It is not particularly long lasting (updated 

versions are frequently produced), but it is still the most suitable for document 

migration, particularly owing to the format’s progressive compatibility between 

different systems. It also ensures that the most obsolete formats remain accessible 

thanks to the increasing number of converters and viewers. Although the format is 

regarded by many as being “unpreservable”, being “owned” by a multinational in 

the IT sector, in practice the DWG file format is considered to be the standard used 

for the exchange and storage of digital drawings at present.It is to be hoped that in 

the not too distant future the rapid evolution of computer hardware and software as 

well as advancements in archival science will provide more specific information on 

electronic document preservation, especially as regards electronic records stored in 

architectural practices. 

Media selection 

Whereas a conventional record cannot exist without its medium, a born-digital 

record is not only affected by technological obsolescence and media fragility, but will 

also always depend on a software and hardware system in order to be accessible, 

also relying on electricity, without which the bitstream could not even exist. Thus, the 

real challenge will be media data conversion, rather than the long-term preservation 

of the media themselves. 

Media selection is only one of the factors that determine and affect the 

choice of one kind of preservation strategy rather than another, but it is 

certainly not the only condition to ensure bitstream longevity. 


15 

A high-quality suitable medium, stored in an appropriate environment, will maximise 

the period between two refreshing operations, simplify the refreshing operations 

themselves, and will provide some certainty on the condition of the bits. 

Yet, the corpus of procedures to be followed for the long-term preservation of a 

record, as we have seen, is altogether another matter. CDs and DVDs, like floppy 

disks and zip-disks, precisely because they are “removable”, cannot substitute the 

hard-drive, which ensures greater security although subject to obsolescence. Even 

though purchase and maintenance costs are quite high, the hard-drive’s longevity 

is less affected by environmental factors, such as temperature variation, excessive 

humidity and atmospheric pollution, which can effectively, even irreversibly damage 

optical storage media such as CDs and DVDs, currently considered to be the most 

appropriate media for long-term preservation. For this reason, policies that dictate 

the transfer of non-current records from the hard drive to removable media or that 

recommend the storage of a single back-up copy of data should be discouraged, 

especially in view of the fact that removable media are fragile, similar to traditional 

media, and can be affected by environmental factors. Although manufacturers have 

promised a life expectancy for optical storage media that ranges from 30 to 200 

years, the real length of time varies between 5 and 10 years, thanks to the rapid 

evolution of modern technology. Hence, this real length of time should be borne in 

mind when substituting the media. It is also essential to draw up an inventory of the 

optical storage media and their contents, and also an indication of where the material 

is stored, since digital items that have not been indexed, although recognisable, 

are essentially “non-existent”, precisely by virtue of the fact that their classification is 

random and temporary. 

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193

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195

16 


› archive 

› circulation 

› film 

196 

image archive: 

A Hybrid Structure 

for the Enhancement 

of Architecture Videos 

› media 

› multimedia 

› video 

iMage ARCHIVE is the multimedia archive devoted to collecting, 

preserving and enhancing architecture videos. Its main 

objective is to offer an adequate visibility to the most significant 

audiovisual documents so as to testify past, present and future 

architectural research and to improve its circulation in the 

most appropriate manner. iMage ARCHIVE is a centre for the 

collection of documents which, by their nature, are currently 

located diffusedly in a series of places, from the microcosm of 

the individual architect’s offices to the macrocosm of the webs’ 

platforms for video-sharing. iMage ARCHIVE, just like the more 

structured archiving institutions, gathers these documents 

and works for their preservation. Besides this function, the 

additional benefit of the activities of the archive stands in the 

specific ability iMage has in relating the videos which are part 

of its collection and in enhancing the discourse on architectural 

culture. Given the importance of the architecture video as a 

product of contemporary architectural culture, iMage ARCHIVE 

works towards an adequate valorisation of these documents so 

that they may become a true support for a debate. 

iMage ARCHIVE is animated by a cultural mission which is 

aimed at circulating architectural ideas and visions, and 

designed to be an instrument for the discussion and the 

exchange of ideas for contemporary design.

paola ricco 

iMage, viewpoints on architecture 

Florence, Italy 

www.image-web.org 

Paola Ricco studied architecture at the Università 

di Firenze and graduated with honours in 2005. 

She is completing a PhD in the field of History 

of Architecture at the Department of History of 

Architecture in Florence. She has been working with 

iMage since 2005 and she is responsible for iMage 

ARCHIVE. 

197

est practice for 

preservation 

multimedia repository 

multimedia 

21 

premise 

Within the realm of contemporary architecture production, video is no longer 

a secondary element, it is instead expressly a tool for design expression and an 

important document within certain areas of research in our times. iMage operates in 

close contact with the forms of communication of the architecture project, carrying 

out a series of actions that recognise the video for its distinction as an important 

strategic value in the development of architectural thought and practice. Through 

the activities of iMage ARCHIVE, a multimedia archive dedicated to the collection, 

conservation and valorisation of architecture video, iMage is conducting a project 

aimed at giving ample visibility to the more significant audio-visual documents in 

order to bear witness to some pivotal steps of contemporary research in architecture. 

The current interest in architecture video is a result of a path that has traversed 

the entire 20th century; a path that has witnessed an interweaving of cinema and 

architectural practices, often producing considerable effects. And there has been 

a frequent tendency to highlight this reciprocal exchange between the two worlds. 

Cinema has been, according to some, the cradle in which modern architecture was 

able to mature some of its basic principles on spatial concepts. It was also however 

one of the main vehicles for the disclosure and affirmation of its very image. On the 

other hand, architecture has often suggested its hypotheses for urban configurations 

to cinema, as well as the pretexts for narrative themes, generating a mirror for the 

comprehension of lived-in spaces and their dynamics. A climate of strong complicity 

has involved both architects and filmmakers for almost a century; and oftentimes, 

over the years, there have been moments of intense relations between them. 

We are particularly interested in the viewpoints of the architects who understood 

cinema as a surprisingly effective instrument for the observation and 

analysis of urban phenomena, while also using it to seek out veritable starting 

points for the verification and extension of their own hypotheses. 

This dynamic tension as it was developed by the architect with cinematographic 

means and, later in the century, with other forms of audio-visual communication, is 

starting to encounter a limit. As Le Corbusier noted in the early 1930’s, the common 

tools of cinema production of that period proved to be less compliant than 

even the more conventional means of expression of the project designer. What was 

lost, despite his awareness of the strong analogies between the profession of the 

architect and the film-director, was the immediacy of the architect’s interpretative 

and expressive action. 

a new convergence 

At the end of the 1980’s, with computing innovation in full swing, the first 

software for digital modelling, along with animation and especially video 

editing, sanctioned a fundamental breakthrough. A greater accessibility 

to technology brought video closer to the daily practices of architects, 

who adopted it as yet another vehicle, adding to their other existing tools, 

in order to elaborate a more distinct expression for their designs. 


convergence 

videos 

16 

Architects and project designers started to systematically deal with audio-visual 

devices as means of communication and, in adapting those tools to their needs, 

became real producers of the moving image. The progressive perfection of the 

instruments, techniques, a growing versatility and the proliferation of computer 

devices all created the conditions for video to affirm itself as a channel for investigation 

and research. In response to certain technological and sociological drives, as the 

fundamental passages for stimulating interest in videos on architecture, the theoretic 

reflection set forth at the end of the same decade had a decisive role in that it focalised 

a number of important factors in the relationship between architecture and its 

tools of communication. Although they never explicitly dealt with the topic of video, 

the contributions of Beatriz Colomina (“Architectureproduction”, 1988 and “Privacy 

and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media”, 1994), and the more recent 

text by Kester Rattenbury (“This is not architecture”, 2002), took time to analyse the 

consequences of a gradual complementarity of the dimension of the project and the 

realm of media production. The video as a tool, according to this view, constitutes 

a noteworthy case in point to explain the development of certain directions in contemporary 

production. And over recent years a few distinct events have shown there 

to be a definite interest, which goes back to the first reflections on the topic: from 

the last two editions of the FIFARC, Biennale Internationale du Film d’Architecture et 

Environnement Urbain in Bordeaux, to the birth of Artimage, Medien und Architektur 

Biennale of Graz, one sees a progressive increased awareness regarding the passage 

from the use of video as an instrument, in which architecture is simply documented, 

to one where it becomes a real act of communication. 

the florence festival 

This is the environment in which the international festival of architecture 

and media, also known as Beyond Media, was born. Starting off 

in Florence in 1997, today it constitutes the opportunity for exchange 

and engaging encounters. 

From the festival’s beginning, its main objective has been to actively monitor the 

audio-visual realm in which architects have been operating. BEYOND MEDIA constituted 

the first significant occasion to provide visibility for video productions based on 

a discussion of architecture, which often remained confined to the private spheres 

and inner circles of their authors. This was paradoxical for documentation developed 

for its availability and potential as a medium that is generally more open to ample 

audiences. For that reason, BEYOND MEDIA was developed to give a voice to video 

projects and tell their stories, as an opportunity to show and share the pieces by 

putting them at the centre of a reflection that is open to all who operate, with various 

roles, in the field of architecture. Over the eleven years of activity and with the 

eight editions of BEYOND MEDIA, iMage has attentively followed the evolution of 

architecture’s theory and expression. 

the archive 

Starting with the first edition of the festival put on by iMage, what emerged 

was the necessity to give life to a permanent structure. There was need of an 

image archive 

199

operative space for the collection of audio-visual documents and their constant 

examination, in order to gather and provide the necessary elements to 

present an updated image of what’s effectively being produced by architects 

in the world of video media production. 

The current interest and the growing distribution of architecture videos confirms the 

quality levels of the projects and offers vitality to iMage ARCHIVE’s future activities. 

The iMage ARCHIVE is a centre for the compilation and collection of documents, 

which, for their specific characteristics, are often arranged in a dismembered, 

spread-out way in a number of different places, from the microcosms of architecture 

studios to the macrocosm of web-platforms and video sharing. 

The archive brings together about 2,500 video works that were created by 

architects, artists, filmmakers, documentary directors and students. 

Each contributor elaborates a personal way of narrating architecture through video 

and gives their own product a vestige that is adapted to the objective for which it is 

realised. The videos are produced to investigate the characteristics and potential of 

a project, and its performance; or else to exhibit in exposition environments, to be 

communicated through media channels, in addition to participation in competitions, 

or to substantiate publication projects. 

Therefore, the material collected in the archive is both varied and multifaceted. Any 

attempt to apply categories would diminish the polyhedric nature of the collected 

works, which is instead one of the strong features of the iMage ARCHIVE collection. 

However, it may be useful, in order to offer an analytical key for better understanding 

the collected videos, to distinguish two lines of production, indicating two different 

main objectives of the audiovisual pieces. 

The first group collects the audiovisual documents that were used as tools of 

design investigation. 

The architects work with animation techniques developed during the stage of the 

project’s elaboration, not only as an occasion for the verification of the structural 

qualities of architecture, but also as a means for clarifying the defining language that 

translates the fundamental concepts of their research into architecture. Experiences 

that make use of geometric outlines and diagrams as structural guidelines are based 

on this approach. 

The second group comprises the audiovisual documents that are developed 

as means to communicate architecture projects. 

These works can narrate the architecture project design or the completed building, 

but that which allows for a comparison between the two is the intentionally communicative 

content of the final product. The video becomes an act of demonstration 

and showcase for communication and, in certain cases, it directly relates to forms of 

publicity production. The two types of video described do not run parallel, they are 

rather interchangeable, and at times even complementary: the first type of investigation 

does not cancel interest in the second type of production and vice versa. 

In all cases, however, one perceives the strong presence of a design dimension in 


preservation 

15 19 26 

16 

each. The collection of the archive is therefore specifically concentrated on videos of 

architecture as acts of communication regarding architecture projects themselves. 

This particular point of observation, however, does not exclude the presence in the 

collection of a series of works that can be ascribed to the critical/documenting genre 

of video that is already significantly consolidated. 

conservation 

In virtue of the unique contents and awareness regarding the necessary attention for 

works that require being hosted for their more ample functions within the world of 

architectural production, iMage ARCHIVE operates on the margins of the two ambits 

of architecture and audio-visual production; consequently the acquired tools for the 

management of the archive draw on models of a double nature. The more structured 

archives of audiovisual material, and especially those connected to video art, offer 

the guidelines for an effective management of possible technical problems. 

The more pressing necessity in this field is to limit the damage caused by the 

perishability of the support devices, in both analogical and digital formats, 

through a cyclical revision of new units of conservation, while also limiting 

the loss of information caused by the aging process of the various reading 

formats of the material. 

The archives of architecture are a point of reference regarding the aspects that are 

directly tied to the description of the architecture project. For purposes of documentation, 

each video piece is equipped, at the moment of its entrance into the 

archive, with standardised information data. There is also a third model that is much 

closer to the world of commercial publicity, which proposes interesting ideas about 

dynamic means for the circulation and distribution of the archive’s material. 

circulation 

The contents of iMage ARCHIVE were proposed outside of our circuit through two 

main projects stemming from the necessity to liberate the material so it could live 

and circulate beyond the limits of the archive. For example, 

the travelling exposition Architecture Media Player was presented for the 

first time during the fourth edition of the Beyond Media festival, at the Luigi 

Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art in Prato, in December of 1999, and was 

followed by a widespread circulation throughout all of Italy. 

The exposition project was developed to define a first systematic interpretation of 

the possibilities of multimedia works and their exposition. The arrangement was 

conceived as an “architecture generator”, a kind of mutable juke-box, capable of 

exposing and communicating architecture through New Media: centred on video 

and open to direct exchange through publications on CD ROM, with the exploration 

of 3-D spaces, cinema and the first architectural manifestations on Internet. The 

“Architecture Media Player” was created to intervene where certain expressions of 

research in architecture could not find the possibility for exposure or published com- 

image archive 

201

munication. The important works presented, which were previously inaccessible due 

to the inadequacy of traditional exposition, could now be proposed through systems 

of interaction and projection that were capable of bringing the architecture projects 

off of the screen and making them available for individual consultation as well as a 

collective spectacularisation. 

In the following years, since 2002, with the SCREENINGS program, iMage ARCHIVE 

has proposed a series of viewings, in Italy and abroad, of video programs of variable 

durations, made up of selected and themed works. On these occasions, the videos 

were presented to the public and accompanied by introductory discussions, based 

on reflections, both spoken and written, which helped to guide the comprehension 

of the selected audio-visual documents, both critically and conscientiously. Critique 

was encouraged towards the projects being documented, in addition to the product 

of communication, as they are both, from the viewpoint of iMage ARCHIVE, perfectly 

integrated. 

The video programs proposed for every event were organised by putting the 

architecture video at the centre of a more ample reflection that could bring 

forth moments of exchange and dialogue to enhance the presentation. 

photograph 

14 19 22 23 24 

It is the collective aspect of the SCREENINGS programs that emerges as the most 

direct and immediate expression of the way iMage ARCHIVE committed to increasing 

the discussion on architecture videos. This is a necessary step for propounding 

the effectiveness of video as a means for a fuller comprehension of contemporary 

architectural production. 

The ongoing objective that guided the project for circulation is the same that is at 

the basis of the festival BEYOND MEDIA; to create the necessary conditions for the 

development of a discussion, which involves an ample group of people that can 

share their interests in architecture, and to impart adequate keys for reading and 

understanding video, and the current critical debates on some of the most dynamic 

experiences in architecture projects. 

an archive of hybrid formation 

The iMage ARCHIVE, as any of the structured archive institutions, aims to convey 

documents of architecture in video while working for their conservation. In addition 

to this function there is the added value of the archive’s activities. Throughout 

its research on those intimate connections that demonstrate the effectiveness of 

architecture videos, it has been a part of iMage’s specific competence to create relations 

surrounding the collected videos in order to construct and stimulate discussions 

on architecture, while paying attention to the expressive content and form of the 

video format. Our structure is comparable to other existing models of architecture 

archives, but at the same time it maintains its own specificity as a result of the 

unique experiences that follow their own particular path. It is this path that today 

allows us to hold active discussion on a theme that continues to grow and transform 

on a daily basis. iMage ARCHIVE carries out its role to increase awareness and incentives 

towards architects, their clients and institutions, with the purpose of generating 

effective practices in the qualified use of video as a medium. The close adherence 

that iMage has developed with what is contemporary makes the material collected 

in our archive the main instrument for photographing an era and understanding how 

it describes itself. The specific skills acquired over time allow us, in interpreting the 

contents of the videos, to elaborate an open theoretic reflection regarding a daily 

confrontation with reality and a verification of its standing positions. 


conclusions 

Having comprehended the importance of architecture video as a major 

project of the contemporary culture of architecture, iMage Archive operates, 

through an intense activity of circulation, so that these documents are adequately 

valued to become a real platform for discussion. 

16 

That which animates our program is a cultural project aimed at circulating ideas and 

visions of architecture and generating a vehicle for debate, encounters and exchange 

regarding the themes of contemporary project design. With the strength of an 

archive base that bears witness to certain key lines of research in project design, set 

forth with the revolution in computer innovation, and with a vantage-point developed 

over more than ten years of observation and activity, we are today witnessing 

important evolutions in the field, such as the growth in popularity of the tools for 

sharing audio-visual documents over the web, or the affirmation of video communication 

as a tool for projects of urban communications, and the renewed and complex 

consequences that can affect the ways architectural projects are exhibited to the 

public. 

Fig. 1: “Post Barnsley”, squint/opera, architecture by Alsop Architects, UK 2003 (p. 342). 

Fig. 2: “Botha House”, dbox and ARC574, architecture by Thomas Phifer and Partners, 

US 2003 (p. 342). 

Fig. 3: “Altstetten Church”, Takehiko Nagakura, architecture by Alvar Aalto, 

US 2003 (p. 342). 

Fig. 4: “Bo-Bo”, archi media, FR 2003 (p. 343). 

Fig. 5: “Rooftecture”, Shuhei Endo, JP 2003 (p. 343). 

Fig. 6: “Words, Images and Spaces”, Kyong Park, US 2002 (p. 343). 

Fig. 7: “Park Avenue”, Florent Rougemont, NL 2003 (p. 343). 

image archive 

203

17 

› classification 

› facetagging 

› faceted classification 

› folksonomies 

204 

the facetag engine: 

A Semantic Collaborative 

Tagging Tool 

› information architecture 

› social classification 

› tag 

› tagging 

FaceTag is a working prototype of a semantic collaborative 

tagging tool conceived for improved bookmarking, searching 

and re-finding of resources in specialized domains. 

FaceTag’s goal is to show how the vast, homogeneous, flat 

keywords’ space created by users while tagging can be 

effectively improved by using a richer faceted classification 

superstructure to supplement the “information scent” and 

“berry-picking” capabilities of the system. The additional layer 

is aggregated both implicitly, observing user behaviour, and 

explicitly, by introducing a compelling user experience that 

facilitates end-user creation of relationships between tags.

emanuele quintarelli 

FaceTag 

Roma, Italy 

www.facetag.org 

Emanuele Quintarelli is an Enterprise 2.0 

specialist and evangelist. He has spoken at several 

international conferences and wrote the Enterprise 

2.0 chapter of the book Web 2.0 by Il Sole 24 Ore. 

He is the organizer of Web2.Oltre (the Italian 

conference about Web 2.0) of the Italian Information 

Architecture Summit and of the International Forum 

on Enterprise 2.0. 

His blog is http://socialenterprise.it. 

andrea resmini 

FaceTag 

Bologna, Italy 


Andrea Resmini is an information architect. An ICT 

professional since 1989, Andrea holds an MA in 

Architecture and Industrial Design and is currently 

pursuing a PhD in Legal Informatics specializing in 

IA and UX issues concerning historical and juridical 

databases. Andrea chaired the 2nd Italian IA Summit 

and leads the Higher Education in IA WG for the 

Information Architecture Institute. His website is 

http://resmini.net. 

luca rosati 

FaceTag 

Perugia, Italy 


Luca Rosati is a freelance information architect 

and professor of Human Computer Interaction at 

the University for Foreigners of Perugia (IT). He 

has spoken at several international conferences 

and published the books Organizing Knowledge: 

From Libraries to Information Architecture for the 

Web; and Information Architecture: From Everyday 

Environments to the Web. His website is http:// 

lucarosati.it. 

205

206

17 

introduction 

Collaborative tagging systems have been largely adopted by end-users as useful 

and powerful tools to organize, browse and publicly share personal collections of 

resources on the World Wide Web through the introduction of simple metadata. 

The aggregation of these metadata is often referred to as a folksonomy, 

a user-generated classification, emerging through bottom-up consensus 

while users assign free form keywords to online resources for personal 

or social benefit. 

folksonomy 

keywords 

tag clouds 

tagging 

browsing 

6 19 21 22 26 

metadata 

1 6 8 10 

15 19 21 

Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us), Flickr (www.flickr.com), 43things (www.43things. 

com), Furl (www.furl.net) and Technorati (www.technorati.com) are all web-based 

collaborative systems for building shared databases of items, enriched by a flat 

metadata vocabulary that can be used to perform metadata-driven queries, to 

monitor change in areas of interest or to discover emergences or trends, such as the 

hottest / most popular topics in the system [Quintarelli 2005]. 

Folksonomies have often been seen as orthogonal to taxonomies and controlled 

vocabularies: flat, inclusive and emerging information spaces created by bottom-up 

user input and consensus versus rigid, hierarchical and coherent systems professionally 

hand-crafted a priori [Quintarelli 2005]. In a flat tagging system each 

document can be retrieved through a simple set of keywords, collaboratively 

introduced by users to describe and categorize that document, very much like in a 

keyword-based search process in which descriptive terms can be used to get a set of 

applicable items. 

Despite their low cognitive cost, their capability of matching the users’ real needs 

and language and their great value in a serendipity research task, folksonomies 

imply however a lack of precision, a very low findability quotient (especially in a 

known-item approach) and a limited scalability for the intrinsic variability of language 

[Quintarelli 2005]. 

Tags also help users identify articles and posts of interest on websites, providing 

a complimentary freelinking super-structure. This marks a major shift in 

that tagging becomes a tool to maximize findability and browsability, requiring 

new, faster and more powerful ways to access content, far beyond what 

was allowed by earlier tag cloud approaches [Feinstein & Smadja 2006]. 

Tag clouds, where the most popular tags are usually displayed through an alphabetically 

ordered list with the font size increasing with the tag’s relevance, are widely 

used visual interfaces for information retrieval that provide a global contextual view 

of tags assigned to resources in a system [Hassan, Montero, Herrero, Solana 2006]. 

As they are currently implemented, tag clouds cannot clearly provide a rich multidimensional 

browsing experience over large tagging spaces. There are several reasons 

for this: 

1. Choosing tags by frequency of use inevitably causes a high semantic density with 

very few well-known and stable topics dominating the scene. 

2. This in turn might lead to a self-sustaining cycle, where well know and stable topics 

become ever predominant because they are predominant. 

3. Providing only an alphabetical criterion to sort tags heavily limits navigation, scanning 

and extraction, and in the end prevents the user from building a coherent global 

map of tag-space. 

the facetag engine 

207

4. A flat tag cloud cannot visually support semantic relationships between tags. 

We suggest that these relationships are needed to improve the user experience 

and general usefulness of the system. 

5. Current tag clouds are simple lists of links and fail to provide any complex semantical 

operation, besides allowing to click on any given tag one at a time. 

As a result of the inherently inconsistent, evolving and much variable process 

of associating words and meanings, tagging systems are implicitly plagued 

by a number of linguistic issues which include polysemy, homonymy, plurals, 

synonymy and basic level variation, which do not appear easy to solve 

[Golder & Huberman 2005]. Any of these problems can dramatically reduce 

the effectiveness of the application and the benefits brought by the use 

of tagging systems. 

folksonomy 

taxonomy 

facet 

1 6 20 

tagging 

6 8 10 

tagging and folksonomies in ia literature 

The widespread adoption of tagging systems by end-users has greatly stimulated 

discussion about their long-term implications inside the information studies community. 

In Ambient Findability, Morville [Morville 2005] states that tagging has its 

own proper place inside information architecture theory and practice, suggesting 

that these systems can be productively considered a complementary fast moving 

layer over slower layers represented by more traditional architectural information 

practices. Karl Fast reinforced this position showing how pace layering theory can be 

combined with the complexity and resilience theories to provide a working model of 

interaction between folksonomies and conventional information architecture [Campbell 

& Fast 2006]. Golder and Huberman [Golder & Huberman 2005] analysed the 

structure and dynamics of collaborative tagging systems trying to extract stable patterns 

and recurrent tag types in del.icio.us. With Mefeedia [http://mefeedia.com], 

Dutch information architect Peter Van Dijck was among the first to propose a mixing 

of facets and tags, even if in Mefeedia tags are statically assigned to a fixed number 

of editorially designed facets. Discussions of faceted classification models in current 

websites, and the relationship between facets and tagging, have been presented by 

Travis Wilson at the IA Summit 2006 [Wilson 2006]. 

Marti Hearst and The Flamenco project have been investigating for more 

than fourteen years how faceted interfaces can help users flexibly navigate 

and search through large information spaces [Hearst, The Flamenco Search 

Interface Project]. 

Hierarchical relationships can be implicitly found in tagging systems as showed by 

Sam H. Kome [Kome 2006], while Heymann and Garcia-Molina presented a simple 

algorithm to automatically convert tags associated to objects into a hierarchical 

taxonomy [Heymann and Garcia Molina 2006]. 

The pioneer social bookmarking site RawSugar, now closed, implemented a similar 

hierarchical approach complemented by clustering techniques. 

Context, language, communities of practice and specialized domains all have a 

large impact in the way users tag, as reported by Resmini [Resmini et al. 2008]. 


clustering 

tag clouds 

17 

Finally, Bar-Ilan [Bar-Ilan et al. 2006] compares unstructured (freely assigned tags) 

and structured tagging (tags assigned to predefined metadata elements), suggesting 

that structured tagging may be able to produce stronger user guidance, hence possibly 

resulting in higher quality descriptions. 

semantic structures in tagging systems 

Usability studies show how information seekers in large domains of objects prefer 

meaningful groupings of related items, in order to quickly understand relationships 

and so decide how to proceed [Hearst 2006a]. In other words, it seems quite clear 

that without any means to explore and make sense of large quantities of similar 

items, users feel lost and fail. Clustering and faceted classification have both been 

proposed in the past as useful techniques to address this issue. 

Clusters 

Document clustering refers to the act of grouping items according to some 

measure of similarity, such as for example, identifiable repetitive patterns 

of words and phrases. 

facet 

1 6 20 

Some advanced tagging systems like Rawsugar and Flickr are already using clusters 

to address the issues that plagued the first generation of folksonomy-based applications: 

clusters help reduce the semantic density and improve the visual consistency 

of tag clouds. Moreover, clustering is automatable, can be used to refine vague 

queries and to disambiguate search keywords. Nonetheless, clustering techniques 

and clustering algorithms are not perfect and often generate unclean, hard-topredict 

groups. These groups tend to conflate many different dimensions as well, and 

easily become hard to label in meaningful ways. Finally, clustering does not generally 

allow refinements and follow-up queries, thus resulting in limits to the exploratory 

capabilities of the system. 

Usability results show that users prefer clear hierarchies with categories at uniform 

levels of granularity, to the unpredictable and unlabeled groupings typical of clustering 

techniques [Hearst 2006a]. 

Hierarchical facets 

At the other end of the classificatiweb, traditional hierarchical categories are coherent 

and complete systems of meaningful labels, which systematically organize a 

domain. The main drawback to this approach is that a single monolithic hierarchical 

organization rarely has the capability to match the varied ways of thinking and 

organizing that the world of different users in a live social environment has. 

In this respect, hierarchical faceted metadata has emerged as a promising 

middle ground, which can satisfy the needs of a wide range of users with 

different mental models and vocabularies [Yee et al. 2003]. 

Facets are orthogonal descriptors (i.e. categories) within a metadata system. Each 

facet has a name and addresses and a different conceptual dimension or feature 

type relevant to the collection. As facets can be flat or hierarchical and they can be 


209

assigned single or multiple values, a faceted search interface requires each object 

in the collection to be classified using labels from different facets. In a hierarchical 

faceted navigation tool, choosing a label from one of the facets is equivalent to 

performing a disjunction over all the labels beneath the selected one, while choosing 

labels from different hierarchies results in a conjunction of disjunctions over the 

selected labels and their sub labels. 

In this kind of interface, users can navigate multiple faceted hierarchies at the 

same time [English et al. 2002b]. Usability studies show how this approach is 

preferred over single hierarchies because users feel in control without getting 

lost [English et al. 2002b; Yee et al. 2003]. Additional features exposed by 

faceted-based interfaces are the possibility to suggest logical alternatives 

at each step and to avoid dead ends, which produce no result whatsoever. 

For these reasons, faceted metadata can be used to support navigation along 

several dimensions simultaneously, allowing seamless integration between browsing 

and free searching, and an easy way to refine (zoom in) and broaden (zoom out) any 

query while retaining a feeling of control and understanding [English et al. 2002b]. In 

short, this approach favours recognition over recall and provides better support for 

exploration, discovery and iterative query refinement [Hearst 2006a]. Again, usability 

studies attest how hierarchical faceted interfaces are preferred over simpler keyword 

based search interfaces and how they can be easily understood by the average user 

[Yee et al. 2003] if iteratively designed and tested to address usability issues [English 

et al. 2002a]. 

overview of facetag 

FaceTag introduces an innovative, multidimensional semantic paradigm for 

organizing, navigating and searching large information spaces through the 

use of tags. We believe this approach can limit the impact of linguistic complications, 

as FaceTag introduces a number of correctives to explicitly address 

these issues: 

1. It allows tag hierarchies. Users have the opportunity to organize their resources by 

means of parent-child relationships. 

2. By means of the underlying, domain-related faceted classification structure, tag 

hierarchies are semantically assigned to established facets. These are used to section 

and navigate the resource domain flexibly. 

3. Tagging and searching can be mixed to maximize findability, browsability and user-discovery. 

Similarly, one of the main limitations of hierarchical faceted categories 

lies in the difficulty to automate both the creation of categories and the association 

of single items to a label hierarchy under each facet [Hearst 2006a]. FaceTag avoids 

this particular issue entirely by reversing the paradigm, as it uses no algorithmic 

round-ups: FaceTag is built around the notion that users provide the legwork, and 

one of the side-goals of the project is to investigate how a hierarchical and faceted 

metadata structure can be added to user generated content making use of tags 

provided by end users in collaborative systems, limiting the amount of effort and toil 

required through a careful user interface design [Mascaro 2007]. 


17 

Although facet and faceted have become very common terms in the information 

architecture field, their application falls often far from its original meaning. The attribute 

faceted, indeed, is often loosely referred to the availability of means to search 

by different keys [La Barre 2004]. 

The full theory of faceted classification, as developed by S. R. Ranganathan 

and the Classification Research Group (crg) and which includes rules 

for citation order and notation, has definitely enjoyed a less widespread use 

as far as website organization is concerned. Notable exceptions to this rule 

are usually offered by projects staffing librarians, such as fatks [Slavic 2002], 

and FaceTag. 

clustering 

facet 

1 6 20 

Reference projects were Flamenco (http://flamenco.berkeley.edu), Facetious 

(http://demo.siderean.com/facetious/facetious.jsp), and Etsy (www.etsy.com). It 

must be noted that both Facetious and Etsy propose a mixture of properly designed 

facets and simpler, less-compliant metadata. 

creating facets for tagging 

The choice of facets is based on the CRG theory [Vickery 1960]. Indeed, an aspect often 

underestimated on the World Wide Web is that both Ranganathan and the CRG 

described a generic schema for faceted classification, which every actual schema can 

refer to. Thus, when working on a faceted classification project one does not have to 

rebuild a schema from scratch every time, but may follow guidelines. CRG postulates 

11-13 general categories [Broughton 2001]: since for the test case implementation, 

the chosen reference domain was information architecture (IA), in Tab. 1 is shown 

the matching between CRG standard categories and information architecture-related 

categories that were used to define the facets. Tab. 2 purports the list of facets 

and a number of sample foci derived from the initial data pool, a preliminary corpus 

of IA resources gathered from the Information Architecture Institute Library [http:// 

iainstitute.org/library]. 

CRG FaceTag 

Thing [Documents, resources] 

Type Resource Types (e.g. online report, case study...) 

Part - 

Property Language 

Material [Format] 

Process - 

Operation Activities/Subjects (e.g. competitive analysis, faceted classification...) 

Product [Deliverables] 

Byproduct - 

Patient Usage (e.g. Industry, Health...) 

Agent People 

Space [Country] 

Time Date 

Tab. 1: FaceTag facets definition by CRG standard categories. 


211

erry-picking 

13 

Facet Examples 

Resource Types white paper, case study, blog>enterprise web 

Language Predefined values (based on ISO Standard ISO 639-2) 

Activities / Subjects Competitive analysis, classification > facets, web 2.0 > folksono 

mies, information Design > navigation design > breadcrumbs 

Usage industry, public administration, health, software > companies 

> Google, education > conferences > www2006 

People Morville, E. Reiss, Weinberger 

Date Automatically added 

Tab. 2: FaceTag facets and examples of foci. 

It must be noted that these facets are being constantly revised upon users’ feedback, 

as they are guidelines and not a restrictive framework. User needs are paramount 

and should be employed to determine the most valuable facets for every system 

and community of practice. Moreover, in the actual implementation foci, the values 

each facet can assume in faceted classification theory, will be user-generated – as in 

this model tags are the foci. The only exceptions are the language facet, which uses 

a predefined list of languages in the ISO 639-2 notation, and the date facet, which 

will receive a software-generated time-stamp upon resource creation. Tab. 3 lists the 

definitive list of facets and labels used by the FaceTag engine. 

Facet Examples 

Resource Types white paper, case study, blog > enterprise web 

Language Predefined values (based on ISO Standard ISO 639-2) 

Themes competitive analysis, classification > facets, web 2.0 > folksono 

mies, information Design > navigation design > breadcrumbs 

Purpose industry, public administration, health, software > companies 

> Google, education > conferencs > www2006 

People Morville, E. Reiss, Weinberger 

Date Automatically added 

Tab. 3: Final list of facets. 

berry-picking, information scent and the two 

axis of information architecture 

Facets are particularly suitable to classify a homogeneous collection of items – i.e. a 

set of resources belonging to a specific disciplinary area, and because of their very 

nature, facets constitute an adaptive classification system capable to easily represent 

both knowledge in movement, such as that observable in a social, collaborative 

context; and several mental models at the same time, such as those playing their role 

in this context. As such, the blend of tags and facets helps empower and amplify the 

“information scent” [Chi et al. 2001] and the “berry-picking” capabilities of the system. 

The term “berry-picking” refers to a model in which searching is described not 

as a single query-response process, but as an evolving temporally laid out set of 

sometimes conflicting search terms along a berry-picking-like path [Bates 1989]. 


17 

Every information architecture deals with two different information axes [Rosati 

2007: 76-91]: a vertical (or paradigmatic) axis, consisting of the hierarchical relationship 

that each item in a system engages with the others; and a horizontal (or syntagmatic) 

axis, consisting of the semantic relationships of contiguity that each item 

engages with the others. We believe that the combination of tags and facets allows 

for better use and management of these: 

ſi paradigmatically, when users associate a keyword to a facet (to tag a resource), 

FaceTag suggests similar tags or a hierarchy of tags pertaining to the same facet; 

ſi syntagmatically, FaceTag allows users to see all the other tags belonging to the 

same facet(s). 

Fig. 1: The two axes of Information Architecture (p. 344). 

using facetag 

FaceTag works differently from the average collaborative bookmarking application. 

It offers both a browsing/searching mode and an administrative/ 

editing mode as separate instances, as these are two different activities to 

which the user interface adapts providing different aiding tools (navigation, 

resource management) and different behaviours (zooming, tag suggestions). 

At the heart of FaceTag is a zooming engine, which maintains a history of all the tags 

and searches that a user is requesting (this is called “engaging a tag”). When users 

engage a tag, the interface adjusts and zooms in providing a filtered view, a subset of 

all available resources based on this active selection. By selecting more tags from different 

meaningful facets (as they are editorially chosen for the current domain), users 

can effectively shrink the results they obtain until they find either what they are looking 

for, or the last possible result set arising from the intersection of all active tags. 

This feature set enables considerably enhanced, berry-picking-like search strategies: 

since tags can be disengaged freely and in whatever order suits the users, opening 

up new unpredicted result sets, users might decide to pursue another search and enter 

new different subsets following some other information scent (that is, a theme or 

term that appears promising), or start anew by clearing up their history completely, 

never finding themselves facing dead-ends, which produce no results at all. 

sample session 

When a user accesses the application, first FaceTag replies in browsing mode and 

the user is presented a page, which lists the most recent additions to the system in 

the main body. The other relevant parts of the user interface are the facet containers 

and the search box at the top. 

Fig. 2: FaceTag main page, with the most recent resources and the facet containers (p. 345). 

Inside FaceTag, a user can decide to look for content a) by entering tags 

manually or b) by clicking on first-level tags in a specific facet container. 

If the user enters a tag manually, FaceTag returns the paginated results set of all 

the resources, which either contain that tag in their tag pool or have the same term 


213

in their title, description or notes. The facet display is adjusted accordingly to show 

only those facets and pertaining first-level tags that are related to the results set. Any 

active tag is called an “engaged” tag. 

Fig. 3: Searching for resources. The user chose “information architecture” and facet 

containers and tag lists adjust. Stickers for the engaged tag appear in the status bar 

top, grey (p. 345). 

In case the keyword happens to be an umpteenth-level tag, the corresponding facet 

will show all umpteenth+1 tags and add any broader tag in the hierarchy up to the 

umpteenth-1 tag to the facet title as clickable items, which allow zooming out. If 

there is no umpteenth+1 tag, the facet is not displayed. If the user clicks on a tag 

from any of the facet containers, FaceTag returns the paginated results set of all the 

resources that have been tagged with that tag. The currently engaged tag (or tags) 

is displayed in a status bar to show it’s active. The facet containers are adjusted consequently. 

The active facet container shows all broader tags from the hierarchy, the 

selected tag may be part of and alongside the facet title and all pertaining narrower 

tags. Inactive facets show first-level tags, which relate to the resources pertaining 

to the results set. Upon subsequent zooming in and refining the query, when there 

are no narrower tags, the breadcrumb display is maintained to allow zooming out or 

what we call “disengaging”, resetting the search, while the facet container is greyed 

out and becomes inactive. 

Fig. 4: Empty facet containers and greyed out pertaining terms at the end of a search 

session (p. 345). 

Obviously, a user may start searching for a keyword and then adjust her results set 

using facets, combining the two approaches in any way she prefers until she reaches 

a satisfactory answer, or proceed vice versa and zoom in and out by using tags. Similarly, 

tags pertaining to different facets can be used together during a single search 

to narrow down a results set quickly and efficiently. If there is no disengagement, all 

subsequent operations are performed on the intermediate results set. 

If a user logs in, access to the administrative interface is granted and adding, 

editing and deleting resources and tags become possible. Upon entering new 

resources, a user is provided with a simple form with entry fields for every facet. 

These tag fields are optional, and can be left empty at will: there is no mandatory 

facet. However, if a user start to enter a tag, the completion tool suggests similar 

tags from the pertaining facet only. Moreover, since users can optionally identify two 

or more tags as a hierarchy through a simple syntax (using the “>” character), the 

completion tool can suggest, again facet per facet, not just similar tags, but similar 

tags as parts of a hierarchy of tags, hence effectively suggesting an entire hierarchy. 

Gradually, with use, these hierarchies acquire complexity and become globally 

significant in the system. 

Fig. 5: The administrative interface for adding resources to FaceTag (p. 344). 

Editing or modifying can be done seamlessly from the browsing interface, by clicking 

icons, which appear next to one’s own resources. Noticeably, the same happens if a 

user tries to add a resource she already added (based on URI identification): FaceTag 

simply supplies the editing interface and preloads the original data. 


17 

conclusions 

By providing the user with facets to which hierarchical sets of tags relate and pertain 

and a usable interface, which adapts to the ongoing query, FaceTag may solve, 

through contextualization and user-added semantic value, most of the basic issues 

connected with polysemy, homonymy and base level variations. 

While further testing and usability studies are needed to verify to what 

extent users are motivated to use our prototype and to introduce structure 

in addition to flat tags, preliminary user evaluations show how the addition 

of hierarchies and facets can improve and disambiguate the meaning of tags 

by means of contextualization and organization. 

This approach also augments the overall architectural scalability of the system and 

directly addresses one of the largest issues faced by the most appreciated social 

applications. Iterative card sorting tests with different user groups is being considered 

for all labelling, with the purpose to map some of the mental models by which 

users represent the IA knowledge domain. These results will provide further data to 

tune the facet architecture. Similarly, the user interface is being designed through 

documented heuristics and patterns and verified at each iterative step by small usability 

tests. More extensive user research will involve the use of think-aloud protocol 

sessions with more than five testers for each session. Scenarios will include storing 

bookmarks and retrieving them. Looking at preliminary results, a critical task addressed 

by the application is the assignment of new bookmarks and the association 

of tags to relevant facets. The current interface is rather simple but other options, 

leveraging advanced tag suggestion and tag/facet association, are beginning to be 

evaluated. 

FaceTag began from the assumption that bottom-up and top-down classification 

methods are complementary: tagging is inclusive, simple and matches 

the user’s real needs and use of language, whilst formal methods provide 

coherent, consistent systems for organizing data, but are expensive and do 

not have the advantage of corresponding to the user’s use of language. 

The system that was built as a result combines both approaches, to mutual benefit. 

As testing and evaluation is now underway it is hoped that results will become available 

later this year. 



215

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217

18 

› building management 

› building system 

› computer integrated 

218 

computer integrated 

building system: 

Preliminary Thoughts 

› construction 

› contemporary fabrication 

› design information 

The author proposes a Computer Integrated Building System 

(CIBS) based on the wide application of digital technology in 

design, fabrication and building management. The problems, 

which CIBS is facing, are divided into several aspects, including: 

the incompleteness of the IT revolution, the conflict between 

traditional construction and contemporary architectonic, 

and the viability and efficiency of IT application in building 

management. 

This article gives preliminary discussions and constructive 

opinions on these problems, concluding in the framework 

of four sub-systems of cibs, which are, Computer Integrated 

Building Information System (cibis), Computer Integrated 

Building Construction System (cibcs), Computer Integrated 

Building Manufacture System (cibms) and Computer Integrated 

Building Administration System (cibas). In general, this article 

tries to set up a forward-looking argument on the complete 

and holistic innovation that should have already taken place 

in the field of architecture in the new digital era.

hong zhang 

Tsinghua University 

Beijing, China 

www.tsinghua.edu.cn 

Hong Zhang (1977), doctor of engineering. 

Assistant Professor in School of Architecture, 

Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Research work 

concerning mainly Computer Integrated Building 

Information System (CIBIS), which is a new concept 

and workable system for studying Life Cycle 

Building research. 

219

uilding management 

building system 

Following the first industrial revolution and the first and second technological revolutions, 

the human world is entering the second industrial revolution and the third 

technological revolution: the information revolution. 

Ubiquitous digital technology is changing human life completely. This change 

in the field of architecture can be seen in two ways. The first is the change 

of the life-container, the building itself. The second is the change of the fundamental 

architectural system. 

computer integrated 

construction 

contemporary 

fabrication 

design information 

While the industrial age has a corresponding industrialized system for buildings, the 

information age should, and must have one of its own. 

However, the fact is that in the field of architecture, the groundbreaking change in 

building systems haven’t yet been thoroughly studied, with no convincing achievement 

gained comparable to the CIMS in the manufacture industry. This embarrassing 

reality is more obvious when a holistic analysis is taken on the past and present, 

treating architectural design, building construction, building component fabrication 

and building management as a whole and inherent process, with the information 

flow through them as a central axis. 

With the success of cad and PCs, the design process is already somewhat 

“paperless”, but deeper investigations suggest that the digitalisation of 

design information is still a dream not yet realized. 

digital design 

2 

Most of the digital design media we have now are only electronic correspondences 

of their traditional predecessors, made, organized and used in the same way as we 

did with drawings on paper. These good-looking digital medias (floor plans, facades, 

texts and renderings, etc.) are still separated entities, serving their individual objectives 

and specific design phases, with no real digital assets such as coherent interrelation 

or continuity. 

The great potentials of digital data processing such as efficiency, accuracy, 

integrity, mass storage and remote processing are far from beeing utilized. The 

building information system, as advanced as it may look, is still as undeveloped 

as it was at it conception. We are still waiting for a basic revolution in this 

field, given the large-scale construction and urban renewal especially in China. 

The Chinese building industry is still under a progress of industrialization, facing the 

loss of traditional architectonics, and the lack of contemporary fabrication techniques. 

Mechanization of construction, unfortunately, is still the main goal of this 

progress. Two decades after China opened its borders, with more and more western 

architects and contractors working in China, the Chinese are starting to realize that 

the big difference of quality in contemporary Chinese and Western buildings, not 

only comes from design ideas but also and sometimes even more, from the precision 

of design and construction. 

Technologically speaking, China has a strong need for accuracy in design, 

fabrication and construction. This may finally lead to a complete change 

in the Chinese building system, from mechanization to digital fabrication. 


Hard and impractical as this change may seem, the time to act is now. A cibs 

supported by a database and network technology should be established. 

18 

Owing to a long industrial tradition, developed countries have all the basic resources 

in the construction and manufacture industry ready for innovation. With the success 

of CIMS in the fabrication industry, many recent developments have taken place in 

the building industry as well. CIMS have entered the fields of building component 

prefabrication, building material manufacture and the making of new structures. 

Its impact can also be seen in the recent trends of architecture, from the hi-tech 

structures and components of Foster, Rogers and Piano, to the ecstatic shells of 

Frank Gehry. The maturation of these trends requires much work to be done in the 

architecture discipline, including the setting up of standards and assessment criterion, 

and the framework of relevant systematic theories. 

Traditional architecture is the result of craftsmanship. It inherently embodies 

a kind of aesthetics that is natural and humanistic. After the industrial revolution, 

industry replaced craftsmanship, with a new kind of aesthetics making 

machines and sheer geometries the most admirable objects. 

Accuracy, smoothness, tidiness and duplicability have become the most important 

properties. It is the aesthetics of the production-line. It is mechanic, totalitarian. It 

excludes individuality. However, the recently developed digital technologies have 

brought some new changes to the industrial aesthetics, as well as to the industry 

itself. Compared to the rigid, mechanic technologies, the digital technologies are 

somewhat softer, more elastic, and with the provision of more freedom, they can 

even be more individual. Although the mechanic process is still needed for the final 

production, it is the individual concept and the creative idea that decides the ultimate 

quality. Therefore, products of digital fabrication have the potential to combine 

industrial quality and accuracy with the ecstasy of digital quality, thus defining a new 

trend in contemporary aesthetics. 

In the foreseeable future, the most common building materials, steel (and other 

metal products), concrete, glass, wood, brick and stone, will not be replaced, but 

their fabrication process will be updated, mostly due to the development of digital 

technologies. Usually, the design and construction of a building takes only 10% of its 

entire lifetime. The other 90% is spent in running and management. The rising level 

of building standards and facilities has made the running and management costs 

go far beyond the initial construction cost. In many developed countries, Computer 

Aided Facilities Management (CAFM) is trying to bring the original building design 

and construction data into the running and management phase, thus providing far 

better information than traditional archived blueprints in both terms of quality and 

quantity. 

With the aid of a carefully designed computer interface, clients and building 

managers can easily browse through the database and find the correct 

information that meets their administrative and professional needs. Via this 

approach the cost of building management can be significantly reduced. 

Based on the discussion above, we propose an integrated system of CIBS (Computer 

Integrated Building System). Four subsystems are included: CIBIS (Computer 

computer integrated building system 

221

Integrated Building Information System), CIBMS (Computer Integrated Building 

Management System), CIBCS (Computer Integrated Building Construction System), 

and CIBAS (Computer Integrated Building Administration System). The following text 

gives forward-looking arguments and constructive suggestions. Several important 

problems will be addressed, such as the incompleteness of the building information 

revolution, the contradiction between traditional construction and contemporary 

fabrication, and the efficiency and accuracy of building information in building 

management. 

i cibis 

The CIBIS integrates all kinds of building information (incl. information related to 

spatial layout, information related to components, rules of symbols and graphs, text 

descriptions, etc.) from all related disciplines (incl. architects, structural engineers, 

HVAC engineers, economic consultants, etc.) at all stages (incl. strategic planning, 

schematic planning, construction documents, construction and installation, takingover 

and management, etc.) complying with a common standardized protocol. It 

results in a database that is both all-round and dynamic. Today, the computer is only 

used to generate media that replace old drawings and texts. Information at different 

working stages is still separated from each other. Graphs and texts are still isolated 

objects. CIBIS can bring the following changes: 

› Set up a universal platform for information exchange between all kinds of people at 

all working stages; 

› Set up interlinks between different kinds of information as well as uniformly organizing 

them; 

› Create a user-friendly interface and generate appropriate feedback for the different 

needs of different people. 

ii cibms 

Today, prefabrication is being increasingly used in practice. With the CIMS concept 

as the template and CIBIS as the starting point, the CIBMS brings the contemporary 

idea into the realm of the building industry, linking building design, component 

design, tectonic design, procurement, quality control, feedback and modification, 

product delivery and on-site installation. 

It can certainly bring improvements in quality and efficiency, while at the 

same time creating a “softer” and more individualized working space. It can 

revive some virtues of traditional craftsmanship and the humanistic values in 

pre-industrial aesthetics, which have been lost for quite some time. 

CIBMS makes up a technological base for new trends in post-industrial 

architecture and can: 

› Bind the architectural design with contemporary fabrication via the linking 

of CIBIS and CIBMS; 

› Achieve the first steps in the change of basic building technological systems, 

from the industrial age to the information age; 

› Bring about changes of knowledge and skill in the architecture discipline. 

Create new trends in architectural aesthetics. 


18 

iii cibcs 

Adopting the systematic approach, basing on theories and practices in logistics, 

CIBCS takes on the task of contemporary construction management, linking design, 

technical design, construction planning, site preparation, procurement, logistics, 

project management, contract negotiation, financing and cost control, and can: 

› Integrate design and construction via the linking of CIBCS and CIBIS; 

› Implement “virtual construction”. Create real-time links between design information, 

3D VR and construction information, and simulate the construction process on 

computer; 

› Digitalize and systematize logistics management. 

iv cibas 

The CIBAS links together the ClBIS and the Computer Aided Facility Management 

(CAFM). 

It gives access to the original design and construction information to building managers, 

in the form of a knowledge base system, oriented to building maintenance 

and facility management. 

It offers an information service for the whole life cycle of a building and results on 

coherence and continuity among design, construction, management and occupation. 

It will: 

› Integrate CIBIS and knowledge base systems; 

› Digitalize the building management process; 

› Implement ideas of sustainable development in the whole system. 

The key to CIBS, with its four sub-systems, is the digital integration of building 

information. It is this integration that changes the traditional organization 

of building information and brings segregation among them to an end. 

To accomplish this, new standards, new protocols and new links need to be set up 

before the four sub-systems can work with order and coordination. 

Basically, the building industry has its own characteristics, just like those of the 

manufacture industry. Work on site is necessary and low technology is inevitable 

here and there. Each building (except standardized housing) needs to be different. 

Large scale and a huge number of components need to be dealt with. Multidiscipline 

coordination requires complicated organization; therefore CIBS cannot be 

established simply by the transplantation of CIMS. The CIBS must be built upon its 

own principles with consideration to its own specific problems. 

CIBS is not an incremental update of the architectural application of the digital technologies 

we have today. It is a change in the way of thinking, and a change in the 

deeper structure of design, construction and management; this is the great digital 

era. It is a fundamental revolution of not only the basic technological systems but of 

the profession itself. 

CIBS is not only a technological, but also a cultural construct. Just like the industrial 

age had modern architecture, the information age, should and will have its own 

architecture. 

Digital technology forms the technological basis for a change in architecture style, 

and brings new definitions of knowledge and skill to architects. 

CIBS is the result of thought on a wider scale. It is a holistic framework, a pioneering 

peek into our future. 

computer integrated building system 

223

19 

› born-digital data 

› digital design 

› digital production 

chain 

224 

save the bubble: 

The Architectural Archive 

in the Digital Age 

› documentation 

› original 

› preservation 

› recovery strategy 

At the DAM, a project concerning the examination of strategies 

for permanent conservation of digital databases in architecture 

is currently being carried out. 

The project concerns a work by Franken Architekten, Frankfurt, 

namely their transparent “BMW Bubble” of 1999, which no 

longer exists. It served as a temporary mobile pavilion for 

international automobile fairs. Architects with special animation 

software had generated the architectural form. The data for the 

project, which is reputed to be a prototype for digital design, 

was at risk of perishing, due to the fact that the software and 

hardware are no longer used. In cooperation, Franken Architects 

and the DAM plan to find out how it is possible to preserve, with 

the highest possible grade of detail, the digital data of the BMW 

Bubble. The study, which began in Summer 2007, is foreseen as 

the beginning of a permanent project. In 2008 the existing and 

newly generated material of the Bubble will be transferred to 

the archives of the DAM.

ernhard franken 

Deutsches Architekturmuseum/Franken 

Architekten 

Frankfurt am Main, Germany 

http://dam.inm.de 

Mr. Franken completed his Diplom-Ingenieur in 

architecture in 1996 at the TU Darmstadt as well as 

the Städel University of Fine Arts, Institute for New 

Media Frankfurt. Having worked as a freelance for 

ABB Architekten, Frankfurt, for 5 years, he created 

a joint venture, from 2000-2002, with ABB. In 2002 

he founded Franken Architekten. Since 1996 he is 

present in the academic field as a Guest Professor 

for; the University Kassel, the Sci Arc in Los Angeles 

and the Zollverein School for Management and 

Design in Essen, among others. 

berthold scharrer 

Franken Architekten 


www.franken-architekten.de 

2005-today : Work for Franken Architekten 

as creative director, architectural and 

research&development project manager. 

2004-2006: Work für Schneider+Schumacher 

Architekten. 

1999-2006: Studies in Architecture at Universities 

in Darmstadt and Rome, research on parametric 

geometry. 

1999-2000: Software Developer. 

1996-1999: Education in Cabinetmaking. 

1988-1996: Activist in Computer-Demoscene and 

Urban Art. 

suemri nina michaela vogel 

Franken Architekten 


www.franken-architekten.de 

2008: kleinundarchitekten, Frankfurt, Germany. 

2007: mad, modeling-architecture-design, Frankfurt. 

2006-2007: Visionlab-Architekturexport, Munich, 

Germany. 

2003-2004: Nemesi Studio, Rome, Italy, Prof. Michele 

Molè, European Union scholarship. 

2003: Bremer & Bremer, Wetzlar, Germany. 

2002: Museum of communication, Frankfurt, 

Germany. 

1999-2007:University of Applied Science, Frankfurt, 

Germany. 

225

226

digital database 

6 20 21 22 23 

19 

save the bubble. case study, 

february-october 2007, continued in 2008 

The case study of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) and Franken Architekten 

focuses on the long-term preservation of a project concerning the examination of 

strategies for permanent conservation of a digital database in architecture, with the 

concrete example of a project by Franken Architekten. 

The transparent “BMW Bubble” of 1999 was a non-permanent mobile pavilion for 

the International Automobile Exhibition in Frankfurt (IAA), stored and rebuilt at the 

EXPO 2000 Presentation of BMW in Munich. 

After the physical destruction of “the Bubble” in 2005 we are trying to ascertain 

a proper way to at least preserve its digital presence. Since not only the 

planning process was digital, but the whole production chain from design to 

manufacturing was one of the first continuous digital processes with computer 

aided design in a realised project. Facing the changes in the digital world over 

the past eight years, the danger of a complete loss of the data is very real. 

A precise databased documentation of the project must be the first step. 

Current and used software and hardware versions, the process of the project, the 

structure of data, the involved persons and all other facts have to be documented. 

The structuring of the metadata and the project-data itself into adequate orders 

is a central aspect. The aim is to build a digital archive made accessible 

and comprehensible by metadata. 

preservation 

3 15 24 

This enables the researcher to dynamically acquire and visualize information out of 

the archive, as to guarantee to keep the digital data alive by an automated conversion 

processes. 

Project data containing parametric design processes had been partially created on 

ancient hardware platforms. Preserving and making this data accessible in differentiated 

levels of depth and accessibility is the other central aspect of this research. 

The conditions and rules for minimum or best results should be established and 

carried out as far as possible. We are looking forward to proving guidelines and hope 

that in the future they serve not only to presere “the Bubble”. 

The results of this case study will report on difficulties and experiences and will 

demonstrate the strategy of long-term preservation through the special data of “the 

Bubble”. 

prologue 

In 1998, Bernhard Franken with ABB Architekten won a competition held 

by BMW for a design for the company’s trade-fair presence at the 1999 

International Motor Show in Frankfurt. It was a freeform in the shape of a 

drop of water that visitors could walk into, and was intended to be a landmark 

symbol for hydrogen-based technology: the so-called “Bubble”. 

save the bubble 

227

computer aided design 

production chain 

After two weeks at the Frankfurt Motor Show the Bubble was dismantled, stored and 

then rebuilt at the Expo 2000 Presentation of BMW in Munich. There it served as a 

café and club for another four months, before again being dismantled and stored. 

There had been several attempts to rebuild it, for example as a club in Ibiza or as 

part of a museum of the Blob Research Group of the Delft University, but in 2005 

BMW decided to have the remains destroyed. 

The Bubble was one of the first buildings ever to be designed and 

manufactured with computer aided design and manufacturing methods. 

The continuous digital production chain as well as the form of the building itself 

represents a prototype for an emerging line of architecture at the end of the 20th 

century: the so-called “Blobs”. Even though it was just a temporary pavilion and only 

a small building, the Bubble stands for the beginning of a new era in architecture 

and is therefore most important for science. That is one of the reasons why the 

Deutsches Architekturmuseum is so interested in taking over the Bubble and looking 

for an adequate way to preserve it. 

When the museum contacted Bernhard Franken at the beginning of 2007 it was 

known that the building had already been destroyed but there was no idea at the 

time – that after 8 years only – there was also a high risk of loosing the digital 

Bubble. This was an awful prospect for archivists who normally have to deal with 

decades and centuries. 

To start a case study for long-term preservation along the data of the Bubble means 

an examination of various types of hardware and software. The difficulties are 

immense but in its complexity the data of the Bubble gives us the chance to learn 

how to be better prepared for the near future. In the past, long-term preservation 

primarily meant to care for good paper storage, however, today archivists are receiving 

thier first complete digital archives from architects. The most important question 

is whether all what is important can be saved for tomorrow. Archivists and IT experts 

are bound to find the answers now. 

Only time will tell us the real results of the long-term case study “Save the Bubble”. 

The partners Franken Architekten and Deutsches Architekturmuseum hope it will be 

possible to preserve more than just some coloured digital images of the building and 

its production chain over the years. The first steps have been made. 

the digital revolution 

and the architectural archives 

In a very simplistic way one may say that the discipline of architecture deals 

with designing, manufacturing and the experience of the built environment. 

For the architectural discourse many of the most important statements have 

never been built. 


1 8 13 14 15 

Architectural expressions can be as ephemeral as poems or dances, but in practice 

the architectural archives faced the double-sided problem of how to preserve the 

design process documents as well as representations of final buildings. The design 

process documents mainly consisted of sketches and drawings on paper and physi- 


19 

cal models. The representations were photos or slides and movies. For these media 

proven processes methods of how to categorize, catalogue, preserve, store and document 

artefacts already exist. The shift in paradigm from analogue to digital since 

the early 90´s of the last century presents the architectural archive with a complete 

range of problems. In short the problems are what to preserve, how to catalogue, in 

which media to store, how to keep the data updated and how to document digital 

projects. It is not only a question of data management but of hardware maintenance. 

Beside the digital side there are physical outputs to be preserved as well on paper 

or as models. Of course this question arises not only for pure digital projects, but 

also for most contemporary architectural practice that mixes analogue and digital 

processes. The Bubble could be termed an ideal case study since it is extreme in its 

digital continuity. 

the original in the age of reproduction 

Any archive focuses on collecting “originals” as exhibits. In the case 

of the Bubble the question arises as to what is the “original”. 

It reaches beyond Walter Benjamin’s problem described in “The Work of Art in the 

Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in the sense that neither the design process itself 

nor its reproduction includes any work of hand 1 . Benjamin differentiated between 

an original in its physicality, and its aura and its reproduction that lacked both. The 

digital production emancipates the work of art (architecture), not only from its parasitical 

dependence on ritual, but on the matter itself. 

The digital production chain that led to the Bubble was divided into five phases: 

briefing, process, form, computer aided manufacturing and experience. The starting 

point for the designs was the briefing from BMW to express “Clean Energy”, the 

use of hydrogen as fuel in a combustion engine. This briefing was translated into 

a process, by way of a computer generated force field simulation, that lead to a 

form. The design methods incorporated special-effects software, common in the 

film industry, to simulate the merging of two substances. In an experimental setup 

in the computer, parameters were set up such as two drops as base geometry and 

cohesion, surface tension and gravity as the laws governing deformation. This form 

was directly transformed in different steps using computer aided manufacturing into 

the final building, so that the forces of the creation process were visible and thus 

delivered a sensory experience. The form of the Bubble arising from this process 

was defined to be the master geometry, and it was not to be changed manually in 

any way; otherwise the forces of its creation would no longer be perceptible. The 

master geometry of the Bubble had a bidirectionally-curved surface without actual 

thickness. To begin with, inconsistencies were ironed out and curvature analyzed by 

means of an image-generating process. 

In order to get from this surface to elements suitable for building the term derivative 

was introduced. All further manifestations of the project are derivatives from this 

original “sacred” master geometry. These derivatives can be computed images (CAD 

renderings), or the structural engineer’s stress calculations using finite-element programs 

or 2D-sections as CAD-drawings. Before the data is manifested in real space 

as derivative it goes through several intervening digital steps. In the project, derivatives 

for the first, second or umpteenth degrees were defined. The final bubble is a 

composition of numerous derivatives, and thus can be seen in its totality or merely 

as one possible version of the original incorporated in the digital master geometry, 

in the umpteeenth derivation. All other derivatives could be termed “originals” as 


229

archiving strategy 

11 13 14 

hardware selection 

well, regardless of their physical manifestation. So a decision had to be made what 

derivative should be archived. 

the archiving strategy 

The origin of the digital design process is the experimental setup. As a first step this 

will be archived as a running file with the original hard and software environment, 

together with a movie and stills of this setup that had been screen-captured for 

presentations. Secondly, it will be sufficient to store most of the data of the production 

process in an exchange format, which is to be defined. A process of collecting, 

screening and restoring of all the existing data is currently in progress. As a third 

step the representation material of the design process, the manufacturing process, 

the construction on site and the final building as digital images, photographs and 

movies will be archived in physical and digital formats. The forth step will be the 

physical models produced digitally and original parts of the Bubble. The fifth step 

will be a documentation of what has been done and a process manual, which must 

be completed to maintain all material. In the following texts these five steps will be 

explained in detail. 

step 1. restoring and archiving 

the design environment 

The design was developed in the film animation program Explore by Wavefront on a 

O2 Silicon Graphics Hardware running a UNIX operating system. This environment 

was preserved in our office, running non-stop for almost 10 years. However, recently 

the computer malfunctioned. 

With the help of Prof. Manfred Koob, TU Darmstadt, department of CAD in architecture, 

it was possible to easily purchase an identical system for hardware component 

exchange. 

Hardware description 

The Silicon Graphics O2 System was an entry-level Unix workstation introduced in 

1996 by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to replace their earlier Indy series. Like the Indy, the 

O2 used a single MIPS-based CPU and was intended to be used primarily for multimedia. 

The O2 was replaced by the Fuel series in 2002. 

System architecture 

The O2 features a proprietary high-bandwidth Unified Memory Architecture (UMA) 

that connects the various system components. A PCI bus is bridged onto the UMA 

with one slot available. It has a designer case and an internal modular construction. 

It has space for two SCSI drives mounted on special sleds (one in the later R10000/ 

R12000 models due to heat constraints) and this machine had the optional video 

capture / sound cassette mounted on the far left side. 

CPU 

This O2 comes in two distinct CPU flavors; the low-end MIPS 180-350 MHz R5000/ 

RM7000 based units and the higher-end 150-400 MHz R10000/R12000 based units. 

The 200 MHz R5000 CPUs with 1 MB L2-cache are generally noticeably faster than 

the 180 MHz R5000s with only 512 KB cache. 

This machine has a 150-400 MHz R10000 CPU. 


19 

Disks 

The O2 carries an UltraWide SCSI drive subsystem (Adaptec 7880). Older O2’s generally 

have 4x speed Toshiba CD-ROMs, but any Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM can be used. 

The R5000/RM7000 units have two available drive sleds for SCA UltraWide SCSI 

hard disks. Due to the fact that the R10000/R12000 CPU module has a much higher 

cooling-fan assembly, the R10000/R12000 units have room for only one drive-sled. 

This machine had 2 additional external discs. 

CDROM 

The SCSI-CDROM-Drive of both of the machines had been broken. Purchasing a 

stored working drive from a specialized hardware-dealer would cost around a minimum 

of €60. A working and compatible CDROM-Drive luckily could be found in an 

agency in the neighborhood. 

Networking and file transfer 

Networking is provided through an integrated 10/100 Base-T ethernet port. The 

machine supports NFS File-System, which however, is currently not installed. Approaches 

to install NFS (Network File System) enabling file transfer from the SGI O2 

to the file-servers of Franken Architekten failed due to lacking version compatibility 

between IRIX and NFS. A more precise research has to be undertaken. 

Operating system 

IRIX 6.5, based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions, is capable of extremely long 

uptimes, and its XFS file system is regarded as one of the most advanced journaling 

file systems in the industry. The current major version of IRIX is IRIX 6.5 which was 

released in May 1998. IRIX 6 is compliant with UNIX System V Release 4, UNIX 95 

and POSIX (including 1e/2c draft 15 ACLs and Capabilities). 

Thanks to the compliance of the systems an attempt to completely virtualize the 

platform appears reasonable. 

Approaches to make files being created on the SGI O2 accessible 

In the upcoming research it will be important to figure out how far it is possible to 

make the original files accessible to researchers. Parametric design processes had 

been stored in those files and for a researcher it could be interesting which parameters 

had been set or which dependency-structures had been used to create and 

control certain geometries. 

The following approaches cover the spectrum between singular localized accessibility 

and most original setup to a wider and much easier non-localized accessibility by 

using todays’ technologies and imaging the original setup. Approaches of imaging 

have to be proven. 

Application software 

The software provider Wavefront was merged with Alias to AliasWavefront. The 

new company was bought by SGI. The program Explore was stopped at version 4.3. 

The merged software Maya does not read Explore files. In case of a recovery of the 

original O2 machine the Explore software is available on CD´s and there is a FlexLM 

licensing key. 

If the machine of the TU Darmstadt has to be used, fortunately they used the same 

film animation program Explore by Wavefront, and have running keys. 


231

Hardware storage: singular localized accessibility, most original setup 

Once the original hardware and software is restored it should be stored in the DAM 

archive in a flightcase in a dry and moderately climatized place. In order to secure 

against future hardware failure, the complete configuration should be cloned and 

stored redundantly in another place. Every year it should be run once as a test. 

Virtualization of the platform setup: multi-accessibility, usage of imagingtechnologies 

A possible approach to store the original design-process accessible to researchers 

independently of hardware originals or duplicates is to install the whole platform, 

applications and files into a virtual machine running under windows-platforms and 

create copies of this installation on CD/DVD media. The process of virtualizing a 

platform enables a researcher to fully simulate the original circumstances of the 

design-process and the related development-environment on any modern computer. 

After running the OS in the virtual machine, a copy of the Bubbles’ design file can be 

loaded into the application. Existing virtual machines should support installing IRIX- 

OS. If there is no prefabricated product on the market, which offers the possibility of 

an individual setup of a virtual machine, it could quite easily become cost-intensive. 

Migration of original Explore file into Maya: usage of current software, 

possible loss of originality 

Making the parametric process stored in the file accessible in a modern 3d-application 

by converting with the help of a third-party-plug-in: http://www.highend3d. 

com/maya/downloads/tools/3d_converters/3.html. 

Due to the original bubble-geometry been created with a plug-in module for the 

Explore software, it is to be expected that parameters controlled by the plug-in will 

get lost in the conversion to a maya-file-format. 

step 2. data of the production process 

In the digital chain of production different sets of data in different hard and software 

soloutions are produced, most of which are archived on various carriers at different 

companies. 

In order to be able to work in the short space time available, with such a 

heterogeneous planning team made up of architects, structural engineers, 

mechanical engineers, communications experts, lighting designers and av 

media specialists, a finely intertwined planning process was developed. 

No one existing software met all the demands of the project. 

browsing 

6 17 21 22 26 

The structural calculations and trials were carried out using Ansys and R-Stab, special 

finite element programs. Rhinoceros, a powerful free-form surface program, was 

utilized to realize the planning of the load bearing structure and the shop drawings. 

All these programs run on Windows. This data is partly with the structural engineers 

and partly with the contractor and since the contractor unfortunately ran bankrupt, 

this will be hard to get. The panelisation was done in Catia, the preferred program of 

Frank Gehry on IBM UNIX workstations, which are no longer in use by a subcontractor. 

It is therefore assumed that this data is lost. The CNC-machines only understand 

machine code, and separate co-processors were programmed for this. This data is 

anyway mostly irrelevant. The communications, lighting and construction planners 

for the interior design used Apple Macintosh platforms (e.g. with Vector Works). 


Because of the variety of programs and operating systems used, the design 

team chose a process similar to the Internet: not to define one connecting 

program, but rather an interface format (protocol), with which the special 

programs can communicate through a browser, with which everyone can 

view the data. 

photos 

14 16 19 22 

23 24 

movies 

16 

19 

The choice of interface was IGES (a standard format in industry) for all 3D data and 

DWG for all drawings. In addition plotfiles (PLT) and PDF were allowed as secured 

data formats. Some drawings were done in VectorWorks (MCD). Rhinoceros was 

defined as the “browser” for all 3D, as an inexpensive free-form-compatible CAD 

program. 

IGES, DWG, MCD and PDF are still standard industry formats and new generations 

of hard and software can read them. 

Recovering the original data 

An archive of a total of 29 CD’s from Franken Architekten had been restored to the 

companies’ file server – luckily without any CRC-errors. 

The order of the Data had been fragmented, so it was necessary to reconstruct and 

to reinvent folder structures, before the data could became useable. During this 

process it was possible to get an overview of the existing data and to distinguish 

whether data was relevant or simply useless. 

Specific file handling tools for comparing folder and file structures had been used to 

guarantee that no data-loss occurred while the reordering-process took place. 

step 3. representation material 

Digital produced images 

In the past usually the original sketches and drawings of a project were archived. 

Digital images were generated of all the different stages of the production chain. 

These images exist as TIFF, TGA or JPG’s. 

Photos 

The manufacturing process and the final building was documented by photos. These 

Photos exist physically as slides, printouts and negatives and as scans in TIFF. The 

decision to save just the digital form or the physical form as well still has to be made. 

Movies 

With a marketing department as a client, an additional approach to the presentation 

of the project was taken. In order to explain the design development, the form 

generating software was used to make movies as well. The manufacturing process 

and the final building was documented by a film team. All this material exists on 

videotape. This material will be digitised. 


233

Storage 

All data has to be screened and relevant data has to be stored on DVD redundantly. 

These formats then will have to be maintained, in the sense that changes from one 

format to the next generation of formats of the industry in general will have to be 

carried out. Similar care will have to be implied with the carriers of the data. For example 

most of the tapes on which the Bubbles’ data is stored are no longer supported 

by today’s hardware. So data carriers have to be redundant and regularly updated. 

step 4. digitally produced physical models 

and original parts 

Physical models 

A presentation using models has proven to be quite indispensable, as the 

complexity of form in the drawings and pictures can be confusing even to 

experts. A model, on the other hand, is self-explanatory, allowing any number 

of perspectives and can anticipate tangible qualities and lighting effects. 

Due to the complex language of form, highly specialized fabrication methods in 

the manufacture of models were required. The first model of the Bubbles’ skin was 

constructed using a laser sintering method in the department for rapid prototyping 

at the design department of BMW. This is an example of a very early application 

of rapid prototyping for architectural models. Two more models of the Bubbles’ 

substructure had been 2D milled from polystyrene. These models still exist and will 

be archived applying the usual process in the DAM. 

Original parts 

For the Bubble, 305 different acrylic-glass plates were heat formed onto individually 

CNC milled foam blocks, and then trimmed at the edges, again with CNC. The 

computer model and constructed surface are absolutely identical, and with a thickness 

of 8mm it resembles a dimensionless data-surface. The effort expended, when 

one considers the lack of standardization, is of course immense as each pane was a 

one-off. The substructure was based on orthogonally projected sections made from 

3 layers of cut sheet aluminum. An additional level of abstraction or derivation to the 

master-geometry was thereby introduced. The section cutting was carried out using 

CNC-driven water-jet cutters in seven different factories, and the 3500 individual 

pieces were completed with required drill holes and assembly markings, so that the 

manual work on site for assembly could be reduced. 

The contractor that stored the Bubble will be asked if he kept some remains of it 

when it was destroyed and if he will donate them to the museum. 

step 5. documentation 

Dynamic Catalogue 

Every single file receives adequate metadata-entries in a relational-database. 


The structure of the database needs to be developed alongside the ordering 

of the original project-data. This model of a database-structure is going to 

be a prototype for later integration into standard archiving-software used by 

museums. This does not actually support archiving methods for digital data, 

but only for data as hand drawn plans, photos and physical models. 

dynamic catalogue 

14 

metadata 

1 6 8 10 

15 17 21 

19 

Metadata will contain information like file format, file format version, file size, application, 

application version, contained information type (2d, 3d, vector, pixel, text, 

calculation, diagram), date of creation, creator name, creator company, projectstage, 

aim (conceptual design, construction, civil-engineering, manufacturing, 

documentation, press…) 

Diversified user rights make it possible to give different access to different types 

of researchers. 

Generating automated reports out of the metadata gives other types of insight into 

the project data and the generation of project-data during the process. 

Looking for certain data criteria could make it possible to find interfaces between 

different planning parties in the project and the single stages. It could 

be possible to receive information for future workflow optimisations and to 

have closer circles in data-exchange as in collaboration. 

Research process documentation 

A crucial step of the project will be a proper documentation of what has been done 

and a process manual of what will be necessary to maintain the archive. This documentation 

will make it possible for researchers and third parties to work with the 

material. Schedules for check-ups will be defined so that the data can be maintained. 

epilogue 

The problems of archiving the Bubble are typical for valuable historical digital 

architectural projects. To develop proper processes and to generate adequate 

resources to handle these issues will be a major challenge for museum archives. 

However, due to the legal obligation of keeping a 10-year record and the 30-year 

warranty of architects for their work, this is a general problem facing the industry. 

So far there are no ready-made solutions to this problem and it is a priority of the 

times to solve it. 

All the efforts to save the Bubble might prove to be worthwhile, not only because 

of the historic relevance of the Bubble as one of the first buildings ever designed 

and build digitally. Franken Architekten has just one request: would it be possible to 

rebuild the Bubble in a new location – as another derivative of the master geometry 

– as another original? 

Fig. 1-11 (pp. 346-348). 

notes → 


235

notes 

1 Benjamin used the word “aura” to refer to the sense of awe and reverence one presumably 

experienced in the presence of unique works of art. According to Benjamin, this aura inheres not in 

the object itself but rather in external attributes such as its known line of ownership, its restricted 

exhibition, its publicized authenticity, or its cultural value. Aura is thus indicative of art’s traditional 

association with primitive, feudal, or bourgeois structures of power and its further association with 

magic and (religious or secular) ritual. With the advent of art’s mechanical reproducibility, and the 

development of forms of art (such as film) in which there is no actual original, the experience of 

art could be freed from place and ritual and instead brought under the gaze and control of a mass 

audience, leading to a shattering of the aura. “For the first time in world history,” Benjamin wrote, 

“mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.” 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction. 


19 


237

20 

› classification system 

› database 

238 

a classification system 

for construction units 

and products: 

Methodological Hypothesis 

and Application Testing 

on Pre-Modern Building 

› knowledge management 

› methodology 

The research presented in this paper aims to structure a 

database for the systemization of construction units in all 

their complex and elementary sections, including a method for 

defining the final products derived from the construction of the 

individual components. The work starts from an assessment of 

the instruments of knowledge and information technology for 

construction considering the current production, but mainly 

analyzing the evolution of the so-called manuals in the last 

two centuries. The issue is to apply a unique methodology for 

the decomposition of the building. This problem stems from 

the hierarchical structuring of the most commonly adopted 

system, the standard uni 8290, which was made by subdividing 

types of industrial buildings and is inadequate to describe premodern 

buildings. Moreover, the technical evolution, leading 

to new morphostructural types, makes it even more difficult to 

classify them. Starting with an analysis of the different types of 

general classification, we conducted a critical reading of two 

specific methodologies of architecture: the uni 8290 and the 

SfB systems. Research has led to an integration hypothesis of a 

closely specialized know-how of architecture technology with 

that of other scientific fields, specifically knowledge management 

and information. The result was a facets structure onto which 

are grafted hierarchical relationships in order to use uni 8290 

without being tied to it.

sara scapicchio 

Università di Napoli “Federico II” 

Naples, Italy 

www.unina.it 

Master degree in Architecture at the Università di 

Napoli “Federico II” in 2004 with an experimental 

Thesis on Bio-architectural residences; Ph.D. student 

in Architecture Technology at the same University 

where she also works as an expert in the field for the 

course on technology. She is carrying out research 

about rural architecture and bio-architectural and 

sustainability fields. 

17 

239

“Information without control or organization, it’s no longer 

a resource but becomes instead the main enemy of those working”. 

(Naisbitt) 

manuals 

search engines 

technical information 

database 

6 19 21 23 

Any development always starts with the problem of knowledge transmission. Obviously, 

no one can speak of a real problem with only the ability to communicate a 

limited amount of information. Problems arise when the amount of data to be communicated 

becomes excessive and when the situation passes from direct to indirect 

communication, which requires the use of specialised media to amass, transmit and 

interpret information. 

Therefore it is necessary to systematise the knowledge to make it easier to store 

and to transmit. In the field of architecture, and more generally of construction, the 

problem of transmission of knowledge focuses on information technology. 

technical information in contemporary 

architecture 

Technical information, traditionally referring to the description of equipment, 

products or constructive technology, today signifies all the information involved in 

the various stages of the process; it discusses conventions among different actors 

and the type of information that they exchange, thus we can evaluate possible 

standardising interventions useful to make this information exchange effective and 

reliable. 

The doubts about the effectiveness and the use of technical information come from 

the deep transformation in the building process in the industrial era, when a range 

of techniques and materials that remained virtually the same for centuries changed 

within a few decades. Faster and more invasive innovation characterising landscape 

construction made traditional certainties fail, which ensured the achievement of 

a substantial formal and technical quality through the reinterpretation of stylistic 

codes and techniques validated by experience and continuous repetition. 

With the arrival of new technologies, for the first time the manuals of the last century 

needed to describe new constructive disciplines in functional and technological 

terms, rather than with morphological, stylistic or purely physical-mechanics terms; 

these manuals discovered a whole new way to communicate the process of design 

and construction, with new materials and new disciplines in construction caring for 

function, performance and detail. There is a migration from manuals to technical 

literature. 

This crisis of technical information came not only from this moment of extraordinary 

abundance, but also from confusing information. Since the 1960s 

progress has seemed unstoppable; new paradigms of industrialisation were 

created; new construction processes and materials; productive subjects 

and organizational models; and architectural design began to suffer from 

a lack of information clarity and regulatory apparatus. 

The completeness of technical information was then seen as a key to proper communication 

of technological innovation for the building process. The authority 

of a “standard” was seen as the perfect solution, to be an effective guide for the 

construction process, also offering quality control. 


20 

In those years, the CIB (Conseil International du Bâtiment) had proposed, with its 

Master List of Properties, an exhaustive list of all the performances that an object 

at any scale of construction could theoretically provide in response to a set of needs; 

it was a text to develop the so-called “performance standards”, but it could also be 

used as an “index” of a hypothetical catalogue of building materials or products. 

For many years it was used as a standard in design. 

Attempts to rebuild a systematic knowledge of build technology only rarely 

stop to get the technical innovation in architecture and more often return 

a framework of technologies that is removed from the actual application 

of the context. This has inevitably led to the contribution of manuals becoming 

obsolete 1 . 

Nevertheless, the demand for manuals to support design is still very strong; one has 

only to think about the facsimile edition of the Architect’s Handbook in its edition of 

1965, the well-known Neufert Manual and the new Architect’s Handbook published 

by Mancosu in 2000. To these publications we must add lots of other specialised 

manuals, ranging from single materials or specific constructive technologies, to real 

mono or plurithematic series. 

The specialized production branches are a disciplinary area. Like the Handbook 

of building design by Hoepli (1994), or the Manual of Restoration, there are also 

manuals on single materials or components, such as the “Great Atlas of Architecture” 

published by UTET, which is divided into various volumes on a single theme, like the 

“Atlas of the Great Facades” or the “Atlas of the Great Stone”. 

Today rapidly changing technology has created inadequate manuals, because 

without a critical approach, they become mere trade publications; on the 

other hand, there is an extremely prolific output since the majority of these 

manuals are subject to rapid obsolescence and thus replaced by new texts, 

however, due to their competitive nature they can never be truly innovative. 

Even magazines are moving towards technical information. For example, those 

involved in the study of constructive systems or materials, such as the German 

“Detail” or the Italian “The Plan”, “Building Materials” or “Construction”, or the most 

traditional “glossy magazines” about architecture such as Domus or Lotus, with their 

great attention to construction technologies. Publishers have also launched a vast 

number of publications focusing on various themes ranging from current law (The 

energy certification of buildings), technical standards (Safety on construction sites), 

to more general areas of architectural studies and building types (Eco-building, 

School construction, Sports buildings, etc.). It should also be noted that computer 

systems of representation and communication have significantly changed the application 

of technical information, as they have changed both the request for types 

of materials, and the medium on which they can be displayed. 

The variety of factors involved in implementing, but also in finding information about 

the construction sector frequently requires the use of the Internet to give or receive 

technical information. This significantly increases the amount of information, but at 

the same time highlights the lack of a standardised and recognisable system that 

creates a shortage or inaccuracy of information; there is often a clear disproportion 

between the time it takes for a search online and the results obtained through search 

engines based also on semantic data mining. 

a classification system for construction units and products 

241

Specialized portals are mediators between many different factors, however, 

the search through these websites is often limited to products and companies 

who own or sponsor the site itself and their structures can be quite basic or 

at worst confusing; sometimes it is not possible to trace a product without 

knowing who the producer is, and classification is made indifferently between 

technological unit and field. 

On the Internet it is also possible to consult the websites of manufacturing firms that, 

after the registration and data acquisition of a potential client, provide information. 

Among professional companies there is an increasing practice to allow the download 

of part of their work in graphic and/or vector form, duly protected from the possibility 

to change and reuse them. The first groups to provide this opportunity were the 

big international “atelier”, such as Renzo Piano and Norman Foster. 

Another web resource, and perhaps the most interesting experiment, is the Materioteche 

that is both a physical place, configured as laboratories and research centres 

where the database is not necessarily in one location and also as a virtual space, 

configured as a portal with the specialised functions of a catalogue. 

There are two main groups involved: trade and universities. Involved in the trade side 

are MaterialConnextion and Matech that have a worldwide network, also offering 

support to the development of new materials by providing sites for experimentation. 

The universities are ArTec of the University of Venice, Politeca of the University of 

Milan and Materioteca® of the University of Alexandria. These are public structures 

for information and teaching, not limited by companies or sponsors. 

Fig. 1: Contemporary Technical Information: current scenario (p. 349). 

The general framework of contemporary technical information seems quite broad, 

but at the same time disarticulated. It is thus necessary to recover research into the 

field of architecture technology, particularly of the last century, aiming to achieve a 

proper uniform standard of the elements and materials involved in the construction 

sector, in order to guide users, customers or producers, in a constructed dialogue for 

a more useful exchange of information. 

systems classification for building 

A building is a structured system of elements performing together. If each 

part is assigned a function, then we can consider the building unit as a 

domain in which to classify its components according to their functions and 

relations. 


3 21 

There are already classification systems made for this domain; in our study we 

decided to consider two of them, the standard UNI 8290 and the system SfB.They 

have different typological structures, hierarchical the first and faceted the second, 

referring to Italian and international standards. 

Published in 1981, inspired by the principles of the Master List of CIB, UNI 8290 is 

still the standard reference in the Technical Institutes and Universities where it is 

used. 

The UNI 8290 is a hierarchical enumerative structure that creates a classificatory 

sequence based on the division into classes of technological units, each technologi- 


20 

cal unit class is in turn divided into technological units, each technological unit is in 

turn divided into classes of technical elements. 

Classi di unità tecnologiche 

Struttura portante 

Chiusura 

Partizione interna 

Standard UNI 8290 – Summary. 

Unità tecnologiche 

Struttura di fondazione 

Struttura di elevazione 

Struttura di contenimento 

Chiusura verticale 

Chiusura orizzontale inferiore 

Chiusura orizz. su spazi esterni 

Chiusura superiore 

Partizione interna verticale 

Partizione interna orizzontale 

Partizione interna inclinata 


Classi di elementi tecnici 

Struttura di fondazioni dirette 

Struttura di fondazioni indirette 

Struttura di elevazione verticali 

Struttura di elevazione orizzontali 

e inclinate 

Struttura di elevazione spaziali 


verticali 


orizzontali 

Pareti perimetrali verticali 

Infissi esterni verticali 

Solai a terra 

Infissi orizzontali 

Solai su spazi esterni 

Coperture 

Infissi esterni orizzontali 

Pareti interne verticali 

Infissi interni verticali 

Elementi di protezione 

Solai 

Soppalchi 

Infissi inerni orizzontali 

Scale interne 

Rampe interne 

The expressions that define the various sets are called items. The entries of each 

level are selected according to criteria of homogeneity. The voices of different levels 

are such that the requirements and/or required systems can be defined, measured 

and verified. 

For the application, we can identify the technical elements proceeding along each 

respective branch. 

The norm is organized into three parts each referring to “Classification and terminology”, 

“Analysis of the requirements” and “Analysis of the agents”. These parts relate 

to each other as well as with the UNI 8289 on essential requirements of users. 

The Classification System SfB is a faceted classification; its acronym comes from the 

initial Unitarian Working Committee for Building Problems – in Swedish Samarbetskommittén 

for Byggnadsfragor (SfB). In 1950 the Swedish SfB published the 

technical standard, the result of three years work, while two associated organisations 

published a catalogue and a price list for building materials and components, 

based on the same classification system. It was designed to solve classification 

problems about technical aspects of the project and building process. 

In 1958 the IBBC (International Committee for the Construction Classification), 

established by the CIB (International Council for Construction) and FID (International 

Federation of Literature) decided to recommend the adoption of the SfB. 

243

classificatory 

methodology 

faceted classification 

system 

1 17 

The CIB, which has status in the UN, assumed the copyright and the task to promote 

the SfB on an international scale through the granting of licences to correspondent 

national associations to commit to translating and publishing in their countries 

manuals developing the use of SfB. 

The classification system, although well known, is not used on a large scale, despite 

the fact that its first English version was translated into German and Italian. 

In the language of SfB a certain item always has the same code, whether it is in a 

book, a data sheet, a quality assurance document, or a computation; therefore it 

becomes a “common language for construction” that facilitates cross-references 

between documents and different operators in the building process, bypassing the 

usual limits of technical and national languages. 

The SfB identifies some basic principles of the building process in the constructive 

activities that produce parts of a building defined through quantity and location. This 

means that the distinctive feature of the system, is to divide a building or a project 

into parts identified by these main three viewpoints: 

› function: what part is it? 

› method: how it is built? 

› material: what is the material made of? 

The first version, in answer to these questions, has three tables: “1 – Elements”, 

“2 – Works” and “3 – Materials”. 

The English version was later extended to contain two other tables: “0 – Natural and 

build environment” and “4 – Activities and requirements”. 

Information is classified using codes that refer to the tables. For example, to classify 

“sound insulation panels made with plastered ceiling for a cinema” we have: 

› Tab. 0: Show building: cinema 525; 

› Tab. 1: Finishing: false ceiling (35); 

› Tab. 2/3: Works/Materials: gypsum hard sheet Rf7; 

› Tab. 4: Sound, quiet: soundproofing (P2). 

The complete code for information will be: 525 (35) Rf7 (P2). 

The structure of SfB allows us to separately classify the space, the technical elements 

that perform specific functions and the materials that they are made of. It is 

not simply a list of items coded as with UNI 8290, but a system of items related to 

each other. In Italy the SfB system is not widely used, because current practice is still 

linked to UNI 8290. 

metaproject of an interactive database 

The first operation is to identify the classificatory methodology, a precise definition of 

our domain action, so that it is clear what we mean by building units and products. 

The commonly accepted meaning for a construction product is any product used in 

construction. The product is essentially “the result of a process, namely of a system 

of related activities or interacting elements that transform input elements into 

output” 2 . Accepting this definition allows us to distinguish the material by subject, so 

that we can classify the material as a product; the greater the degree of importance 

on the original characteristics of the matter, the greater the difference between the 

material and the process. Obviously the minimum process is to extract the material. 

Marble is a matter; the block of marble is already a material and once extracted it 

becomes a product. 

The peculiarity of manufactured building, as an organism unit, is that it is composed 

of elements with precise minimum features that define the unit, separable 

as elements that do not perform the same functions and therefore not classified as 


20 

minimal unit, but as materials, in building processes. One can easily guess that there 

are certain items that we find on the edge of this limit, such as products that can be 

functional elements only at the end of their industrial production. 

Our domain will cover the total construction field, from material to opportunity, 

to catalogue entire buildings. We are trying to structure a complete 

definition of the construction domain. This domain ontology will also form 

the basis of an inferential search engine that, together with a traditional one, 

will respond to the questions of users of the database. 

For the nature of our domain we choose a faceted classification system, in order to 

allow greater flexibility of the database and a unique management of the material 

under investigation at various scales.To define our basic categories we choose to 

rely on basic categories currently defined by studies of CRG (Classification Research 

Group). This international research group, founded in 1960, implemented the 

CC-Colon Classification, broadening the groups of basic categories. Starting from 

their succession order, we set up a series of tables of the identified categories, each 

containing series of relating factors not necessarily exhaustive, but implemented. 

CC Category CRG Category Tables Identified Category 

P: Personality 

M: Matter 

E: Energy 

S: Space 

T: Time 

Objects 

Species or types 

Parties 

Matters 

Proporties 

Processes 

Operations 

Agents 

Space 

Time 

Table 1 

Table 2 

Table 3 

Table 4 

Table 5 

Table 6 

Table 7 

Table 8 

Table 9 

Table 10 

Summary of Tables in relation to CC and the CRG. 


Object 

Capital letter 

Functional typology 

[Number] 

Element 

Lowercase letter 

Matter 

 

Requirements 

 

Productive process 

(Lowercase letter) 

Constructive system 

[Lowercase letter] 

Operators 

 

Territory 

(Capital letter) 

Period of production 

[Capital letter] 

To each catalogued product is then associated a code of 10 fields (notation, Fig. 2). 

Not necessarily all fields must be completed. An object may not have any of the 

characteristics, in which case this will be left blank. 

Fig. 2: Notation in relation to the Category tables (p. 349). 

245

Each category is represented by numbers or letters: 

A [1] a 1 (a) [a] (A) [A] 

A sequence can be written without a table, simply rewrite the individual fields in succession, 

each separated by one point for a clearly reading: 

A.[1].a.1..(a).[a].(A).[A] 

If a field is blank it will be skipped in the sequence of notation, as the different symbolism 

allows to distinguish in what fields the symbols are present: 

A.[1].a.1.(A).[A] 

From the 10 tables, we can define the same number of fields and we can easily find 

elements that have the same classification based on the category tables. In this way 

the system aims to find and compare objects belonging to similar types. However, 

when we want to catalogue these objects we must identify them uniquely in the 

repository: the eleventh field has this function. This is a numeric field whose function 

is to be a unique counter that is automatically associated to a sequence in the index. 

The advantage of using a system of facets is to impose relations among the 

various terms. The structure will be partly pre-coordinated and partly postcoordinated; 

from the terms of all the tables it will be possible to create a 

general relationship. The terms in Tab. 1 form a hierarchical pre-structured 

relationship. 

Tab. 1 is, in fact, what gives us the first and fundamental information on the analysis, 

because it allows us to define the “scale” on which we operate. 

Tab. 1 – Object: capital letter – reserve character Z 

A – Building unit 

B – Sub-system 

C – Technical element 

D – Semi-finished 

E – Material 

Tab. 2 is related to function and is derived from the tab. 0 of SfB “natural and build 

environment”, as it is easily assessed, applicable and expresses function in common 

urban standards. 

Tab. 3 has been structured according to UNI 8290, showing its hierarchical relationship. 

This choice comes from a purely practical problem: the Standard 8290 is very 

popular in its own nation, among users and producers. It provides an extremely 

stable classification and is therefore indispensable. 

This is very similar to the system SfB (Tab. 1), yet it seem more flexible, since the 

possibility of using relations within the voices of individual tables can integrate the 

degree of freedom of UNI 8290 to overcome the limitations of hierarchy, particularly 

in the breakdown of traditional structures. 

Indeed, introducing the simple relation “:” (colon), for example, we can indicate a 

exterior load-bearing masonry as: 

aba = Vertical elevation structure 

baa = Perimeter vertical walls 

so aba : baa. 


20 

Tab. 4 was deduced from the “the new architect handbook” integrated with the 

notebook of “Architectural Design Manual – Synthetics Materials”. 

Tab. 5 resumes again UNI 8290 in its listings about definition of requirements, linked 

to UNI 8289. 

For Tab. 6 we verified that in Italy there is not a unique standard reference, so we 

chose to follow the common directive of engineering universities and use the German 

standard for industrial processing of materials DIN 8580. 

Tab. 6 – Productive process: (letter) – reserve character Z 

a – Process of manufacturing / assembly 

aa – Continuous 

ab – For parts 

b – Process 

ba – Shaping amorphous material 

bb – Transformation/plastic deformation 

bc – Union 

bd – Separation 

be – Surface treatment 

bf – Changing of physical characteristics 

c – ... 

Tab. 7 was designed to mediate between the definitions that the current Italian legislation 

provides for professionals to identify constructive systems, with technological 

characteristic definitions of structures. First there is a distinction about executive 

techniques and then one about structural morphology. The report of these terms 

together with those provided by the legislation definition allows us to include the 

various constructive systems in use avoiding redundant terms. 

Tab. 7 – Constructive system: [letter] – reserve character Z 

a – Executive techniques 

aa – Dry system 

ab – Wet system 

b – Structural morphology 

ba – Point system 

bb – Continuous system 

c – Legislation definition 

ca – Normal reinforced concrete framework 

cb – Pre-stressed concrete framework 

cc – Steel framework 

cd – Bearing panels structure 

ce – Masonry structure 

cf – Timber structure 

cg – Unusual constructive systems 

ch – Combined systems 

Tab. 8 partially derives from the UNI standard 10914/1 and the UNI standard 10838 

assessing building process for the various users. 


247

Tab. 9 expresses territorial characteristics, providing information from about 4 areas, 

namely the institutionalised territory (for example, Campania is divided into provinces 

but certain territories, such as cilento or salento, fall into different provincial 

administrative areas) and geological and geomorphologic areas, distinguishing in 

this way the characteristics of the territory in its consolidated stratigraphy and external 

environmental relations. 

Tab. 10, the last table, concerns chronological operating. It is designed also to add 

information about historical periods. It has not yet been completed because it could 

be ambiguous. In fact sometimes, historical periods do not coincide with the history 

of art, giving rise to possible misunderstandings. 

In conclusion, a corresponding item in each table, plus a string name free 

of text will characterise the object entered into the database. Each object 

may have associated graphics, video or alphanumeric documents. 

Each object may have associated sub-objects with similar configuration and structure 

that will be subordinate to Tab. 1. 

Fig. 3: UML scheme (p. 350). 

The research will be done through an information retrieval system in which the 

user can, by issuing a query, select key words to search through a traditional search 

engine and/or select the fields related to terms belonging to the tables of categories. 

Currently we are validating the procedure with pre-modern constructive 

systems, but the hypothesis that we want to prove is to make an application 

with innovative elements and components in order to verify the validity 

of the system for all building types. 


20 

notes 

1 Nardi, G. Tecnologie dell’architettura. Teorie e storia. Milan: CLUP, 2001. 

2 Norma UNI EN ISO 9000, Sistemi di gestione per la qualità – Fondamenti e terminologia. 2000. 

bibliography 

Ciribini G., ed. Tecnologie della costruzione. Rome: NIS, 1992. 

Denton, W. How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put It On the Web. Melvil: Miskatonic 

University Press, 2005. 

Gnoli, C. Classificazione a faccette. Rome: AIB, 2004. 

Guenzi, C. L’arte di edificare. Manuali in Italia 1750-1950. Milan: Be-Ma, 1981. 

Nardi, G. Tecnologie dell’architettura. Teorie e storia. Milan: CLUP, 2001. 

Tatano, V., ed. Dal manuale al web. Cultura tecnica, informazione tecnica e produzione edilizia 

per il progetto di architettura. Rome: Officina Edizioni, 2007. 

DIN 8580: 2003, Fertigungsverfahren - Begriffe, Einteilung (German)/ Manufacturing processes - 

Terms and definitions, division (English). 

Norma UNI 8290/1, Edilizia. Informazione tecnica. Terminologia. 1984. 

Norma UNI 8290/2, Edilizia. Informazione tecnica. Classificazione dei livelli di completezza 

dei contenuti. 1984. 

Norma UNI 8290/3, Edilizia. Informazione tecnica. Articolazione ed ordine espositivo 

dei contenuti. 1984. 

Norma UNI 10838, Edilizia, Terminologia riferita all’utenza, alle prestazioni, al processo 

edilizio e alla qualità edilizia. 1999. 

Norma UNI EN ISO 9000, Sistemi di gestione per la qualità – Fondamenti e terminologia. 2000. 

Norma UNI 10914/1, Edilizia, qualificazione e controllo del progetto edilizio di intervento 

di nuova costruzione e di interventi sul costruito. Criteri generali e terminologia. 2001. 


249

21 

› content-based indexing 

› content-based search 

250 

the probado framework: 

A Repository for 

Architectural 3d-models 


› 3D model 

In this paper, we describe a repository for architectural 3dcad 

models which is currently set up at the German National 

Library of Science and Technology (tib), Hannover as part of the 

larger German probado digital library initiative: The proposed 

probado-framework is integrating different types of multimedia 

content-repositories and adding features available in text-based 

digital libraries. 

A metadata model for organizing the 3d model data collection 

has been developed. The 3D repository can be searched using 

both textual (metadata-based) and non-textual (e.g. 3dsketching) 

retrieval mechanisms. A workflow for automated 

content-based data analysis and indexing is proposed.

ina blümel 

German National Library of Science 

and Technology (TIB) 

Hannover, Germany 

www.tib.uni-hannover.de 

Ina Blümel received her Diploma from TU 

Braunschweig, Germany and Master of Science 

in Architecture Helsinki UT, Finland both in 2000 

and started working at digitales bauen, Karlsruhe, 

with focus on optimizing the planning of individual 

architecture regarding prefabrication and facilities 

management. Since 2006 she has been research 

assistant for the probado-3d group at TIB, Hannover. 

harald krottmaier 

Technical University Graz, Institute of Computer 

Graphics and Knowledge Visualization 

Graz, Austria 

www.tugraz.at 

Harald Krottmaier studied Telematics (1991-1998) 

in Graz, University of Technology. He started his 

work on Digital Libraries in 1996 using a second 

generation Hypermedia-System (Hyperwave). 

In 2002 he finished his dissertation on aspects 

of modern electronic publishing systems. Main 

interests are on digital libraries, personalization 

and service-integration. 

raoul wessel 

University of Bonn, Computer Graphics Group 

Bonn, Germany 

www.cg.cs.uni-bonn.de 

Raoul Wessel studied Computer Science and 

Economics at the University of Bonn, Germany. 

He received his diploma in 2005 and started working 

as a research assistant for the probado digital 

library initiative. His main interests are 3d shape 

retrieval and matching with a special focus on 

architectural data. 

251

252

introduction 

The number of newly generated multimedia content increases year by year 

and the use of this complex, non-textual data is becoming more and more important. 

However, this data is not analyzed and indexed sufficiently within the 

workflow of today’s digital libraries, which are focussing on textual documents. 

keywords 

7 13 15 17 

21 

Even though a lot of research has been done on how to manage, search, retrieve 

and present multimedia documents, there is still the need for integrating multimedia 

documents in existing library workflows. User-friendly tools must be developed so 

that both the management of multimedia documents for librarians and the user 

access to these documents (both content-based and in the conventional way of 

searching metadata) become possible. 

Indexing multimedia content with keywords often results in a loss of information. 

multimedia 

16 

To give an example: if a complex 3D model of a roof is just marked with the keyword 

roof, it is not identifiable as a flat roof, a pitched roof or a cupola. In current document 

interpreting processes two different persons have to use the same keywords 

to make the document detectable: the person interpreting the document and, to 

detect the document, the person who is searching. Another issue is that authors are 

not motivated to extend their documents with metadata, even with the presence of 

suitable tools. Furthermore it is also nearly impossible to interpret all existing data 

manually. 

The result is that in most cases multimedia documents are “black boxes” 

whose contents cannot be searched individually. 

repository 

8 10 11 14 

16 26 


As a concrete step forward, we will describe an ongoing project initiative that aims 

to set up a repository for digital architectural 3D-content at the German National 

Library of Science and Technology (TIB), Hannover. The project aims to develop an 

integrated workflow for both document handling and cataloguing, according to the 

classical librarian workflow and content-based document processing, i.e., making 

the collection accessible through content-based retrieval, the latter involving automatic 

content-based document analysis and indexing. As key contributions, we 

› propose a generic structure of a 3D repository for storing realworld architectural 3D 

content that is suitable for both conventional and content-based access; 

› propose a metadata scheme for 3D repositories; 

› describe a concrete design of a corresponding 3D repository that is currently set 

up at TIB and in particular describe a prototypical workflow for automatic contentbased 

document analysis, annotation and access; 

› sketch up how the proposed repository will be integrated into the larger-scale 

PROBADO framework that facilitates access to general document types stored in 

digital libraries. 

related work 

In library catalogues and subject databases textual documents are normally 

interpreted by the title, keywords and classifications. But there are also selected 

databases that provide a content base search for 3D models: 2D or 3D sketching and 

the probado framework 

253

database 

6 19 20 22 23 

3d model 

9 10 24 

model-upload by e.g. Princeton 3D Model Search Engine [1] in academical and e.g. 

3DSeek [2] in commercial context. 

Two research projects in the area of digital 3D libraries, which are funded by the 

European Union, are AIM@SHAPE [3] and SCULPTEUR [4]: The innovation sought 

by the former project is to move towards digital representations of shapes which are 

able to model, not only the visual appearance of objects, but also their meaning or 

functionality in a given knowledge domain. The older SCULPTEUR project has been 

developing both the technology and the expertise to help create, manage and present 

cultural archives of 3D models and associated multimedia objects, exploiting the 

semantic web technology. 

Automatic generation of metadata for multimedia files is sought by the 

German theseus [5] initiative. The research partners are looking for ways 

of registering content and creating interoperable metadata for audio-visual 

data, with the aim of improving the indexing, archiving and accessing 

of multimedia sources. 

the probado-project 

probado is a cooperative German digital library project funded by Deutsche 

Forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg). The project started in February 2006 and 

has a tentative duration of 5 years. The main goal of probado is to integrate 

general (in particular non-textual) multimedia documents into the workflow 

of existing libraries. 

text-based queries 

content-based queries 

6 17 19 22 26 

Important subtasks of the project are to develop and implement; a) methods to support 

automatic processing of general documents in the library processing chain of 

document acquisition, annotation, search & delivery, and storage; b) local PROBA- 

DO repositories which are located at particular libraries and in which documents 

and annotation data for single subject areas (e.g. 3D models) can be organized; c) a 

common PROBADO platform serving as a web-based access point for searching and 

accessing documents stored in the connected repositories. 

Rather than being a pure research project, it is a special focus of probado 

to achieve long-term usage of the developed systems and workflows at the 

cooperating libraries. 

To achieve the above goals, project partners from different universities, each having 

expertise in distinct areas of multimedia document analysis and retrieval, are 

cooperating with partners of two large German libraries (TIB, Hannover and BSB, 

Munich). 

Fig. 1: Overall system architecture of the PROBADO framework (p. 351). 

An overview of the PROBADO system architecture is depicted in figure 1. It consists 

of three layers. The user interface layer enables a user to perform both classical textbased 

queries as well-as content-based queries for the specific subject areas (e.g., 

query-by-sketching for the 3D subject area). 


21 

The main component of the PROBADO system layer is a task dispatcher that is used 

to assign incoming queries to the respective query engines located at the connected 

repositories. As a special feature, global DublinCore-style metadata for all documents 

stored in the connected repositories is managed in a central metadata repository 

that is hosted at the PROBADO system. 

A service-oriented architecture is used to connect different layers in the system. 

Therefore PROBADO services are loosely coupled. Every single layer may be replaced 

by some new implementation, as long as service-contracts are abided by the 

concrete implementation. These service-contracts are described by Web service 

description language (WSDL). The architecture is not tied to a specific technology or 

programming language. Currently many parts of the system are implemented using 

Java-technology. 

The repository layer consists of an arbitrary number of repositories, each one 

specialized for a specific multimedia domain and holding documents and associated 

data for a specific subject area. In the current stage of the project, PROBADO repositories 

are set up for the particular subject areas of 3D models and music. In this 

paper we describe the PROBADO repository for the subject area of architectural 3D 

models, that is currently set up at the German National Library of Science and Technology 

(TIB), Hannover [6] in cooperation with the Computer Graphics Groups at 

the Universities of Bonn [7] and Graz [8]. Each repository offers a specific number of 

query engines, which are registered at the central repository manager located in the 

PROBADO system layer. Beside a mandatory query engine for descriptive metadata 

a repository may contain an arbitrary number of query engines for content-based 

queries. We refer to [9] for detailed information. 

the metadata model for the probado 

3d model subject area 

In architectural context a special meanings are associated with the metadata, 

as 3d models should be described with relation to other subjects, e.g. built architecture 

or a competition, if we want to substantially increase the benefits 

for the user. 

metadata 

1 6 8 10 

15 17 19 

Architects, as a target group, were integrated intensively in the development of the 

3D repository, e.g. by a survey concerning the search behaviour or the use of 3D in 

practice. As one result, many potential users are less interested in models of entire 

buildings, but rather in the partial models and elements within a building model, 

for above all, having the option to integrate these objects into their own building 

models. This was considered within the development of the metadata model (Group 

1 entities). 

After the evaluation of standards for storing 3D metadata (e.g. ISO 19115, VRA 

and MPEG-7) an entity relationship model was developed. Most of the entities are 

arranged within three groups: Group 1 describes the 3D models themselves including 

semi-automatically derived model-metadata, Group 2 the involved agents, and 

Group 3 different optional related subjects. Nearly all the 15 elementary descriptors, 

useable for a lot of bibliographical information, from the common Dublin Core [10] 

standard are used as attributes within the entities. 

Group 2 and 3 entities are based on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic 

Records (FRBR) [11], which is a suggestion of the International Federation of Library 

Associations and Institutions for an improved structure of bibliographic metadata. 

Group 1 entities do not encapsulate all information that is inherent to the model 


255

epository 

8 10 11 14 

16 26 

itself, as the IFC-standard exists for the comprehensive digital description of the 

logical building structures, associated characteristics as well as geometry. The repository 

supports IFC, which is developed by the International Alliance for Interoperability 

(IAI) and registered under ISO16739 to facilitate interoperability between 

software platforms in the building industry. 

Fig. 2: Main parts of the 3D metadata model (p. 351). 

Figure 2 shows a low level view of a part of the metadata model that is used for the 

3D subject area of the PROBADO project. The model is shown as an entity-relationship 

diagram for a relational database design containing the most important entities 

with attributes and relations. The 3D repository uses the non-commercial MySQL for 

storing metadata. 

The central entity of Group 1 (the bottom left box) is “model_formalinfo”, which 

can be described as an abstract representation of a 3D model encapsulating formal 

information. “Model_entityinfo” holds the metadata of the concrete model, e.g. 

vertices, polygons, size, location etc. Usually, several copies of a model that differ in 

some key feature, like their format or resolution, are exported. They can be examined 

together in a group as one “model_formalinfo” may have multiple relations to 

“model_entityinfo”. A detailed building model usually contains several small models, 

e.g. furniture or structural components. Therefore a recursive nesting of formalinfo 

and entityinfo is possible, and for each formalinfo entity a type information (e.g. 

building model) is additionally stored. 

Group 3 (the top box) contains the entities object (built architecture), place and 

event (e.g. seminar, competition), which give expanding information about a model. 

Group 2 (the box to the right) captures information regarding a person or an institute 

that is in some way (creating, ownership, uploading, etc.) associated with 3D models 

or objects and events. 

the 3d repository at tib 

Model collection 

Figure 3 shows an overview of the components of the repository. The primary data 

stored in the repository consists of architectural 3D models of different formats 

and image-files. Contributors are faculties of architecture, producer of architectural 

components or 3D model databases. Momentarily the repository contains over 500 

building, construction unit and object models, which are converted, indexed and 

extensively described with metadata as well as approximately 5000 models that are 

still to be analyzed and indexed. 

Fig. 3: Components of the PROBADO 3D repository (p. 352). 

Processing and obtaining metadata 

For easier indexing, searching and viewing, a copy of each model is normalized and 

automatically converted into a uniform format. For previewing, an image and a 3D 

pdf file is obtained. The latter is needed if the author doesn’t want his CAD-model to 

be downloaded by other users. 


One major goal of the probado project is to minimize the manual cataloguing 

work and to automatically generate the appropriate metadata wherever 

possible. As a 3D model normally does not bring along any describing data 

(if it is not catalogued in a database beforehand), the main source for first 

metadata is the automatic deduction. 

21 

For establishing the PROBADO service in practice, the import both of individual 

models and large data sets of external sources, e.g. servers of university chairs or 

manufacturer databases, is facilitated with a specific interface. Apart from bundling 

existing tools like metadata extraction or thumbnail generation, a further function 

for recognizing errors in models has to be integrated, so the time per model can be 

reduced substantially, with continuous quality of model processing. 

After automatically deriving metadata, some additional compulsory data 

needs manual intervention via interface, e.g. realizing the relation to the particular 

contributor, often already stored as an entity in the database. Further 

automation of this process is required for the future. 

Searching the 3D repository 

The user can search the repositories connected to PROBADO in different ways: 

when no specific subject area is selected, the user enters text in a Google-like search 

form and the search is done on global PROBADO metadata, which is a subset of 

the metadata of all connected PROBADO repositories (similar to Dublin Core). For 

3D-specific searches, the PROBADO system allows: a) searching in the metadata of 

PROBADO 3D repositories; b) content-based search. 

a) Basic and advanced search 

The search in the metadata of the PROBADO 3D repositories is similar to the traditional 

search in OPACs of large libraries. It is a text-based search with a basic search 

form (with just one input field) and an advanced form. In the advanced case, the 

user can specify entities and attributes whose values must match the text that the 

user enters into the input fields. 

b) Content-based search 

For content-based search, PROBADO 3D currently offers three query engines (Fig. 

3). The Room Connectivity search engine makes use of the room configuration and 

topology of 3D building models (Fig. 4). This information can be used for queries in 

two ways. 

Fig. 4: Room connectivity graph and results from the database (p. 352). 

First, the user can upload a 3D building model and search for database models containing 

a similar room configuration like the query object. Second, the user is offered 

sketching interfaces (Fig. 5) allowing quick and intuitive drawing of volumes or floor 

plans, which can be used as a query to the building database. 

Fig. 5: Query by 3D sketching for content-based global search of the PROBADO 3D 

repository (p. 352). 


257

The Component Search engine is especially tailored to retrieve single 

building units like roofs, stairs, etc., from building unit databases as well as 

from 3d building model databases. This search engine relies on query-byexample, 

i.e. the user can upload 3d models of building units and search 

for similar components. 

The third query engine is based on 3D building model parameterization. Here, the 

user is offered an interface allowing for change of parameters defining a 3D building 

model, like for example the number of floors or roof type. Fast retrieval and indexing 

techniques make it possible to search for building models in the database with a 

similar parameter setting. 

Content-based document analysis and indexing 

As one major goal of the probado digital library initiative is to minimize 

manual cataloguing work, the main focus during development of all three 

search engines was to keep the amount of manual administrator interaction 

for metadata generation and indexing as small as possible. 

In the last years, automatic content based indexing research resulted in the detection 

of many indexing characteristics especially in the lower semantic layers, i.e. 

characteristics relying on rather pure geometrical shape content. These low-level 

semantic features are mainly used in our Component Search engine. They can be 

generated completely automatically and do not require any administrative interaction 

by the librarian. 

For the semi-automatically interpreting process additional semantic layers are 

defined: physical, logical (e.g. building structure), small semantic (e.g. room connectivity 

graphs, Fig. 5), higher semantic (e.g. the assignation of a building comparing 

room connectivity, floor area and other relevant characteristics). These higherlevel 

semantic features are used in the Room Connectivity search engine. Although 

extraction of these could not yet be completely automated, it only relies on a small 

amount of information, like for example building orientation and scale, which need 

to be provided by the librarian during model acquisition. For technical details on the 

corresponding retrieval problems, we refer to the corresponding technical papers 

[13][14][15]. 

conclusions and future directions 

In this paper, we presented the PROBADO 3D repository for organizing and making 

accessible 

collections of digital 3D models, which are currently set up at TIB, Hannover, as a 

component of the larger PROBADO framework. 

The next steps in setting up the 3d repository will consist of finishing the 

metadata for the initial probado 3d collection and subsequently increasing 

the number of 3d models considerably. 


21 

Concerning content-based document analysis, the next steps consist of evaluating 

and completing the workflow for automatic indexing and annotation. For contentbased 

retrieval, existing query engines have to be adapted and integrated into the 

repository. For presenting retrieval results to the user and for facilitating contentbased 

browsing within the 3D collection, further components for multimodal 

browsing, retrieval, and presentation of 3D data have to be integrated. Finally, the 

repository will be connected to the overall PROBADO framework and the PROBADO 

service will be integrated into the conventional library services. For information on 

the PROBADO project, we refer to [16]. 

references 

[1] http://shape.cs.princeton.edu/search.html. 

[2] http://www.vizseek.com/3DSeek/Sketch.aspx. 

[3] http://www.aimatshape.net. 

[4] http://www.sculpteurweb.org. 

[5] http://theseus-programm.de. 

[6] http://tib-hannover.de. 

[7] http://cg.cs.uni-bonn.de. 

[8] http://www.cgv.tugraz.at. 

[9] Krottmaier, H., F. Kurth, T. Steenweg, H. J. Appelrath, and D. Fellner. 2007. PROBADO – 

A Generic Repository Integration Framework. In Proceedings of Research and Advances 

Technology for Digital Technology: 11th European Conference – ECDL 2007 (Budapest, Hungary, 

16-21 September, 2007). 

[10] www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf. 

[11] http://dublincore.org. 

[12] http://www.buildingsmart.de/2/2_01_01.htm. 

[13] Wessel R., I. Blümel, and R. Klein. 2008. The Room Connectivity Graph: Shape Retrieval 

in the Architectural Domain. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference in Central Europe 

on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision’ 2008 (University of West Bohemia, 

Campus Bory, Plzen – Bory, Czech Republic, 4-7 February, 2008). 

[14] Schnabel, R., R. Wessel, R. Wahl, and R. Klein. 2008. Shape Recognition in 3D Point-Clouds. 

In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, 

Visualization and Computer Vision 2008 (University of West Bohemia, Campus Bory, Plzen – 

Bory, Czech Republic, 4-7 February, 2008). 

[15] Berndt, R., D.W. Fellner, and S. Havemann. 2005. Generative 3D models: A Key to More 

Information Within Less Bandwidth at Higher Quality. In Proceedings of the 10th International 

Conference on 3D Web Technology, 111-121. New York: ACM Press. 

[16] http://www.PROBADO.de. 


259

websites 

A European Network 

of Architectural Contents 

Websites and portals devoted to architecture and websites of professional 

architects have a considerable amount of resources (pictures, renderings, 

2d-3d drawings, details, texts, videos animations and information) 

continuously updated and enriched. However this material is often 

disorganised, poorly structured, not properly tagged, and has no advanced 

and coherent search systems enabling cross-referencing among the 

available documents. A lot of very interesting resources often remain 

inoperative and useless, lost in the abyss of often unknown databases. 

Moreover, very often each website is an isle on the Internet that 

does not communicate with its brothers and sisters, that remains alone 

affronting lots of difficulties to survive, renovate, update tools 

and generally look after the way content is provided and organised. 

This book addresses the following topics and other related ones: 

› Organisation of contents of information, architecture and knowledge 

› Which content for what kind of people and purposes 

› Architectural portals and their goals 

› User communities and web 2.0 

› Implementation of virtual super-networks and impacts 

on the original repository

22 

› advertising 

› archiving 

› cities 

› community 

› copyrights 

› creative commons 

› database 

› Europe 

› feedback 

› guide 

262 

mimoa: 

An Interactive Architecture 

Guide 

› interaction 

› interface 

› mapping 

› modern 

› niche 

› open 

› photography 

› portfolio 

› shared tools 

› travelling 

This essay was written for the mace International Conference on 

“On-line Repositories in Architecture” held in Venice, during the 

period of “La Biennale di Architettura 2008” 12-13 September, 

2008. It is by no means a “scientifically justified” paper nor can 

we verify made statements with thorough research. It is merely 

an account of a process we followed and experiences we had, 

while developing MIMOA. It can be read as an approach to 

building, maintaining and managing an on-line architecture 

guide. Some of the issues we address are interesting to the 

larger extend of Architectural Repositories, and fit the scope 

of the conference.

mieke vullings 

Utrecht, Netherlands 

www.mimoa.eu 

naomi schiphorst 

Amsterdam, Netherlands 

www.mimoa.eu 

Dutch architects Mieke Vullings (1976) and Naomi 

Schiphorst (1978) were both educated at the 

Technical University in Delft and San Sebastián 

(Spain), faculty of Architecture. They currently 

work as senior architects, Mieke since 2002 at A12 

Architecten BNA, and Naomi since 2003 at RAU. 

Together they founded the architecture guide 

MIMOA (www.mimoa.eu) in August 2006, and 

officially launched in September 2007. Mieke and 

Naomi share their love for photography, architecture 

and travelling. They have successfully started a 

growing community of like minded architecture 

lovers who organise, contribute, and map modern 

architecture throughout the world. Next to MIMOA, 

Mieke and Naomi cherish a special interest in Spain, 

the people, it’s language and the food. 

263

what is mimoa 

mimoa (Mi MOdern Architecture) is, in short, an international interactive 

architecture guide. It is a user generated website on modern architecture that 

offers exactly the information you need to actually find and visit buildings, 

parks, bridges, public interiors and art in public spaces all in real life. All visitors 

can find and add information for free. 

architecture guide 

travelling 

Who is MIMOA 

MIMOA is developed by Mieke Vullings (31) and Naomi Schiphorst (29), two Dutch 

architects, who share a love for travelling, architecture and photography. 

What’s your problem? 

mimoa was born out of personal frustration: never being able to find the right 

addresses of most recent Modern Architecture when you set out to choose 

and prepare a city trip. We spent hours aimlessly flipping through hundreds 

of dusty architecture magazines that do not include addresses. 

website 

modern architecture 

28 

City guides generally cover “old” architecture, proven to be worthy for mainstream 

tourism. Architecture books cannot keep up with the pace and are not up to date. 

We turned to the web and found inconsistent and non-comprehensive websites, 

which fail to provide an easy to compare and all-in-one-glance overview of the latest 

developments. We saw many colleagues and friends share the same experience. We 

also imagined the struggle non-architects must have. 

Be your own audience 

We knew there had to be a better way, so we decided to build our own. In August 

2006 we “just started”. We are our own target audience, and we know what would 

make our lives, and our visitors, a little easier. As it turned out, we weren’t the only 

ones. Thousands of like-minded people are in the same boat. 

We created a tool that we’re passionate about. And that’s the best way to 

get others to feel passionate about it too. In less than six months, thousands 

of architects, photographers, students and travellers were using and contributing 

to mimoa. 

real life architecture 

Stay focussed 

MIMOA is an international website that focuses on visiting architectural projects – in 

real life. Most off-line architecture repositories tend to collect the derivatives of 


database 

6 19 20 21 23 

22 

architecture itself: drawings, models, written descriptions, often even objects, furniture 

and fragments of long forgotten note books. Instead, MIMOA focuses on the 

real-life encounter. There are many examples of websites (and magazines) that become 

(on-line) destinations in themselves, intentional or not. We decided to collect 

only the information that is strictly needed to actually find and visit architecture.This 

is where MIMOA strongly differs from other on-line architecture databases. The final 

personal judgement and experience can only be made after seeing the site in person. 

“Architecture teaches you to see, and therefore you learn to see things – and 

they are not all in one place. And sometimes they are in places far away from 

home. And you have to travel; and travelling and seeing is more important to 

your education than reading books. You have to teach yourself by seeing; and 

life becomes richer and the world is yours in a way”. 

Quote from architect I.M. Pei in the documentary movie “First Person Singular: I.M. 

Pei (1997)”, Director: Peter Rose. 

Stay lean 

We only publish projects that are built, or under construction. MIMOA does not 

publish artist impressions, drawings or plans. Each publication is accompanied by a 

maximum of 3 real-life photos. Just enough to recognize the project, and illustrate all 

a designer needs to explain. We do not collect endless shots of beautiful buildings: 

you simply need to get excited to eventually visit a project. A real life experience 

doesn’t match up with the on-line equivalent. Besides: images take up a whole lot of 

disk space, and we wouldn’t want to have our visitors waiting for loading time. 

Stay fresh 

We found that this condition of the “real-ness” of objects is a powerful filter 

of critical selection. It makes it possible to stay clear of a narration by images, 

and the max. 3 photos constraint improves the quality of the photos. 

Not only is the first selection by the first-time contributor better; photos are 

the first things to be changed by others. If someone has better quality photos 

or new information on how to get there, we’ll update the publication. This 

way we stay accurate and actual. 

real world objects 

1 

niche market 

“MIMOA is interesting in that it targets a niche audience which really is rather large. 

Who doesn’t go to Europe without expecting to see some fabulous architecture?” 

Text from Killer Startups “MIMOA.eu – Comprehensive Database, Architecture in 

Europe”, Author: Siri, Posted December 21 2007 1 . 

mimoa 

265

Tiny slice, big market 

How many people could possibly be interested in content with such pinpoint focus? 

A very large number, as it happens. At the time of writing, in nearly half a year after 

it’s launch, MIMOA has reached about 40,000 page views and 200,000 unique visitors 

per month. MIMOA is addressing a mega-niche, a thin slice of the Web, which 

nonetheless represents roughly 22 million users. Now that more than a billion people 

have access to the Web, there is no longer a trade-off between size and specificity: a 

tiny slice of an immense pie is huge. A tightly focussed group is smaller, but easier to 

reach and more loyal than a mass audience. 

Address the right audience 

MIMOA can assemble a large highly committed audience because it doesn’t try to 

be all things to all people. The essential content is disclosed by the essential features 

and tools adjusted to the needs of a specific customer. Architecture students immediately 

understood the ease and opportunities MIMOA brought them and they are 

among MIMOA’s most dedicated contributors. Now architects use MIMOA to present 

their work internationally, and to get inspired by others. But also city marketeers, 

real estate developers, related magazines, and travel organizations have discovered 

MIMOA as its foremost monitor for architectural trends in Europe. Finally, for people 

who love culture and travelling in general, MIMOA is an eye opener, a new source of 

inspiration for their next destination. 

Young and inexperienced 

Of all these groups, students matter most. Students have typically been 

thought of as transients who contribute little to the collective world of architectural 

publishing. In fact, mimoa’s application for financial support from 

a national fund that grants “cultural architectural projects that foster the 

development of knowledge of the design disciplines” and helps projects that 

seek to “circulate knowledge and can involve a professional public and/or 

a broad spectrum of the general public” was rejected. 

web 2.0 

7 8 

The advising committee saw “no confidence in the critical expertise of the two executive 

graduates”. The judging committee “does not expect them to be able to place 

the information in a national, nor international perspective”. The report continues to 

argue: “Those who are to create and develop this project are two young, inexperienced 

architects of whom the committee can not judge if they would be capable of 

editing the contents of such a website”. 

New era of collective enthusiasm 

But in the world of Web 2.0, the world where we start by assuming that everyone 

already uses the web, the young ones matter for several reasons. First: they’ve got 

time to work and to contribute to a site like MIMOA, secondly they have the skills, 

and thirdly, they are more eager to engage and claim the (on-line) stage, precisely 

because they are young. They want to collect, connect and distribute information 


Most important is that young people are part of a large like-minded network 

of casual social connections. The exact value lies in casual meetings, like 

study trips, summer schools, foreign traineeships, exchange programs and 

student assemblies. They generate an enthusiastic spin-off for companies 

and encourage other individuals to join in a cycle of self-reinforcing growth. 

creative community 

1 8 23 

22 

and are socially motivated. MIMOA offers them a level of involvement and influence. 

With collective enthusiasm they continually encounter the classical conventions 

where gained knowledge of (the history of) architecture practice among students is 

considered not matured enough to be of any general valuable. 

Tell your friend 

The potential of this focus group – the “creative community” 2 of architects, architecture 

students and design related professionals – is that they are amazingly effective 

attractors, and their effect is truly magnetic. As a result, the site doesn’t need to 

advertise to the general public to reach its audience. The general public will follow 

the dedicated ones. If you get the niche right, the audience is not only large and 

inexpensive, but active and loyal as well. 

Be open 

Architecture Museums and archives have an equal interest in the question of audience: 

in what ways can architectural museums address issues of importance to both 

architectural students, and to the general public? This question illustrates other 

unexpected dimensions of the mega-niche’s power: 

The multifaceted role of young people not only plays a part in an ever expanding 

network, their amenities help to create a progressive, open and tolerant climate that 

attracts and retains members of the “creative community”. The key to a successful 

community lies in developing a “people-climate”, aimed at attracting and retaining, 

especially but not limited to, creative people. The question comes down to whether 

or not people feel they are doing something valuable and fun. This means MIMOA 

needs to actively work to cultivate, remain open, and invest and develop in the tools 

that the focus group really wants to use the most. 

interaction with users 

Let your audience guide you 

“Revealing news: MIMOA’s first demo is on-line! Go check our beta-version, which is 

continuously developed and altered to our and your (feedback feedback) latest insights. 

Even though not every feature works, and the face of it will probably change 

several times, we thought it to be better to get something real up and running 

quickly, instead of building a flash-demo. So, the release version actually is the same 

as the beta-version. We hope to improve the site, and the community gets early access 

to what they want. It allows our users to tell us what they think, so please spam 

us!” MIMOA’s blog “Demo On-line”, Author: Naomi, Posted: February 12th, 2007 3 . 

mimoa 

267

Just start and learn 

We didn’t have large funding, nor a huge team or lengthy development time. 

We just decided to build, launch and learn. We started the development, 

and set every new step directly on-line. This way we could immediately start 

building a community and start collecting content. 

In February 2007 we had our first page on-line. After 6 months of updates, new 

features, bug removing, user experience tests reporting issues, more updates, evaluating, 

and a lot of constructive feedback, the first fully functional version of MIMOA 

1.1 was launched in September 2007. 

Real-life interaction 

The aforementioned constraints forced us to get our idea out quickly. After a month 

or so we had a pretty good idea of whether we were on the right track or not. The 

faster you get feedback from your users the better. Ideas can sound great on paper 

but in practice turn out to be suboptimal. The sooner you find out about fundamental 

issues that are wrong with an idea, the better. There’s no substitute for real 

people using your site in real ways. You can listen and respond to your users. We 

learnt that once you iterate quickly and react on customer feedback, you establish a 

strong community connection. Many features in our latest update (MIMOA 1.2) were 

requested by our contributors. 

Get your priorities straight 

To actively work and improve MIMOA, we’ve got a large list of possible updates, 

features and tools in our heads, which will probably help to make MIMOA 1.3 (and 

MIMOA 1.4, 1.5, etc) more fun, bigger, easier and better. However, we still don’t 

have large funding and we are still bound to time, but that is a good thing, as we 

have to think about what’s really essential and what we could do without. We keep 

it small and manageable, so we can actually enjoy the process, planning new steps 

in an appropriate order and prioritizing as we go along. The lack of time forces us to 

deal with real problems, instead of hypothetical ones. Don’t waste time on problems 

you don’t have yet! If we had had to solve everything before we started, we would 

have probably never have started at all. Just because we do it this way, by developing 

step-by-step, and not rushing into things, we are creating a sustainable product, 

a company that has collected real-life experience and knowledge and built a durable 

committed community. Which is, eventually the motor of all. 

“We live in a time of great promise. We have evolved economic and social systems 

that tap human creativity and make use of it as never before”. 

Text from “The Rise of the Creative Class (2002)”, Author: Richard Florida. 

usability 

Start with the user 

From the start we were in urgent need of a user-experience designer, since we (as 


user interface-design 

3 6 11 24 

22 

two young architects) mainly look at things from the end-user perspective, and had 

difficulties communicating with the technical side. The UX designer helps us to plan 

and to develop a clear and well-thought user interface-design for each update or 

feature. Developing starts with the interface; the real screens that people are going 

to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards 

from there. This lets you get the interface right first, avoiding timely mistakes with 

the software. 

Usability is everything 

As it’s founders we were, and still are mimoa’s most critical users. We’re very 

impatient. Instead of focusing on the relatively easy task of disclosing information, 

similar existing sites were cluttered with options that only complicated 

the process; we don’t want to see things we won’t use. 

We don’t want something that’s appealing to information hungry “geeks”, but so 

overloaded that regular people can’t find the basic stuff they are looking for. For 

MIMOA we needed to find the right approach for the usability, especially but not 

limited to, creative people. When someone uses a website, they’re not just looking 

for features, they’re looking for an approach, and this especially makes sense to the 

general public. To stimulate their appreciation of architecture, we needed to make 

the website accessible and attractive. The idea behind the design is that not only 

architects will enjoy MIMOA, but a much broader target group. That’s why we tried 

to give MIMOA a friendly look, adding colour and friendly fonts, unlike the not-soeasy-to-use 

black-and-white (and red) architecture databases out there. 

Keep a clear overview 

On top of our list was a one-page-overview of a project. You need to see 

everything requested without having to click through pop-ups and new pages 

only to find yourself lost in the quest for information. So every single page 

shows everything we have about the project you’re viewing. 

browsing 

6 17 19 21 26 

Ease of searching, browsing, finding 

Thanks to the immediacy and ease of it’s searching, MIMOA effortlessly opens up its 

databases. Designers get inspiration; students find a valid support to their education; 

moreover, the agile and effective structure of query paths also addresses a 

much wider, interdisciplinary public made up of lovers of contemporary architecture, 

travellers, people mindful of the evolution of the constructed heritage and, in general, 

in the development of cities. 

Lost without a map 

In all the sites we analysed we never saw the possibility to show the informa- 

mimoa 

269

tion’s location with a map. We can truly say the map is mimoa’s best part. 

It’s always there, on every page providing a clear overview, orientation and 

suggesting new destinations for navigation. 

It took some time to make it fully functional and interactive: adjusting it’s zoom 

levels with clusters and corresponding markers; focussing on the selected project; 

showing personal favourites and projects you’ve visited; intelligent zoom when 

showing search results; the choice to show or hide other nearby projects; and the 

possibility to enlarge the map on your screen. 

We ran several usability tests that showed the user wasn’t aware of all these capabilities, 

and simply used it intuitively. 

“As you browse through the buildings featured in MIMOA you can add them to your 

favourites or you can add them to the list of buildings you have seen.Once you start 

tagging your favourites and the buildings you have visited these become options 

on the map. You can therefore create a map that only includes your favourites or a 

map that just includes the buildings you have visited. This is a feature I haven’t seen 

before in other Google Maps projects and is a great way to personalise the browsing 

experience”. 

Text from weblog Google Maps Mania “MIMOA”, Author: Keir Clarke, Posted: March 

03 2008 4 . 

Credit the author 

Registered members, who have the opportunity to edit their own profiles, make the 

contributions. He or she can link to a website, add a picture and text to explain their 

interests, backgrounds and profession. They can choose which information is made 

public, and whether they want to publicly publish their names. Authorship of the 

content is a strong factor in assessing the quality of the content. 

By deliberately and prominently including the small sentence “contributed 

by” to each and every publication, mimoa gives its authors ownership and 

pride. It gives them a platform where they can proclaim their authority. Especially 

professional reviewers and journalists gratefully adopt this attribution 

and are actively using their personal editable profile to advertise themselves. 

In time, currently unknown or “very young” contributors may grow to become 

expert reviewers themselves. Ideas to further nourish this concept are currently 

being developed. 

An illustration 

The original Wikipedia design made its content ego-less and time-less. Instead of 

attributing the documents to a certain person, they removed much of the visual representation 

of ownership. They decided it wasn’t important who wrote the content 

or when it was written. Some say this decision fostered a shared sense of community 

and was a key ingredient in the success of Wikipedia. However, this vision is now 

heavily disputed, not the least by it’s own founders, resulting in a true battlefield. 


22 

Recently founded Citizendium (where “the general public and experts collaborate, 

using their real names” 5 ) and Veropedia 6 enforce an expert review or approval 

mechanism to maintain order, intended to counter Wikipedia’s grown amateurism, 

anonymity and anarchy 7 . 

content management 

Consistent entries 

All the design strategy, user research and interaction design in the world isn’t 

going to get customers to the information they need without a sound architecture 

to guide them. 

copyrights 

14 

Other interactive (user generated) databases have major difficulties showing their 

information in a clear, comparable and comprehensive way, and at the same time 

maintaining a high quality of content. We designed our pages in such a way that all 

the information is structured in exactly the same manner. Input by third parties creates 

an extra variable and requires a clear structured content management system. 

Consistent data entry is crucial. 

Adding or improving? 

Furthermore, subsequently added information (data that is added to the database 

after publication) is either separated from the original entry in new fields (for 

example the comments) or it is an update of the original data. We have a hard limit 

on text input. To a hardcore data-collector this may sound senseless, but MIMOA is 

not for enlarging the collection and offering more data, we would prefer to improve 

the quality of the information, boiling it down to its essentials. This is a fundamental 

element of our content management system: focussed on condensing data and 

spending less time on managing additions, supplements and appendixes. Lean and 

easier to change or improve, but above all: the right records are easier to find. Oh, 

and yes; it keeps our storage costs down. 

Editing before publishing 

The basic project entries are reviewed before publishing, checked on required 

minimal information and checked for errors. As soon as a new project is submitted, 

MIMOA reviews and edits the data, adds information where possible, and decides 

whether to put it on-line. We keep the right to change the texts a bit, but will always 

respect the personal contributions. We also need to check the copyrights of all data 

that others contribute. You might think that this is quite a lot of work, why not use 

a more wiki-like system? Many “wiki-like” sites have major problems on keeping 

the information consistent, correct and complete. That is why we need an “editing 

panel”, a gentle expert guidance to maintain order. You would be surprised to see 

what people try to upload. 

Copyrights on content 

We respect the intellectual property of others, and we expect our users to do the 

mimoa 

271

copyrights 

same. MIMOA does not claim copyright on the photos or texts, which always remains 

with the author. If we believe that someone is publishing content without the 

rights to distribute it, we simply don’t publish it. We ask the contributor if he or she 

has a photo that they’ve taken themselves. Members are very understanding about 

this. The photos do not have to be of a professional standard, the object just needs 

to be recognizable. People need to register before contributing content, thus we can 

always get in touch with them if we have any questions. For example, if we want to 

use a member’s content for any use other than publication on MIMOA then we ask, 

and so far no one has ever said no. 

Integrating Creative Commons 

The Internet has pushed the rigid structures of copyright law to breaking point. 

The problem is that absolute control is contrary to what users and customers need. 

The non-profit organization Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, 

scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms 

they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights 

Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved” 8 . Currently they cover increasing amounts of 

web content, including Flickr photos. MIMOA wants to integrate the CC licences into 

the site. Many contributing photographers do not mind others using their material to 

create other works, and have begun to offer their content to users under these liberal 

licensing terms. Having CC-licensed open contents on the site offers a better service 

to current and new visitors. 

Choose your medium, set your content 

Just like the amount of photos is set to a maximum, we also have a limit on 

text. It forces you to write down only the essentials. In 1000 characters, including 

spaces, every one can convey a message, and if not, you can link the 

publication to any other web page leading to more information. 

Providing architectural content on a medium such as ours, forced us to rethink 

the character and size (or length for that matter) of information. We want to see 

large size real-life photos we’re not writing books on-line. Also, drawings are pretty 

difficult to publish. How many times do you run into an architects’ website and 

find scaled, low resolution, blurred illustrations with indefinable details – probably 

texts? Apart from the visual restrictions, drawings are juridical gremlins 9 . We’re not 

including these into our website, but will always link a project to the architects’ site, 

where you can probably find them. “The first is that the Web is not a medium of 

data, information, knowledge, wisdom, or content – it is a medium for linking data, 

information, knowledge, wisdom, and content. Just as writing a newspaper column 

isn’t like writing a novel”. From “Lessons Learned: We Still Don’t Get the Web” article 

published in Wired 04.29.97, Author: Michael Schrage 10 . 

Take your content with you 

“I envisioned myself wandering around a city with a hand-held device 

such as a pda or an iPhone viewing a map that tells me where I am, 

and what beautiful architecture exists around the corner”. 


digital content 

22 

Quoted from an email send to MIMOA by one of its members. 

One major advantage of having only digital content is its mobility. The use of wireless 

Internet will only continue to grow and we see a great opportunity for visitors 

to be able to reach MIMOA with their mobile phones. Travelling is becoming easier, 

cheaper and the number of city trips (in Europe) is growing. There will be a major 

change in the use of travel-guides and other city sources. Travellers don’t want to 

spend hours searching for information, buying heavy travel books, nor do they want 

to walk around conscious about with their small “ruthlessly researched, designconscious 

handbook for the discerning traveller” 11 in their hands. As a global traveller 

you want inside niche information on the spot. 

content selection and quality 

mimoa has set up a complete and easy-to-use interactive upload form to help 

you get your most favourite, last built, and just visited new projects published 

on-line. You can even save your work and come back later to finish the upload 

form, so there is no need to prepare days in advance, just start now. 

From the MIMOA website, introduction to the upload form. 

Selection starts at the door 

The interactive on-line upload form is really easy to use, but the amount of fields 

may intimidate the first time contributor. This is a good thing. If contributing were 

easy, editing would be hard. 

As Saint Gobain puts it: “One less chore in life. Actively break down dirt so your 

windows stay cleaner for longer. Save time and money...” 12 

User generated content 

Of course there are a lot of remarks to be made about the quality of the content of 

user-generated websites. Today’s fierce discussions on the reliability of information 

of these “open” platforms provoke reactions that go from legitimate scepticism to labelling 

them “dangerous places” that are best to be avoided. The fact is that today’s 

user-generated content has great utility. 

“The tools of production, from blogging to video sharing, are fully democratized, 

and the engine for growth is the spare cycles, talent, and capacity of regular folks, 

who are, in aggregate, creating a distributed labor force of unprecedented scale. It’s 

providing the energy that drives a new sort of company, one that understands that 

talent exists outside Hollywood, that credentials matter less than passion, and that 

each of us has knowledge that’s valuable to someone, somewhere”. 

Text from “People Power”, article published in Wired July 2006, Author: Chris Anderson 

13 . 

Without the input of its users, it would have been very hard, if not impossible for 

MIMOA to be able to compile and collect the information, necessary for building 

such a database. 

mimoa 

273

Feedback from avid users 

Apart from the editorial quality of content coming from architecture magazine 

advertisements and architects office promotions, the majority of projects 

are contributed by less editorially skilled “architecture lovers”. However, if you 

search through the publications on mimoa, you really have to look hard to find 

fast and non-comprehensive “Euringlish” 14 , or terrible, badly lit snapshots. 

In fact, some photos by amateur photographers are so good we get requests from 

architecture firms who want to contact the authors. One of the reasons for the high 

quality of the content, apart from the ones aforementioned, is the feedback we get 

from our visitors. Some of them are true groupies and avidly report errors and place 

additional comments. 

Who knows best? 

Returning to discuss the “professional” contributors, some of our members have 

been communicating that they find “generalizing topics in the commentary misleading, 

that clearly show that the buildings have been described and analysed from 

a magazine’s review” and that “the idea then of letting locals from each city add 

reviews about their buildings is quite an advancement from traditionally printed 

magazines” 15 . 

The fact that the reviews are reports from volunteers somehow represents 

a more compelling recommendation than the opinion of an expert whose job 

it is to review architecture. This user-generated content creates very different 

points of view, all depending on both who the contributor is, and who the 

audience is. 

Interference of advertisement and editorial content 

Similar to magazines, architects tend to make reality look better, but not more 

realistic. They are not to blame; eventually it’s their job. MIMOA does not have a 

guideline that states that (concealed) advertising and commercial sponsorship must 

not influence any editorial content, for architecture is advertising. A 5-star hotel 

owner preferably has his newest venture designed by a certain architect for reasons 

of image and appearance, status and prestige. Why would those buildings not be 

included in a guide? This issue again exemplifies the need for published authorship 

and disclosure of intentions and competing interests. 

Relevance of the publications 

Not only does the editorial quality or purpose of publication differ, also the relevance 

of the submitted projects strongly diverges. Simple and complex, well-known or 

obscure, pretentious and humoristic designs vary. It’s more symbiosis than rivalry. 

MIMOA does not reject a contribution based on its looks. The only criteria are that it 

matches the required minimal information. This way we can offer a true exchange of 

people, designs and ideas. It’s up to the visitor to judge and form their opinion. 


22 

How about the “old buildings”? 

We’ve never stated on our website that we only want to publish actual, or 

new buildings. Somehow it just works this way and people add what they feel 

needs to be added. Most of the time, the contributions are not the projects 

that are covered in mainstream tourism books, sites and guides, but the ones 

that are not (yet) present in the all-to-familiar-tourist-guides. 

Buildings everybody knows about are less interesting, of course eventually they will 

be included too, and we would never reject a contribution because it is “too old”. 

However, there is a sense of what is “modern” that somehow starts around 1900. 

The community has got lots of tools to filter and rate the projects and we want to 

keep these assessments, to continue this reviewing-factor with the public. 

Selecting content 

Apart from the quality, it is much more interesting to see how the visitor chooses 

from the quantity of objects. How does he choose to select the projects he wants to 

see on his next two-day trip to Amsterdam? From the group of registered members, 

maybe only 10% actively publishes projects, but the remaining 90% of consumers 

are also contributing, unintentionally or not. They all use the other “Web 2.0-features” 

MIMOA has to offer. We can track the popularity of a project by all the other 

movements: the use of the comments-box; rating; adding information on your profile; 

making your favourites lists; marking where you’ve been; selecting and creating 

a personal architecture guide; tell a friend – it all contributes to the database. All this 

data is then returned to the site, and you can easily find out which projects are worth 

visiting in a certain city from their popularity. No “one” is as smart as all of us. 

Managing content by creating Mi guides 

The recently introduced Mi guide offers visitors a simple selection tool. It adds external 

projects to a guide, prints a booklet or downloads as a PDF. Since the launch 

of the first version of the Mi guide it has proved to be a very popular tool and has 

created a rise in visitor numbers. 

This feature could develop into something bigger, creating a sub-community 

around the development of the Mi guides. It can achieve a higher level than 

just contributing, because people are able to compile a list based not on what 

they have submitted, but on what they think is important to experience. 

We noticed a new creative use of the Mi guides: people collecting content based on 

other, special preferences, not related to geographic location. They are compiling 

reference guides, with projects all made out of the same material or categorized in 

the same discipline (for example all housing). Some architecture firms even started 

publishing their own portfolio and urge their clients to download it from their 

personal profile page on MIMOA. This phenomenon prompts a new interesting question: 

How can on-line databases help architects to archive their work by promoting 

the exchange of information, and vice versa? 

mimoa 

275

Turn community into content 

Selecting projects for a Mi guide is actually also a form of “voting”. But voting isn’t 

the only mechanism for collecting feedback. We can run tests to see what buttons 

people click on and check our statistics to see which projects are viewed most, where 

visitors come from and where they go. Many users question whether MIMOA is 

really Web 2.0, with an editing panel behind all publications. Fortunately they forget 

the other Web 2.0 features that turn community into content – “fortunately”, because 

whenever the visitor is unaware that he’s using these tools, they prove to work 

best. MIMOA is a convincing example of how to fuse these two strands, combining 

metadata and social networking. 

The Web truly is a medium that can measure, monitor, track, and segment 

the marketplace with a rigor and intensity that force an editorial refocus. 

That’s great. That’s what responsiveness and innovation should be all about. 

archiving 

11 13 14 

Text from “Lessons Learned: We Still Don’t Get the Web”, article published in Wired 

04.29.97, Author: Michael Schrage 16 . 

archiving trends, issues and considerations 

Archiving? Too much trouble... 

These days no building is designed without the use of a computer. The archives 

that repositories will acquire in the future will largely consist of digital files. Also 

architects are less keen on saving all consecutive versions of a drawing. Archiving is 

time consuming and architects often only keep the final versions in their archives. 

Furthermore, we’ve experienced that many architects outsource the promotion-part 

of their work. They hire communication offices to react on information requests and 

send out press releases. 

How can we help architects with their diminishing willingness to archive and 

their desire to promote their material? Can we offer new tools for archiving 

and promoting? 

Changing production methods and changing products 

Does the type of on-line media and it’s ease of usability change the way architectural 

information is published? Does it also influence the range, quality, content and typology 

of the products, which architects create? The issues with publishing drawings 

on-line are mentioned above. We have already see some architecture offices that 

have turned their websites into meticulously kept databases, exclusively filled with 

content that’s fully adjusted to the use of monitors. 

Off-line or on-line archiving? 

What is the future of large off-line repositories of which the majority are hardly ever 

consulted? Should all those regional or national institutions keep on collecting while 

the target group has already dropped out? The collective nature of the architect has 

changed. 


Architecture students don’t take the time to go and dig into dusty archives 

for a history class, only to drop the project as it becomes too unwieldy and 

time consuming. 

22 

On-line repositories can become the new content-interchange platform, where the 

creators of content publish their work, and the knowledge is actively republished and 

released to the same group: students and architects alike. 

New products and new interest groups 

All users add a new company value to the extensive database: their reviews, opinions 

and traffic-stats are all combined into a new product. The archiving activities are not 

only interesting for the first targeting group that is creating and collecting the data, 

but also large real estate developers, city marketeers, travelling organizations, and 

related magazines (architectural, design, travelling, life style), who all need facts & 

figures to define their upcoming activities. With enough content to enable viable output, 

you can track the creative flows. By collecting personal information, reviews and 

opinions, on-line repositories like MIMOA can become cultural trend watchers. 

Content distribution networks 

Creating great content that no one knows about is of no use. “Build it and they 

will come” is not a viable plan with search marketing. A successful website not 

only depends on the quality of the content worth visiting, but also on the distribution 

network. The key to realizing the linking benefit from creating useful, 

engaging and unique content is to create channels of distribution. 

Next to the channels that we spread ourselves, like blogging, newsletters, press release 

distribution, RSS feeds and social networking, a content-provider like MIMOA 

needs partnerships to increase the network of content distribution. 

Various examples already exist. Now that the music industry has found itself losing 

its lucrative distribution chains and television producers are changing their ways of 

distribution not to lose out on new business opportunities on the web. The BBC is cooperating 

with Azureus to distribute their television shows and original productions. 

iTunes movie rentals service, is powered by deals with all the major film studios and 

stands to reinvent the way people rent and watch movies 17 . 

MIMOA can receive new visitors by distributing content through relevant channels 

such as MACE. By interlinking with other architectural databases, users find more 

content to discuss, tag, use and learn from. And eventually these new channels, or 

formats for content distribution, will have a great effect on building an organized 

content distribution network and the corresponding effect on search engine visibility. 

Fig. 1-6 (pp. 353-355). 

notes → 

mimoa 

277

notes 

¹ Read the original article here: 

http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/MIMOAeu---Comprehensive-Database-Architure-in-Europe. 

See the corresponding post on MIMOA’s blog here: http://www.mimoa.eu/blog/?p=149. 

2 We gratefully adopted the term “Creative Community” from Richard Florida’s 

Rise of the Creative Class (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Books, 2002). 

3 Read the original post here: http://www.mimoa.eu/blog/?p=7. 

4 Read the original article here: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2008/03/mimoa.html. 

See MIMOA’s corresponding weblog post “Innovations in the use of Google Maps” 

for more information: http://www.mimoa.eu/blog/?p=190. 

5 Text from Citizendium: http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page. 

6 Read more on: http://veropedia.com. 

7 Read more about the reliability and history of Wikipedia in Wired: “Jan. 15, 2001: 

Enter Wikipedia, for Better and Worse”, Author: Tony Long, 01.15.08. 

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/dayintech_0115. 

Read more about Veropedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veropedia. 

Read more about Citizendium here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizendium 

8 Text from http://www.creativecommons.org. 


22 

9 Gremlin: in American folklore, malicious, airborne supernatural being. Gremlins were first heard 

of during World War II as creatures responsible for unexplainable mechanical failures and disruptions 

in aircraft (from: The Columbia Encyclopedia. NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2007). 

10 Read the full article here: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1997/04/3460. 

11 Text from Wallpaper City Guides product information http://www.wallpaper.com/travel/ 

wallpaper-city-guides/1085. 

12 Product information of SGG Bioclean, Self Cleaning Glass. Text from the Saint-Gobain website. 

http://uk.saint-gobain-glass.com/b2c/default.asp?nav1=pr&nav2=single%20pane&id=108. 

13 Read the full article here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/people.html 

14 Euringlish, or also Euro-English: refers to dialects of English spoken by Europeans for whom 

English is not their first language, especially since English is frequently used by two Europeans to 

communicate especially when neither of them know each other’s language as their first language. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro-English. 

15 From Archinect Forum “European modern architecture database”, Author: Medit, Posted: 25 

September 2007. http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads.php?id=64697_0_42_0_C. 

16 Read the full article here: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/1997/04/3460. 

17 From Wired “Apple Reinvents Film Biz With iTunes Movie Rentals”, author: Eliot Van Buskirk, 15 

January, 2008. http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2008/01/macworld_keynote. 

mimoa 

279

23 

› digital graphics representation 

for architecture 

280 

nextroom: 

The European Hub 

for Contemporary 

Architecture 

› learning objects 

› learning paths 

nextroom was founded in 1996 by Juerg Meister with the idea of 

“creating a space for architecture on the Net”. Today nextroom 

has become the European hub for contemporary architecture 

based on an extensive database of buildings, images and texts. 

The architecture database was set up according to a collection 

principle guaranteeing high quality standards. Qualified 

architectural institutions select buildings and prepare project 

descriptions. Numerous partners in 8 European countries, 

curating nextroom collections, already undertake this form 

of ongoing documentation. nextroom acts as editor-inchief, 

links all information, searches daily for articles on 

architecture in newspapers and specialised magazines and 

offers a comprehensive overview of up-to-date books in its 

library. The Federal Republic of Austria made this development 

possible through art promotion grants. At the moment, the site 

generates more then 2.5 million page impressions every month; 

the community keeps growing, and nextroom has evolved into 

a top-quality web 

address for architecture. 8,000 buildings, 

16,000 actors, 60,000 images were thus collected, edited and 

stored in a joint database. This data stock served as the basis 

for the subsequent development of archtools, applications 

aimed at architects (archbau.at), architectural photographers 

(archfoto.com) and authors specialising in architecture and its 

communication (archtour.at).

juerg meister 

nextroom 

Wien, Austria 

www.nextroom.at 

Born in 1958 in Aarau, Switzerland, an Architect; 

vocational training in Aarau; studied architecture 

at Basle Engineering School (Muttenz); in Vienna 

since 1982; collaborator of A. Krischanitz; freelance 

architect and participation in art projects in Austria 

and Switzerland; founded nextroom – architektur 

im netz in 1996; since 1997 continued development 

of the database for contemporary architecture and 

connected online tools. 

helga kusolitsch 

nextroom 

Wien, Austria 


Born in 1968 Hainburg, Austria, studied history and 

art history in Vienna, researcher on cultural affairs 

with a special focus on architecture; editor on 

Austrian cultural policy; 1998-2000 DAM, Frankfurt; 

co-editor of World Architecture 1900-2000 (UIA); 

since 2001 consulting and editorial work; since 

2003: nextroom – concept, editing, development of 

European co-operation ventures. 

stephan f. haupt 

nextroom 

Wien, Austria 


Born in 1973 in Vienna, Austria, studied business 

informatics at Vienna University with a focus on 

applied informatics, investment and financing, 

banking operations; until 2001: strategy and concept 

consulting for telecommunications, infrastructure 

and financial companies, since 2002: nextroom 

collaborator; technical concept development and 

implementation of the architecture database for 

nextroom. 

281

282

origins 

Although the origins of nextroom date back to the earliest days of the World 

Wide Web, the evolution of the online database was much more strongly 

influenced by a thematic-artistic commitment to the architectural discourse 

than by the possibilities offered by this (then novel) technology. 

contemporary 

architecture 

22 

online database 

6 19 20 21 

presentation of 

architectural data 

8 11 

23 

Most network activists in Vienna were artists. Artists’ networks such as “The Thing”, 

which was brought from New York to Vienna by Helmut Mark, or Konrad Becker’s 

“Public Netbase” as well as “digital cities” – above all Amsterdam – tried to further 

the interaction between art, city and Internet. The roots of nextroom are likewise 

steeped in the field of Internet art and right from the beginning were strongly 

determined by the new visual levels disclosed by the Web. “nextroom – architektur 

im netz” was founded in spring 1996. The first regular service was an architectural 

event calendar, which was followed by the online building database as early as in 

1997. This core of nextroom was continuously enlarged and today is the heart of 

a high-frequency hub integrated into a dense European network of contemporary 

architecture. 

milestones 

1996: Start-up of nextroom on the Internet. 

1997: Start-up of architecture database with an Austrian collection partner. 

1998: Start-up of press review on architecture-related issues. 

2005: Start-up of specialised review archive, enlargement into European architecture 

database. 

2005: Start-up of online library. 

2006: GIS (geographic information system). 

2008: 2.5 million page impressions, partners from 8 European countries, 17 building 

collections, more than 30 newspapers and magazines, 50 publishing houses specialising 

in architecture, approx. 8,000 buildings, 16,000 actors, 60,000 images, 1,000 

publications. 

content 

Right from the beginning, the nextroom application was designed for the co-operative 

management and presentation of architectural data from a variety of sources. 

Numerous building collections, newspapers, architectural reviews and publishing 

houses specialising in architecture from 8 European countries provide the database 

with content that is constantly complemented and edited by nextroom. 

buildings 

nextroom presents contemporary architecture but is mainly concerned with providing 

an ongoing documentation of current architectural production. The main database 

objects are buildings (currently approx. 8,000), which are selected by independent 

collection partners. This quality-based documentation is the key characteristic 

of nextroom. 

nextroom 

283

The buildings are presented with text, images and meta-data. Moreover, links 

with other information sources, such as texts from newspapers and specialised 

magazines, publications, awards and prizes, actors involved in a given 

building and related events, are offered as well. 

community 

8 22 

photographs 

14 16 19 22 

23 24 

Buildings can be accessed via index lists (persons, locations, chronology, function, 

companies) as well as via a search function. The nextroom front-page features a list 

of ever-changing new entries. A newsletter informs the numerous subscribers about 

all new entries of the week. 

actors 

Since nextroom is primarily a collection of objects and not a directory of actors/persons, 

the latter are only presented if linked to objects (building, texts, photos, etc.) as 

authors of a specific item and if at least one of their works is accessible on nextroom. 

The currently 16,000 entries on actors (both legal and physical persons) result thus 

from the fact that each of them is linked to at least one object; paid entries are not 

admitted. In this respect, nextroom differs markedly from person-focused providers 

that offer marketing platforms – on which clients can buy space – based on their 

directories. 

images 

At the moment, the database contains close to 60,000 images, which mostly include 

architectural photographs as well as plans and diagrams. nextroom always features 

photographs untrimmed with their original aspect ratios; the authors of each image 

are of course cited by name, and copyrights are invariably clarified before publication. 

In this, too, nextroom differs from other platforms. All images are provided to 

nextroom free of charge. 

press 

Architecturally themed articles and features from dailies and weeklies in Germanlanguage 

are an important element of the database. 

nextroom continuously scans approx. 20 of the leading print media for contributions 

with relevant architectural content and presents these in different 

formats, either as full text or with a link to the respective newspaper 

or magazine server. 

specialised press 

Leading architectural magazines and reviews have been part of the nextroom 

network since 2004. In the context of individual media co-operation projects, the 

editorial teams of as many as 20 reviews submit selected articles for publication on 

nextroom. Depending on the specific co-operation model, these texts are presented 

in various formats; with the spectrum ranging from integrated full-text articles to 


23 

PDF download abstracts or brief summaries. Roughly 700 contributions are already 

listed. By comparison to the text archives of major newspapers and specialised text 

libraries such as e.g. the “Baugedächtnis” (electronic library service) of ETH Zurich, 

the main focus of the nextroom press review is on linking texts to buildings, images 

and actors from the database. 

publications 

An online library was added to the database in 2005. This enables nextroom to build 

a comprehensive directory of contemporary publications on architecture directly 

connected to the nextroom content. Due to our co-operation with publishing houses, 

the library already offers close to 1,000 titles. 

awards & prizes 

Awards and prizes that are linked to buildings, texts and actors provide another 

important source of information. As a quality criterion of contemporary architecture, 

they can be searched in nextroom, with a list of concrete examples. 

event calendar 

The event calendar was the first nextroom application and has remained 

a key database element. 

Organisers can publish events free of charge; to ensure thematic completeness, the 

event index is also edited by nextroom. 

the hub for architecture 

The core of nextroom is provided by the building database, which derives 

from a quality-oriented selection of buildings that is ensured by the nextroom 

collection partners acting as an editorial team. 

This core is given greater thematic richness and completeness through the general 

and specialised press reviews, the library, the list of awards and prizes, and the event 

calendar. All content elements are edited and interlinked by nextroom. The specific 

and unique quality of nextroom is embodied in the resulting knowledge matrix. 

In addition to the “traditional” platform nextroom.at, this content of the nextroom 

database can be visualised in other output formats (archbau.net, archfoto.com, 

archtour.at) as well. The difference between these various visualisation modes lies in 

the interest-based filters for specific content selection, which are not subject to the 

collection criteria. The core building data always serve as focal starting-points for all 

further content elements (texts, images, etc.) and in this way mediate, as it were, between 

the different interests fuelling the use of nextroom (non-commercial, qualitybased) 

and archtools (commercial, marketing-based), while precluding potential 

negative influences. By building its international network, linking different forms of 

content and creating the possibility of individual content visualisation, nextroom has 

established itself as a high-frequency hub for architecture. 

nextroom 

285

intelligent networking 

intelligent networking 

The concept of “intelligent networking” allows for the interlinkage of different 

partners, contents, output modes and user interests in the online presentation of 

contemporary architecture. Numerous international partners form the nextroom network. 

A great variety of data is collected by means of decentralised data capturing 

and common data standards. As fine-grained data, they are stored and interlinked 

in the database, which permits structured data editing in nextroom.at. Individual 

guidelines then permit the presentation of the same content on other websites as 

well as its multi-platform linking (to archfoto.com, archbau.net, archtour.at, wienarchitektur.at, 

architekturwettbewerbe.at). 

archtools 

archtools are special output formats of the nextroom application that dip into 

the joint data pool but are also open to commercial purposes. The first archtool, 

archfoto, was developed in 2000 as an online image archive for architectural 

photography that is used by such notable exponents as Margherita 

Spiluttini, Rupert Steiner and others. 

archfoto enables photographers specialising in architecture to administer their 

pictures via personalised database access directly in the nextroom system and to link 

these photos to concrete buildings. nextroom collection partners may likewise access 

archfoto images and “borrow” photographs as required for illustration purposes and 

to document their buildings. A link to the commercial picture archive of the respective 

photographer is placed right beside the photograph published on nextroom. 

In 2006, archbau was the next online tool developed to compile an online project 

archive for architects. Again, the thus emerging collection is used as a project pool 

for the nextroom collection partners, which can then select and access these projects 

for their publications. At the same time, the proposal procedure for architects is thus 

simplified. 

As the last archtool so far, archtour, the Web application for online 

architecture guides, was implemented in 2007. 

Intelligent networking enables archtour operators to put architecture guides online 

to combine wide reach with high-quality architectural information while necessitating 

only limited research and editing input. The archtour administrator simply 

chooses buildings for the database, which are then illustrated with text and images 

and compiled to result in geographically structured tours. At the same time, architecture 

guides can be complemented without any further cost by inserting links to 

the extensive range of information provided by nextroom.at – constant updating, 

sustainable information and target group-specific reach are thus ensured. 

photo/image agencies 

Another form of intelligent networking is related to the illustration service of nextroom. 

Agencies specialising in architectural photography like “artur” are granted 

privileged access to the database to place their images online and thus add to the 


23 

nextroom image stock. Conversely, the linking of the images featured on nextroom 

to other image and photo stocks of the respective agency website creates attractive 

distribution channels. 

event calendar 

Together with Architekturzentrum Wien (Vienna Architecture Centre) and Architekturstiftung 

Österreich (Austrian Architecture Foundation), nextroom maintains an 

event calendar as a co-operative exchange project. This form of intelligent networking 

aims at disseminating information items through various channels. Thus 

organisers publish their events in three attractive locations – their own website, the 

nextroom event calendar and wienarchitektur.at, the central calendar of architecture-related 

events in Vienna – by simply inputting the respective calendar dates. 

architectural competitions 

When the Federal Chamber of Architects and Consulting Engineers was planning 

a portal for the comprehensive documentation of architectural competitions 

in Austria, nextroom’s experience made it the ideal partner, not only 

for concept development and implementation, but above all for intelligent 

content networking as well. 

Ongoing competitions are automatically shown in the nextroom competition 

calendar, while actually built projects are directly linked from competition portal to 

corresponding nextroom building. 

The concept of “intelligent networking” embodies the comprehensive 

competence regarding all matters architectural that nextroom has acquired 

in the course of its work to create an international hub for contemporary 

architecture. 

Fig. 1: nextcard #1: Blindgänger, Hof am Leithaberge, Austria, Architects: the POOR BOYS 

ENTERPRISE (Margherita Spiluttini © , p. 356). 

Fig. 2: Screenshot nextroom.at (Margherita Spiluttini © , p. 356). 

Fig. 3: Screenshot nextroom.at (Rupert Steiner © , p. 357). 

Fig. 4: Screenshot nextroom.at (Robert Leš © , p. 357). 

Fig. 5: nextroom.at advertisment (p. 357). 

project team + photo credits → 

nextroom 

287

project team 

nextroom-team 

Juerg Meister: idea, concept and project management. 

Stephan Haupt: technical development. 

Karl Seiringer: infrastructure and administration. 

Regine Koth-Afzelius: HTML, image editing and cover picture. 

Helga Kusolitsch: editing and public relations. 

Collection partners 

afo architektur forum oberösterreich; Architekturführer Kassel; aut Architektur und Tirol, Az W 

Architekturzentrum Wien; BOKU/ILA University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, 

Vienna; Department of Landscape, Spatial and Infrastructure Sciences; DAZ Architects’ Association 

Zagreb; DESSA Slovenia Architectural Association; gat Steirische Architektur im Internet; 

Initiative Architektur Salzburg; Kärntens Haus der Architektur, Napoleonstadel; KEK Hungarian 

Contemporary Architecture Centre; ÖGLA Austrian association of Landscaping and Landscape Architecture; 

ORTE architekturnetzwerk nö; USTARCH SAV Institute of Construction & Architecture, 

Slovak Academy of Sciences; vai Vorarlberger Architektur Institut. 

Architectural magazines 

A10; anthos; archithese; Architektur+Wettbewerbe; archplus; Atrium; BauArt; Bauwelt; dérive; 

detail; db deutsche bauzeitung; Hintergrund; Hochparterre; Metamorphose; Steeldoc; tec21; 

Umbau; Werk, Bauen + Wohnen; Zolltexte; Zuschnitt. 

Newspapers 

Berliner Zeitung; Falter; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurter Rundschau; Kurier; Neue 

Zürcher Zeitung; ORF on; Die Presse; Salzburger Nachrichten; Der Standard; Süddeutsche Zeitung; 

Tagesanzeiger; DIE WELT; Weltwoche; Die Zeit. 


23 

Publishing houses 

AAM Archives d’Architecture Moderne; Absolut Medien; archplus; avedition; Böhlau; Birkhäuser; 

Callwey; Christoph Merian Verlag; Detail; Dietrich Reimer Verlag; Ernst Wasmuth Verlag; 

Feierabend Verlag; Filmgalerie 451; Folio; Gebr. Mann Verlag; GTA; Hatje-Cantz; Heike Werner 

Verlag; Hochparterre; Jovis; Junius; Karl Krämer Verlag; Kick Film; Lars Müller Publishers; Manz; 

Milena; Niggli; öbvhpt Verlag; Passagen; Peter Lang Verlag der Wissenschaften; Promedia; Quart; 

Scheidegger & Spiess; Schnell & Steiner; Sonderzahl; SpringerWienNewYork; Verlag Anton Pustet; 

Verlag Gebrüder Mann; Verlag HdA Graz; Verlagshaus Braun; VS Verlag; Werd Verlag. 

nextroom-patrons 2008 after BMUKK (Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, 

the Arts and Culture, Arts Division) departure 

BIG Bundesimmobilien GmbH; BENE; Winkhaus; Rheinzink. 

Links 

www.nextroom.at; www.archfoto.com; www.archbau.net; www.archtour.at; www.spiluttini.com; 

www.wienarchitektur.at; www.architekturwettbewerbe.at; www.architekturstiftung.at; route. 

centrope.info; www.archtour.at/vai. 

photo credits 

Juerg Meister (Pez Hejduk © ) 

Helga Kusolitsch (Martin Stöbich © ) 

Stephan Haupt (Martin Stöbich © ) 

nextroom 

289

24 

› 3d modelling 


› content 

management 

› gallery 

290 

the lafis project: 

Managing Publicly 

Induced Data 

into a Scholar Environment 

› image 

› open source 

› photography 

› scripting 

› web resources 

The Lafis project is an open application still under development, 

whose purpose is to archive digital content, and by creating indexes 

make it available on the Internet, classified and accessed 

by scripting routines created in an open source environment. 

It is a web-based deployment of resources, focusing on digital 

photography, 3D modelling, and envisaging BIM in the near 

future. At its core, it is a portal combining the publication of 

administrator controlled resources and publicly generated input 

collected as database content.

francisco agostinho 

Technical University of Lisbon 

Lisbon, Portugal 

www.utl.pt 

Graduate from the Faculty of Architecture TU Lisbon, 

1984, modelled the church of Jerónimos Monastery 

as a case study in his PhD thesis, using GDL scripts 

and objects. Became a CAD teacher at the Faculty of 

Architecture in 1993, having been a strong adopter 

of Internet publishing tools as course content, as 

of 1999. Presented his PhD thesis in December 

2000. Currently coordinator of CAD and Computer 

Graphics courses at this school, member of the 

Steering Committee of CIAUD, coordinator of LaFIS, 

maintains an interest in scripting and programming 

and in the use of databases and sensorial perception 

as cognitive modellers. 

291

3d modelling 

3d models 

9 10 21 

the lafis project: managing publicly induced data 

into a scholar environment 

The Lafis project (http://lafis.fa.utl.pt/; http://lafis.fa.utl.pt/hiper_base; 

http://lafis.fa.utl.pt/hiper_MAMsys; http://lafis.fa.utl.pt/ hiper_MAMsys/3Dsys) 

is an open application still under development, whose purpose is to archive digital 

content, and by creating indexes make it available on the Internet, classified and 

accessed by scripting routines created in an Open Source environment. 

It is a web-based deployment of resources, focusing on digital photography, 3D 

modelling, and envisaging BIM in the near future. In its core, it is a portal combining 

the publication of administrator controlled resources and publicly generated input 

collected as database content. 

The project aims to create, classify and make available digital content dealing 

with the dual nature of design problem solving: on the one hand the necessity 

for a knowledge base of declarative nature, which is known to be part of 

well defined knowledge domains and on the other hand the necessity to make 

available input that can be used in ill-defined problem areas, such as imagery. 

application 

3 6 11 22 

architecture studio 

& learning process 

2 

Another objective is to create an open system of programming routines with a 

value of its own that can be used as an example with didactic purpose towards the 

development of an Open Source software directed towards archiving, preserving and 

making available digital content. This application will work with routines scripted in 

Php and Mysql. The routines will access content, which can be on the file system 

under a directory structure, or reside as records in database tables. So 

we have 

a double standard applied to the archiving and content retrieval: in some cases content 

will be gathered from the file system (text files), while in other cases it will result 

from queries made to the database. 

The reason for this double standard derives from the nature of the application, as a 

didactical resource working within the architecture design context. 

What we want to create is a system that may be easily understood by designers 

involved in the architecture studio, with some degree of transparency 

between the programming processes and the results being displayed. At the 

same time there is a learning process being staged, which addresses the programming 

logic processed on the server with Php. 

cognitive science 

2 


9 11 26 

photography 

14 16 19 22 23 

In terms of content, what we see are articles published through administrator 

management and collections of database tables containing data generated by public 

access, indexed in such a way that they become relevant to the articles content, and 

thus can be presented. 

The scripting processes in action are different depending on whether articles 

controlled by administration, or database content are being published. Articles are 

generated as plain text files (txt), relevant in terms of their chronology. Each article 

may be composed of one or more such files, ordered in the file system in folders 

named with a prefix that increment in time, being read and displayed in reverse 

order. They are displayed by means of a Php routine, which opens and prints each 

file to the screen. Querying the database on fixed selectors, based on the table’s 

fields, however, accesses public generated data. One of the most relevant of these 


24 

is Keywords, where users can upload terms that may carry relevance across different 

subjects, building flexibility within the system. There are three main tables gathering 

public content: 

web address collection (implying a literature and web links catalogue), image collection 

and 3D collection. 

We also note that there is a need to create a stable and well-preserved repository 

of data and files using indexes from metadata associated to knowledge domains, 

receiving input of both a declarative and procedural nature that is relevant to architectural 

design problem solving. 

This particular design problem solving is a field where cognition is working 

with what can be called an ill-defined problem area, meaning that both the 

problem and the solution depend on each other for structure and clarification. 

The prospect of dealing with such ill-defined problem areas is challenged 

by stating the clear necessity for a system to access and display 

information in a natural way, yet with sufficient redundancy in order for the 

information to be presented and available with opportunity and pertinence 

to architecture and design. This redundancy is an important factor on the 

easiness and opportunity for the creation and display of data and information: 

file system + database query. 

Database tables being used at present produce the archival and retrieval of two 

main types of media and information: photography and 3D modelling. For each 

field there is specific information of declarative nature associated with the records, 

defined in fields and deriving from metadata, descriptions and keywords, the latter 

will play a major part on the behaviour of the whole system. The files displayed by 

this process are placed in two groups, photography and digital imaging, from which 

other information existing on the Internet will be derived: literature, links and scheduled 

events, all filed on a table indexing internet URL’s. 

A web address table may be used to target a specific subject, or to access an activities 

agenda and schedule, or bibliographic data pointing to subject dependant 

resources. Each of these tables is called upon when browsing the articles, or may be 

used on its own, displaying results from the user’s queries. 

The association between facts, data and literature as the declarative knowledge 

for the implied knowledge domains of photography and digital imaging, 

correspond to an imagery related to procedural knowledge, and are controlled 

by keywords which are created upon each record submission, whether 

it be a photograph, a 3d file or a url link. 

These keywords control the path and opportunity for the display of each record on 

the main portal, which will act as an aggregator. There are two main types; photography 

and digital imaging (a third type not yet implemented relates to technology 

being used, seen as a didactical value) and three subtypes, literature (bibliographic 

references), Internet references (i.e. institutions, case studies) and scheduled events. 

the lafis project 

293

What is assumed from the start is the existence of an underlying affinity between 

photography and sketching in a design studio context; both have a visual nature in 

their interpretation, and both will be put to use on the process of shaping and defining 

the design space problem, creating inference and information that didn’t exist 

prior to their creation. 

In fact, both of them are called upon on the process of creating structure for the 

problem area by means of partial solutions. This aspect of the application’s use is 

determined by the availability of photographs and 3D models as imagery and information, 

as well as by the possibility to manipulate the actual context, the layout and 

the way they are presented. 

Thus this imagery is a factor in the creation of a preferred space on which 

to foster solutions for new problems, implying invention or innovation. The 

possibility to access and manipulate, to sketch upon this imagery, has indeed 

been credited by cognitive science as a most useful capacity and skill when 

dealing with invention and innovation. 

Being able to control the images layout and to use and present them in different 

contexts is also a critical factor to increase their usefulness. On the one hand they 

cannot be excessively randomized, meaning that there must be a reliable querying 

process in order to predict some expected results, granting opportunity to the 

selection presented, whilst at the same time this selection must be flexible enough to 

adapt to changes created from lateralization towards different aspects of the design 

logic and its intentions. The association between imagery and language, by means 

of text fields, is part of the solution towards the desired ambivalence between order, 

predictability versus change and surprise. 

Other factors are; being able to interact with the imagery presented, which is clearly 

the case on the 3D models display and also enabling users to create their own 

display layout and context. 

The use of photography as an applied knowledge field is a result of its capacity to 

depict and create a formal paradigm with each picture, resulting from intentionality 

that may be present at creation time and framing, and also the recognition that 

there is a specific value to a collection as a whole. 

The information made available by this application, addressing photography 

as domain knowledge, both technical and artistic, has implied consequences 

at different levels of the space of architectural design. It determines a technical 

domain with specific skills, directed towards a structured audience from 

different practices and knowledge fields, such as art, journalism, cinema, 

architecture and science. 

It entails a set of situations and examples that may be used as an analogy on a 

design situation, with a historical or technical assertion. There are external references 

that have to be gathered and aggregated in order to embody a knowledge 

domain as literature and events. It may also constitute as an analytic instrument 

and documentation, while addressing a specific task or problem. Lastly, it is an allimportant 

instrument with some specific procedural domains, such as surveying and 

photogrammetry. 


24 

This project is significant in terms of gathering publicly induced data, into a controlled 

context from which this information is broadcast. It is also important in the 

way that it creates a visible connection between the creative and procedural knowledge 

inherent to photography and the domain oriented programming knowledge, 

which builds the technical backbone for this system. 

Under current development is the implementation of Google maps for the 

placement of pictures, widening 3D formats publication to GEarth Kmz models 

and GDL objects. Two primary goals under development are the possibility 

of recreating queries tested within the Lafis application on different Internet 

sites by using cookies; the second, is to develop a tool that will capture any 

given site being browsed and insert its URL and descriptive information on 

the fly into the hyper base table. 

Fig. 1-7 (pp. 358-361). 



295

eferences 

Web references 

Archiving Born-Digital Architecture and Design Data at the Art Institute of Chicago. 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/daarch. 

Cité de l’Architecture & du Patrimoine. 

http://archivesarchitecture.gaudiprogramme.eu/index.php?r=31. 

Content Management System. 

http://www.joomla.com. 

DILPS. http://www.dilps.net. 

Dspace. http://www.dspace.org. 

DWF. http://freewheel.autodesk.com. 

Future-proofing Architectural Computer-Aided Design. 

http://facade.mit.edu. 

PHP. http://www.php.net. 

Kennedy, T. 2001. Building a Photo Gallery. Webmonkey. 

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/27/index3a.html. 

MACE. http://www.mace-project.eu. 

Merlet, N. 2006. Function Searchdir. In php Man Ch. XXIX. 

http://pt2.php.net/manual/en/ref.dir.php. 

Open Source 

http://www.opensource.org. 

http://sourceforge.net. 


24 

Printed references 

Agostinho, F. 2005. Architecture as Drawing Perception and Cognition, Digital Design: 

The Quest for New Paradigms. In 23nd eCAADe Conference Proceedings (Lisbon, Portugal, 

21-24 September, 2005), 83-90. 

Amar, P. 1997. Histoire de la Photographie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 

Arnheim, R. 1969. Visual Thinking. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Barthes, R. 1980. La Chambre Claire. Note sur la photographie. Paris: Gallimard Seuil. 

Casakin, H., and G. Goldschmidt. 1999. Expertise and the Use of Visual Analogy: Implications 

for Design Education. Design Studies 20, 153-175. 

Marchan Fiz, S. 1996. Las vanguardias históricas y sus sombras (1917-1930). Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. 

Freund, G. 1974. Photographie et Société. Paris : Éditions du Seuil. 

Goldshmidt, G. 2003. The Backtalk of Self-Generated Sketches. Design Issues, volume 19, no. 1 

(Winter). 

Moholy-Nagy, L. 1950. Peinture Photographie Film et autres écrits sur la photographie. 

Paris: Editions Gallimard. 

Pelliteri, G. et al. 2005. Distance Collaboration. A comparative Analysis of Tools and Procedures. 

In 23nd eCAADe Conference Proceedings (Lisbon, Portugal, 21-24 September, 2005). 

Restrepo, J, and H. Christiaans. 2003. Problem Structuring and Information Access in Design. 

In Expertise in Design: Design Thinking Research Symposium 6. Creativity and Cognition, eds. Cross, 

N., and E. Edmonds. Sydney, Australia: Studios Press. 

Whelan, R., T. Wesselmann, S. Greenough, and A. Stieglitz. 2005. Stieglitz On Photography. N.p.: 

Aperture. 

Tisseron, S. 1996. Le Mystère de la Chambre Claire. Paris: Champs/Flammarion. 


297

25 

› architectural repositories 

› classification 

298 

a database of 

architectural repositories: 

Criteria for Selection 

and Evaluation 

› content 

› education 

A considerable amount of information that students and 

teachers in architectural education would find useful in their 

practice is available in a multitude of online databases and 

repositories, all structured in different ways and providing 

disparate search methods. The European project MACE 

(Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe) will provide a 

framework to facilitate finding, acquiring, using and discussing 

online digital architectural content previously reachable only 

to small user groups. 

In the context of MACE we have been building a database of 

more than 200 architectural repositories, structured according 

to several criteria relevant for architectural education. 

The database allows for multi-criteria filtering or search of 

repositories. Each repository is presented in the same format 

offering an immediate view and allowing direct access to the 

repository.

stefan boeykens 

k.u. leuven 


http://www.asro.kuleuven.be/caad 

http://asro.sbuild.com 

The author is an architect-engineer, from Leuven 

(Belgium). After a few years of architectural practice, 

he joined the research group of Building and Design 

Methodology at the Department of Architecture 

at the K.U.Leuven. He recently finished his PhD, 

focusing on facilitating transitions between design 

phases and scale levels in Building Information 

Modeling software. He also teaches CAAD Seminars 

for the students of architecture. 

herman neuckermans 

k.u. leuven 


http://www2.asro.kuleuven.be/asro/english/home/ 

HN/home.htm 

The author is professor and head of the research 

group Building and Design Methodology at the 

Department of Architecture at the K.U.Leuven. He 

has former experience as a self-employed architect, 

but is now full-time member of the academic staff. 

He teaches several courses, including Construction 

of Buildings, Design Methodology and CAAD. He is 

program director for the Department and is the past 

president and currently a council member of the 

European Association for Architectural Education 

(EAAE). 

299

search engine 

7 10 18 21 

introduction 

Powerful search engines extracting the relevant information from the estimated 2 

billion pages on the web are crucial for the future of digital information and moreover 

for education. 

MACE has the ambition to integrate as many repositories as possible 

and focuses on learning objects and their metadata. 

This paper is way above that level of detail and aims at fast assessment 

and directed search of repositories as a whole. Therefore repositories 

have been tagged with multiple characteristics. 


20 24 

digital drawing 


1 8 13 15 19 

repository 

7 10 18 21 

23 26 

rights of property 

27 

taxonomy (criteria) 

Apart from ID data, repositories are classified according to several criteria in a matrix 

containing one row for each repository, while the criteria are listed in the columns 

thus allowing for multiple characterization and search of repositories. The criteria 

belong to three categories, being architectural domain, content types and target 

users. 

Architectural domain 

These criteria refer to the different subjects taught in architectural education. They 

identify repositories that are particularly relevant for students and teachers in one of 

the following subjects: 

› Basic sciences, such as mathematics, physics, stress and strain, chemistry, computer 

science and mechanics; 

› Architecture Theory and History, coupled as a single category, since they are often 

collaborating; 

› Construction and Technology; 

› Equipment and Installations; 

› Architectural Design (including Design Studio work); 

› Urban Design; 

› Interior and Furniture Design; 

› Materials Science; 

› Drawing and Sketching (which could include CAAD). 

Content types 

In parallel organizational categories are introduced in order to filter and sort the 

repository database. 

› Architectural Archives 

There are many digital archives or digitised paper archives, which could provide an 

exceptional source of first hand information for the study of architecture and related 

subject areas, as well as to the development of the architectural profession. 

› E-Learning Platforms 

E-learning platforms focused on architecture are a really relevant kind of resource 

because they usually have vital user communities. They are commonly organized in 


25 

courses and other kind of instructional tools. 

› Material Databases 

They disclose important documentation regarding products, architecture related 

materials and the latest technologies in the building field. Visual Collectors take 

on the figurative, formal, perceptive and spatial dimension of architecture, the 

Project databases take on the spatial organization of dimension and typology, 

while the Material databases bring the material and technological dimension of 

architecture. This last dimension is useful not only to students and teachers, but 

also to the professional world which often has difficulties finding updates on new 

materials, products or technologies. 

› Project Databases 

Project Databases and Architects websites are a rich source of constantly 

updated images and projects. The involvement of architecture portals often 

guarantees a rich and fresh image store. 

› Software Resources 

They help to orient the student, teacher or professional in choosing which software 

is most suitable for his/her work or study needs and they also guarantee 

constant updating regarding the latest CAD, 3D, visualization and simulation 

products. This type of update is determinant as informatics has invaded the 

architecture studio as well as the classroom. 

› Topical Search Engines 

these refer to European Internet portals and Search Engines dealing with 

architecture. Well-organized search engines help to retrieve structured, rich and 

updated materials and in so doing respond appropriately to the user’s research 

requirements. 

› Vertical Portals 

Besides possessing a rich image repertory, Vertical portals are important 

because they contain critical essays and document the development of the contemporary 

debate on architecture. This critical dimension/part complements the 

project and image repertories of Visual collectors and Project databases which 

would otherwise remain mute. 

› Visual Collectors 

Visual collectors offer large collections of images, drawings or videos, be it 

mostly unstructured. Image rich repositories are important for architecture students 

who need to study, design or find project cues by looking at architecture 

examples and teachers who must organize a lesson or analyze a building. Currently 

the first search that students and teachers perform is carried out primarily 

on the web. The use of libraries is often only a second option. Providing support 

directly on the web is thus fundamental. 

Target user profiles 

While the criteria discussed so far are valid and relevant, they cannot fully 

qualify the relevance of the listed repositories for a particular (type of) user. 

Some repositories are mostly appealing for particular users, such as students, 

teachers, researchers, professionals, while other repositories try to address any 

potential user. 

a database of architectural repositories 

301

› Students will look for different information in different situations. The student 

category is thus further subdivided: 

›› Course work, e.g. theoretical classes on architectural design, history and 

theory; 

›› Design studio work, e.g. individual or group assignments to design projects, 

often as a combination of collecting reference information, elaborating design 

propositions and homework reviews; 

›› Construction learning, focusing on the technical aspects of building, including 

knowledge on materials, structural systems, stability, energy performance etc. 

› Teachers will mostly look for either educational content such as tutorials or for 

informative sites to refer students to. 

› Researchers will often look for objective, quantifiable and reviewed information, to 

use as reference inside their own research. They are typically referring to journals, 

books and conference proceedings. 

› Professionals are here mostly regarded in the context of Life-Long-Learning, although 

many repositories would be interesting references for their current practice. In 

fact, during most professional design projects, architects will have to study reference 

material on construction technology, architectural history and architectural design. 

It is possible to define additional stakeholders on different levels, ranging from 

people looking for interesting places and buildings to visit (architectural travellers or 

tourists) to administrative services, on the level of urban and region planning. They 

are at the moment not included in the repository list. 

It is possible to classify the appeal of a repository for a specific target group with 

increasing levels of relevance, such as marginal, useful, interesting or essential. However, 

for practical reasons, we have only been using a Boolean true or false value. 

additional criteria 

While the three criteria discussed so far are the most relevant, considering the scope 

and focus of the repository content, it is interesting to include some additional 

criteria, pertaining to the accessibility and the potential quality control over the 

repository content. 

Access 

The database also rates the objective value and accuracy of the displayed information. 

Here we distinguish a few levels of user accessibility (read-access) to the 

contents: 

› Open indicates that the repository is freely accessible, without registration or log-in 

procedure; 

› Registration implies that the user will access some personal information, albeit 

without requiring a fee; 

› Subscription indicates that the user will also have to make some kind of payment, 

which might be periodical to retain access to the content; 

› In a Private repository, only invited people can access the content. In this case, 

the maintainer of the repository will create user accounts, which might or might not 

involve an access fee. 

In some cases repositories have different access levels. Many commercial sites 


25 

provide a limited access for non-paying visitors, while registered customers will be 

able to access additional content or more detailed information. In some cases, different 

levels of paid-access are set up, e.g. silver and gold memberships, providing 

additional permissions and additional benefits when a larger fee is paid. 

Quality control 

The addition or uploading of content might have different levels of control. We use 

the same terms for the level of access, but add the review value. 

› An Open repository contains content that can be uploaded by anyone. The site 

owners often warn the visitor that they bear no responsibility for the displayed 

content; 

› Usually uploading requires some form of Registration, which is here assumed to be 

free to the user; 

› A Subscription based repository requires payment before users can upload content. 

This is less likely to occur. However, in a market repository, such as eBay or Turbosquid, 

the seller might have to pay a fee to be able to make content available to 

potential buyers; 

› In a Private repository, which is what most repositories are, the content is maintained 

by an internal team and visitors can only view the results; 

› A Reviewed repository contains content that can be uploaded by visitors, but a 

review team will check the content before making it available. There is no review 

procedure to access or view content, though. 

The existence of a review procedure could indicate a certain quality level, although 

it can be argued that closed or even open repositories are not by definition sources 

of unreliable information. Sites such as Wikipedia rely completely on uploaded and 

user-edited content. However, there are certain mechanisms to maintain a certain 

level of quality, most obviously to avoid spam or unsuitable marketing messages. A 

high level of community input in these sites generates a certain level of filtering, and 

removes or corrects inaccurate or false information. 

excerpts from the repository database 

Screenshot 

The screenshot shows the format of the (internal) repository database website, where 

the left frame displays the list of repositories (possibly filtered using a search form), 

while the right frame displays the collected information about the site, including a live 

preview using an iFrame. An authenticated user can edit the metadata and browse 

the site in parallel. An interactive version, using the EXHIBIT framework from MIT is 

also available for browsing and filtering and can be requested from the authors. 

Fig. 1: Screenshot of the (internal) repository listing website (p. 362). 

Collage of some of the repositories included 

The following screenshot displays a small sample of selected repositories, with their 

homepage. 

Fig. 2: Collage of homepages for some of the referenced repositories (p. 362). 


303

3d modelling 

3d models 

9 10 21 

photography 

15 16 19 22 23 

short record examples 

The following excerpts display a few selected repositories, with the kind of general 

information that is extracted from the database. It displays their name and a short description, 

but also the language(s) used, the category and the domain, along with a url. 

Vertical portals 

› About.com:Architecture (ENG) 

Generic portal on architecture. The architectural domain is classified underneath 

“home and garden” which clarifies the non-specialist focus of this site. 

[Vertical portals | Listed | Architectural Design] 

http://architecture.about.com 

› AJ+ “The Architects Journal” (ENG) 

“The Architects’ Journal”, is a colossal English portal dedicated to architecture. 

Focusing on the national area, it provides timely updated news on the most recent 

events; it points out international bids and publishes articles and special features 

relative to building materials. The AJ specification section contains archives of over 

300 architectures, 200 biographical files, and 3000 suppliers; to access the site registration 

is necessary and free of charge. 

[Vertical portals | Listed | Unspecified] 

www.ajplus.co.uk 

› Arcadata “Architectural Portal on technology and projects” (ENG ITA) 

Portal for information about architecture: projects, schools, companies, 

books and reviews. 

[Vertical portals | Listed | Construction] 

www.arcadata.com 

› … 

Visual collectors 

› 3D Warehouse “3D Model library” (ENG) 

3D Models shared by SketchUp users, but usable in different applications 

[Visual collectors | Listed | Drawing and Sketching] 

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse 

› ANNO “Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek” (GER) 

Large collection of digitised Austrian magazines. 

[Visual collectors | Listed | Theory and History] 

http://anno.onb.ac.at 

› Architecture Gallery (OIII) “Architecture Gallery” (ENG) 

A section containing over one thousand excellent photographs of recent and 

extremely recent architecture by major international architects (96 projects realized) 

can be found in Carolin Hinne’s and Ludwig Abache’s site (0lll). Among the galleries, 

the one dedicated to the building phases of Toyo Ito’s Pavilion of the Serpentine 

Gallery, realized during the summer of 2002, in London, is pointed out; this special 

feature alone contains 370 images. 

[Visual collectors | Listed | Architectural Design] 


25 

www.0lll.com/lud/pages/architecture/archgallery 

› Flickr “Photography web platform” (ENG) 

Flickr, owned by the Yahoo! Group, is a web platform that allows loading images 

onto ones own space, sharing online photo albums managed directly by the browser. 

Flickr is a new virtual window on the transformation of our urban areas thanks to the 

thousands of images of cities and architecture shared online by the sites users. 

[Visual collectors | Listed | Unspecified] 

www.flickr.com 

mind map 

The mind map in the next picture was also generated from the database. The 

trunks of the topical search engines; vertical portals, visual collectors and software 

resources are folded in, as they provide rather large lists of references repositories. 

Fig. 3: Automatically generated mind map from the repository database (p. 362). 

conclusion 

Apart from offering a collection of more than 200 architectural repositories, the tool 

presented here is a companion for fast navigation through architectural repositories. 

This is particularly important for those repositories that will or cannot be included in 

MACE. 


This research is carried out within the EU-project MACE (Metadata for Architectural Content in 

Europe. More information at www.mace-project.eu. 

We would like to thank the project partners from UNIVPM (www.univpm.it) for the category 

descriptions and the repository collection from the MACE Analysis Framework, which have been 

included in this database. 


305

26 

› cultural heritage 

› management 

› natural heritage 

306 

cultural heritage 

repositories: 

DigitalArchivesfor 

Conservation and Management 

› protection 


› world heritage 

The unique and irreplaceable value of cultural heritage has 

long been recognized. Similarly, the need for accurate and 

detailed information about heritage for its conservation 

and management is well understood. Yet the records of our 

heritage have received less thorough treatment. From the need 

for heritage repositories, to the steps in creating them, this 

paper provides a high-level look at digital archives of cultural 

heritage. Using the evolving unesco World Heritage portal 

as our example, we provide an overview of the requirements 

for cultural heritage organizations, from planning to design, 

to deploy, and maintaining a digital repository, emphasizing 

information specific to the management, monitoring, and 

conservation of cultural heritage.

alonzo addison 

UNESCO World Heritage Centre 

Paris, France 

http://whc.unesco.org 

Alonzo C. Addison serves as Special Advisor for 

applied technology to the UNESCO World Heritage 

Centre. Past Director of the Center for Design 

Visualization at the University of California at 

Berkeley, his work spans historical visualization to 

design simulation, information architecture, and 

collaborative networks. As Vice President of Cyra 

Technologies in the 1990s, he helped develop one 

of the first commercially viable laser scanners – a 

“monument-scale” 3D LIDAR camera now common 

in heritage documentation. A co-founder of the 

Virtual Heritage Network, he is Vice President of 

the ICOMOS Int’l Scientific Committee (ISC) on 

Interpretation and Presentation (ICIP), on the board 

of the ICOMOS ISC on Heritage Documentation 

(CIPA), and Vice President of the VSMM Society. 

Author of Disappearing World: the Earth’s Most 

Extraordinary and Endangered Places, he has written 

extensively on heritage and its documentation. 

mario santana quintero 

University of Leuven 


www.kuleuven.be 

Mario Santana Quintero completed studies of 

architecture in 1994 at the Universidad Central de 

Venezuela. In 2003 he obtained a PhD on “The use of 

three-dimensional documentation and dissemination 

techniques in studying built heritage” at the R. 

Lemaire International Centre for Conservation 

(University of Leuven). He is currently Assistant 

Professor at the Lemaire Centre and post-doctoral 

researcher for the MACE EU Project, University of 

Leuven. He is also a Professor at the University of 

Applied Sciences St Lieven and associate faculty at 

the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as Vice 

President of the ICOMOS Scientific Committee on 

Heritage Documentation (CIPA) and Executive Officer 

of the Virtual Systems and Multimedia Society. 

307

308 

marta severo 

unesco World Heritage Centre 

Paris, France 


Marta Severo has just obtained a PhD in 

Management of Cultural Heritage (at IMT Lucca) 

with a dissertation on web-based tools to manage 

network cultural heritage. She graduated at the 

Communication Department of the University of 

Bologna. Since 2006, she serves as a consultant 

for several UNESCO sectors. Currently, she is 

coordinating the web community of the UNESCO 

Network of Migration Museums.

cultural heritage 

protection 

world heritage 

9 

heritage information 

browsing 

6 17 19 21 22 

26 

background: cultural heritage and conservation 

Cultural heritage – our shared legacy from the past – is a unique and irreplaceable 

source of identity and inspiration. As defined in the “Convention concerning the Protection 

of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage” (or World Heritage Convention 

as it is more commonly known), “cultural heritage” refers to “monuments”, “groups 

of buildings”, or “sites” with “historical, artistic, aesthetic, scientific, ethnological or 

anthropological… outstanding universal value” 1 . These heritage places can range 

from “a large area such as a whole region or landscape” to “a small area such as a 

feature or building” 2 . 

With recognition of the universal value of these heritage places has come increased 

focus on their conservation. From the creation of the world’s first national park at 

Yellowstone in 1872, to the adoption of the World Heritage Convention by the United 

Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the 16th of 

November 1972 3 , we have increasingly sought to identify, protect and preserve our 

heritage. Today heritage conservation is a major discipline, with thousands of professionals, 

from archaeologists, to architects, historians, museologists, masons, surveyors, 

and others working to conserve and manage cultural sites across the globe. 

Fig. 1: Aachen Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Germany (M. Santana 

Quintero©, p. 363). 

heritage information 

The growth of the field of conservation has brought with it vast quantities 

of heritage information, from scientific records, to historical studies, surveys, 

inventories, photographs, maps, and field documentation. Once laboriously 

collected by hand and recorded on paper, this information is today increasingly 

gathered, organized, and archived digitally. Today it plays a vital role 

in defining a heritage place’s significance, integrity, extent, and threats, and 

is crucial to understanding, protection, and management. 

Information challenges 

Yet the explosion in heritage information has exacerbated 3 key data challenges: 

1. Fragmentation: despite the importance of this information, it remains largely 

disjointed, typically residing with the individuals that produce it rather than in shared 

or common repositories known to a site manager or international conservation 

organizations. 

Sadly, this means that valuable time, resources, and knowledge are often lost in 

reproducing already completed work, adversely impacting on heritage places and 

their conservation. 

2. Reliability: with increased awareness of heritage, has come increased information 

and documentation of cultural heritage. 

The ubiquity of digital cameras alone has led to the production of more imagery of 

cultural heritage in the last decade than in all previous recorded history. 

Although often well intentioned, the rapid growth in the quantity of data, as well 

as numbers and backgrounds of individuals producing information about sites, 

cultural heritage repositories 

309

has brought with it significant challenges. Mislabelling and miscategorization is 

common. Without provenance, professionals find it hard to trust much of this new 

generation of information. 

As shown in Tab. 1, reliability, especially with the new era of digital data, has five 

sources of error or bias. 

Error/Bias 

Artifact 

Device 

Environmental 

Human 

Provenance 

Description 

3. Longevity: although information survival has always been an issue, the growth of 

digital records has also increased a long-standing problem. As illustrated in figure 2, 

without special care, heritage records today stand little chance of surviving as long 

as the monuments they are meant to document. 


Sites are not constant – they evolve, age and are modified over time, meaning 

data about them must consider what point in history it is pertaining to. 

From rounding errors to calibration and issues like CCD color accuracy, the 

tools play an important role in accuracy. 

From temperature to sunlight and cloud cover, environmental conditions play 

a role in accuracy. 

Perhaps the hardest to identify, human error/bias is always present to some 

extent. 

Without an attached record of why, how or with what, where, and by whom, 

accuracy is limited. 

Tab. 1: Information Reliability (from Alonzo Addison 2006). 

Fig. 2: Record Longevity (from Alonzo Addison 2006, p. 363). 

Heritage repositories 

Necessitated by both the quantity of information, as well as the burdens of archiving, 

organizing, and disseminating it, researchers and heritage managers have 

deployed a broad array of tools and methods to store their records. 

These new repositories are largely ad-hoc, developed in-house to solve specific 

challenges. An overview of the types of information systems in typical use today are 

presented in Tab. 2. 

Often important for making informed decisions about the identification, classification, 

management and conservation of heritage places, some of these systems are 

also valuable aids in promoting cultural identity and tourism.

Types Pro’s Con’s Examples 

Physical 

(document and photographic 

inventories and catalogues) 

Localized electronic 

databases 

Geographic Information 

Systems (GIS) 

3D Earth Viewers (on-line 

GIS with spatial imagery) 

Hybrid, shared, ‘Web 2.0’ 

systems with relational 

data structures, XML, & 

other standards 

digital repository 

institutional repository 

11 

26 

› Simple to setup 

› Low cost 

› Highly customizable 

› Relatively easy to get 

started with 

› Simplifies indexing 

› Strong data mgmt potential 

› Highly customizable 

› Combines advantages of GIS 

with an intuitive and easy to 

understand ‘real’ background 

› Highly customizable, 

adaptable, and shared 


› Typically linear/hard to 

cross-index 

› Hard to search/query 

› Physical storage requirements 

can become a challenge 

› Interaction with other 

inventories is difficult 

› Non-standard, specialized 

query tools hard for novice 

users 

› Adding and managing data 

can be complex 

› Requires considerable input 

of mapping info. 

› Steep learning curve. 

› Can be costly 

› Not as useful for non-spatial 

data 

› Nothing more than a nice 

visual interface (i.e. little data 

management and requires 

other tools to extend) 

› Emerging technology 

www.nps.gov/history/hdp/ 

standards/CRGIS/paper.htm 

(description of a planned migration 

from paper to digital) 

www.kikirpa.be/www2/en/ 

doc/docu.htm 

www.mip.berkeley.edu/spiro 

www.timemap.net 

http://zimas.lacity.org 

http://earth.google.com 

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov 

www.microsoft.com/VirtualEarth 


Tab. 2: Types of heritage information systems (based on research by M. Santana Q.). 

building a digital repository: 

lessons from unesco’s world heritage portal 

Using the UNESCO World Heritage web portal (http://whc.unesco.org) and its redesign 

as our example, the steps in creating a modern repository are outlined below. 

The official website of unesco’s flagship “Convention concerning the Protection 

of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage”, the World Heritage portal is 

the source of the most definitive information about the World Heritage List, 

the Convention, and its many partners around the world. 

Both the repository of all statutory information about the treaty, as well as a public 

information tool, scientific material archive, community workspace, and news 

source, it illustrates many of the challenges of a modern heritage repository. It serves 

as an information dissemination and exchange tool at an international, regional, and 

local level, raising awareness and aiding in conservation management, monitoring, 

and mobilization. 

Fig. 3: UNESCO World Heritage portal (p. 363). 

311

preservation 

15 16 19 

Understanding heritage information 

There is a wealth of information about heritage documentation, from what is useful 

to collect, to how to collect it, and standards for organizing it. The following documents, 

although not specifically about digital repositories, provide a good background 

on heritage information and are an important starting point for anyone who 

wants to develop a digital cultural heritage information repository: 

› Principles for the analysis, conservation and structural restoration of architectural 

heritage (Charter ratified by ICOMOS in 2003) 4 ; 

› ICOMOS Principles for the Recording of Monuments, Groups of Buildings and Sites 

(Principles ratified by ICOMOS in 1996) 5 ; 

› Guidance on inventory and documentation of the cultural heritage (available as a 

book from the Council of Europe, 2002) 6 ; 

› The Core Data Index to Historic Buildings and Monuments of the Architectural Heritage 

(1995 Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, 

adopted in 1998 by the Getty Information Institute’s ObjectID program and available 

in the book Documenting the Cultural Heritage, R. Thornes and J. Bold, eds.) 7 ; 

› The International Core Standard for Archaeological Sites and Monuments (1992 

Standard from the International Council of Museums (ICOM) International Committee 

for Documentation (CIDOC) in collaboration with the Council of Europe, adopted 

in 1998 by the Getty Information Institute’s ObjectID program and available in the 

book Documenting the Cultural Heritage, R. Thornes and J. Bold, eds.) 8 . 

Defining goals and organizing data 

A well-designed cultural heritage repository should: 

› Safely store multidisciplinary knowledge of a place, its value/significance, 

and integrity; 

› Archive together all a place’s rich media, from maps to images, drawings, 

documents, CAD files, movies, audio recordings, etc.; 

› Allow intuitive querying and straightforward contributions of additional records; 

› Guarantee long-term viability of the records through clear, simple, and humandecodable 

data structures; 

› Promote interest and involvement in the preservation of the heritage through the 

dissemination of acquired information; 

› Enable informed decision making; 

› Ensure that a place’s management, maintenance and conservation is related to its 

integrity (physical form, materials, construction, etc) and its historical and cultural 

significance. 

To fulfill unesco’s and the Convention’s mission, the World Heritage portal 

needed to accomplish a series of goals that included improving accessibility 

and enhancing and linking information about the Convention, and its sites, 

stakeholders, and activities. This could only be accomplished by organizing 

data in an effective and coherent repository with easy public access via an 

interactive web interface. 

In the case of the World Heritage portal, it was decided early on to group the underlying 

data into 7 key categories: 

1. Sites (the List of protected sites). 


26 

2. States (the Nations that have signed the Convention). 

3. News (news about the places). 

4. Activities (projects about the places). 

5. People (from staff to the conservation workers, site managers, researchers, and 

the public with interests or activities at places). 

6. Money (financial assistance expended in support of sites). 

7. Documents (from official reports to images, maps, movies, and other rich media). 

Each of these categories is 2-way referenced to every other to allow rich and fast 

searching and interrelationships. In addition, data is increasingly thematically and 

spatially tagged wherever possible. Although certain data is available only to the World 

Heritage professional community upon site login, a vast amount is publicly accessible. 

Among the most visited pages are those of the individual World Heritage properties. 

These 878 dynamic pages present a friendly interface to a vast repository of information 

previously only available in paper archives. Since the design of the data structure 

cross-links seven key categories of information, a wealth of related data can 

be pulled and displayed for each site, from imagery to official decisions, nomination 

files, and so forth. The information available from the site pages includes (although 

not all is publicly accessible): 

Main Tab 

› Name, Location and Latitude/Longitude position; 

› Flag and Country (cross-linked to country information); 

› Zoomable flash map showing location in the world; 

› Iconic image of site; 

› Date of inscription and Criteria (summary); 

› Official “Brief Description”; 

› Justification for inscription and Statement of Significance/OUV; 

› Related News, Events, Activities, and Web Links. 

Locations Tab 

› Coordinates and descriptions for serial sub-properties; 

› Scanned nomination maps (under development); 

› IS tool (under development). 

Media Tab 

› Photographs, panoramic images, CAD files, movies, sound clips, etc. 

Documents Tab (a sortable list of all official records mentioning the site) 

› Nomination file as originally submitted to UNESCO; 

› Decisions of the World Heritage Committee about the preservation of the site; 

› Annual State of Conservation reports; 

› Longer-term Periodic Reports on conservation status as submitted by States; 

› Mission reports of site visits. 

Issues (Threats) Tab 

› Danger listing; 

› Details of danger listing; 

› Threats statistical graph; 

› Photographs of issues (under development); 

› Related Information (under development). 


313

A “related information” section, currently under development, will allow the 

user to contribute research papers, news, events, multimedia files (photographs, 

qtvr panoramas, sound, cad, and other relevant files), links, etc. This 

will allow wh staff, site managers, professionals, and the public to interact 

towards a better understanding of the site and its needs. This should enrich 

preservation activities and the decision making processes as interested parties 

use the portal to exchange preservation information (otherwise transferred 

through meetings and personal contacts), to carry out benchmarking 

analyses, and to define shared policies. 

These interactions will be managed offsite by the “Virtual Heritage Network”, an 

associated organization to the World Heritage Centre’s Information Management 

Initiative. This organization’s remote servers will allow Web 2.0-like community input 

contributions, which could not be hosted by UNESCO itself, as they are not official 

governmental records. 

Fig. 4: A World Heritage Property sub-page details, UNESCO World Heritage Centre 9 (p. 363). 

Choosing a technology platform 

In the digital world, technology choices can have far-reaching consequences. 

Given the rapid advances in digital technology, choosing a system is particularly 

challenging. In the case of the World Heritage portal, moving from paper 

records and a simple html website to an advanced digital repository presented 

many challenges. 

A variety of complete “commercial off-the-shelf” tools were proposed but all ultimately 

rejected as they hid the data in a “black-box”. Knowing that technology would 

evolve and such a system would eventually need to be replaced, we considered it 

crucial that the underlying data structure be designed, clear, intuitive, and visible. 

Instead of selecting a single system, the World Heritage portal uses an assemblage 

of tools. At its heart is an open-source relational database (MySQL). On top of this, 

the website is driven by a commercial web development language (Adobe’s ColdFusion), 

which at the time the project started was considered more stable than some 

of the other open-source tools (such as PHP) then beginning to emerge. Much of 

the look and feel is controlled with style sheets (CSS), Flash, Javascript, etc. This is 

an evolving project and in the future the scripting language will likely be migrated 

into either a “code framework”, to make code management easier, or potentially 

even into one of the many community-supported “content management systems” 

(CMSes) built on PHP, ColdFusion, etc. 

Providing a simple, intuitive interface 

As important as the underlying technology is ease of use. Many repositories today 

(including on-line heritage photo archives) can be challenging to use, from 


complex interfaces to specialized data classification and search systems. Good 

data organization is a first step, but a clear and simple interface is also crucial. 

26 

Before the launch of its new on-line repository, UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre 

relied upon an overcrowded static website, printed newsletters, journals, and books 

to disseminate knowledge and issues related to its mandate as Secretariat of the 

Convention. This led to a considerable gap between the information available at 

the World Heritage Centre and the amount of information being disseminated to 

stakeholders and the public in general. 

Today the World Heritage Centre has a dynamic engine and regularly updated 

content, which serves thousands of professionals and public users every 

day. Each of the 878 current sites on the World Heritage List can be accessed 

geographically using a dynamic world map, by region, by category or by simply 

typing its name in the internal search engine. 

Each property has its own dynamically generated page, providing the most up-todate 

information, from facts, to documents, activities, partners, financial support, 

events and news. Similarly, there are dynamic and richly cross-linked pages for each 

of the States Parties to the Convention, as well as news, projects, events, etc. 

conclusions 

Using the UNESCO World Heritage portal as an example, this paper has presented 

a set of ideas useful for the creation of effective digital repositories for heritage. 

Although still in its early stages, the new World Heritage web portal has already 

shown itself to be a useful conservation, communication, and archiving tool. With 

more than 600,000 visitors each month, and one-third of all UNESCO web traffic, it 

has quickly grown to be one of the most powerful tools in World Heritage conservation 

and communication. 

Although successful, much still remains to be done. The final step of building 

any repository is to use, track and refine it. Future goals for the World Heritage 

portal include Web2.0-like features to allow authorized users, from site 

managers to governments, to directly update and contribute new information, 

news and multimedia in a tracked, Wiki-like format. 

User interface improvements are also planned, from general layout, to better media 

gallery tools and customization based on general user type (from general public, to 

child, researcher, and site manager). Using the power of the web and the growing 

numbers of related professional and amateur repositories, from Flickr photo libraries 

to serious archives like ArchNet, future plans call for using next generation web technologies 

to better interlink and cross-reference repositories while ensuring archival 

viability. 

notes + bibliography + acknowledgements → 


315

notes 

1 http://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext. 

2 Australian Heritage Commission, ed. Protecting local heritage places: a guide for communities. 

Sydney 2000, 4. 

3 http://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext. 

4 http://www.international.icomos.org/charters/structures_e.htm. 

5 http://www.international.icomos.org/recording.htm. 

6 http://book.coe.int/EN/ficheouvrage.php?PAGEID=36&lang=EN&produit_aliasid=1369. 

7 http://www.object-id.com/heritage/index.html (accessed 15/07/2008) 

8 Ibid. 

9 http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/211./6. 

bibliography 

Addison, A. “World Heritage Information Systems Initiative”. Unpublished presentation 

to the World Heritage Committee. Paris, 2003. 

Addison, A. “The Vanishing Virtual: Safeguarding Heritage’s Endangered Digital Record”. 

In Beyond Verisimilitude. Proceedings of the Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Media, 

eds. Kalay, Y., and T. Kvan. Hong Kong Univesity, 2006. 

Box, P. GIS and Cultural Resources Management: A Manual for Heritage Managers. 

Bangkok: UNESCO, 1999. 

Burnett, J., and I. Morrison. “Defining and Recording the Resource: Documentation”. In Manual 

of Heritage Management, ed. Harrison, R., 117-126. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1994. 

Clark, K. Informed Conservation. London: English Heritage, 2001. 

Eppich, R. ed. Documentation for Conservation: Illustrated Examples. Los Angeles: 

The Getty Conservation Institute [forthcoming]. 

Evans, K., and L. Fielding. “Giza: The use of GIS in managing a World Heritage Site”. 

In Visitor Management: Case Studies from World Heritage Sites, ed. Shackley, M., 82-99. 

Oxford: Butterworth, 1998. 


26 

Matero, F., et al. “Archaeological Site Conservation and Management: An Appraisal of Recent 

trends”. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 2 (1998): 129-142. 

Palumbo, G. “Beyond CAD: a Look at Data Analysis and Integration Using GIS”. In GRADOC. 

Graphic Documentation Systems in Mural Painting Conservation, ed. Schmid, W., 114-124. 

Rome: ICCROM, 2000. 

Pearson, M., and S. Sullivan. Looking After Heritage Places: The Basics of Heritage Planning for 

Managers, Landowners and Administrators. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995, 126- 

186. 

Santana Quintero, M., A. Addison, S. Refsland, and E. Esquivel. “A Portal to the World’s Heritage: 

Rethinking UNESCO’s World Heritage Web”. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference 

on Virtual Systems and Multimedia – VSMM’2004 (Ogaki, Japan, 17-19 November, 2004). 

Severo, M. “Sharing Information about Network Cultural Heritage”. In EVA Conference Proceedings, 

(25-28 August, 2008), 2008. 

Stovel, H. “Monitoring World Cultural Heritage Sites”. ICOMOS Canada Bulletin 4-3 (1995): 15-20. 

Thornes, R., and J. Bold. Documenting the Cultural Heritage. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 1998. 

Wheatley, D. “The Impact of Information Technology on the Practice of Archaeological Management”. 

In Managing archaeology, eds. Cooper, M.A., A. Firth, J. Carman, and D. Wheatley, 163-174. 

London: Routledge, 1995. 


The World Heritage (http://whc.unesco.org) portal is the product of an interdisciplinary team and 

thousands of hours of work. Conceived by Alonzo Addison and supported by Francesco Bandarin, 

Minja Yang and Kishore Rao, among the many involved in the system development include: Scot 

Refsland, Mario Santana, Eric Esquivel, Benjamin Geebelen, Nicolas Caris, Maria Lepeigne-Cobo, 

Pierre Smars, Jurgen De Keyser, Hung Nguyen, Olivia Prevost, Roel Bylemans, Francesca Balzani, 

Marta Severo, and Peter Stott. Major support has come from the World Heritage Fund, the Flemish, 

Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and French governments, and Hewlett Packard. We would also like to 

thank Rand Eppich for his insightful feedback. 


317

images

1 

mace: connecting and enriching 

repositories for architectural learning 

Fig. 1: MACE technical infrastructure. 

Fig. 2: The Hjelmslev’s interpretative semiotic model, based on the double opposition 

of contents/expression and substance/form, reduced and focused on architectural 

works. 

Fig. 3: The first level of the Mind Map Taxonomy: decomposition and classification of 

the architectural domain; result of the MACE analysis requirements activity. 


Fig. 4: The whole Mind Map Taxonomy. 

images 

321

1 

322 browsing architecture 

Fig. 5: Mockup of map widget and related links widget 

integration into the DYNAMO portal. 

Fig. 6: Add and edit metadata in place. 

Fig. 7: The detail view of a Learning Object shows a patchwork 

of all its available metadata in widget form, resulting 

in various pivot points for further browsing and search.

Fig. 8: (a) MACE advanced search (b) experimental faceted 

browsing interface. 

Fig. 9: Browsing the hierarchical classification glossary in structured tag cloud 

visualizations. 

images 

323

2 


models of design activities:towards effective 

design scaffolding 

Fig. 1: (a) The semiotic triangle (b) Levels showing how the interpretation process is 

related to the structure of the interpretative codes. 

Fig. 2: Building sketches and designer’s words denote a reference building and connote 

general concept related to aggregation forms.

Fig. 3: Signs and objects of building design domain arranged 

according to a multimodal perceptual representation. 

Fig. 4: A functional schema of a multimodal perceptual model. 

images 

325

2 


Fig. 5: Functional scheme that synthesises the interaction 

between various forms of expressions in a solutions’ 

elaboration process. 

Fig. 6: The figure shows a design problem regarding the formal definition of a building.

3 


Fig. 1: WINDS in action. 

Fig. 2: WINDS technical architecture (schema) and the OAI adaptor. 

Fig. 3: DYNAMO screenshot. 

images 

327

3 

Fig. 4: The OAI-PMH harvesting process. 


Fig. 5: Mapping DYNAMO’s metadata onto the MACE Application 

Profile. 

Fig. 6: OAI-PMH and DYNAMO mapping tool technical architecture.

6 

indexed and browsed: a new didactic approach 

towards the orders of columns 

Fig. 1: tEXtMACHINA, web-based platform to work collaboratively with texts. 

Fig. 2: Media-Database of ZHdK provides a platform for saving, grouping and sharing 

of images. 

images 

329

6 


Fig. 3: HyperImage, an editor to compile interactive presentations. 

Fig. 4: Column-Browser, starting situation with randomly filled image-bands.

Fig. 5: Column-Browser. Browsing situation: a reference image and related examples 

to the left and to the right. 

Fig. 6: The metadata field opened out of the index-browser. Showing on the bottom 

of the screen a “basket” to collect and group images by drag and drop. 

images 

331

6 


Fig. 7: Column-Matrix: five columns of terms. Refinement of the search 

by marked terms.

7 

housing@21.eu: integrating learning spaces and 

architectural repositories 

Fig. 1: Web site to collect and study housing examples (www.housing21eu.net). 

Fig. 2: Web site of the Design Workshop (www.housing21eu.net/workshop1). 

images 

333

7 


Fig. 3: Case repository collaborative tools: keywords mode. 

Fig. 4: Case repository collaborative tools: grouping mode.

8 

beyond digital repositories: 

architectural information presentation 

Fig. 1: Examples of the layering of texts, sketch, 2D and 3D animations, videos and 

drafted drawings with interactive navigation. 

Fig. 2: A concept of piecing information through a multi-user, online jigsaw puzzle. 

images 

335

8 


Fig. 3: Screenshot of Microsoft Live Lab’s Photosynth allowing users to “navigate” 

through Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy. 

Fig. 4: A screenshot of Rheingold’s slide presentation.

9 

towards using digital modeling systems: 

the context of e-learning 

Fig. 1. Digital modeling system. 

Fig. 2. Understanding and interpretation of an architectural site. 

images 

337

9 

Fig. 3. Evolution of an architectural space 

as a learning tool. 


Fig. 4. Models produced as e-learning tools.

10 

@gd: keeping a record of learning paths 

on digital graphics representation 

for architecture 

Fig. 1: Learning path of a Geometric Modelling class of the Digital Graphics Post- 

Graduation Course. 

Fig. 2: Learning path of a specific activity of a discipline. 

images 

339

10 


Fig. 3: The GPS_3D Course, an extracurricular activity.

13 

building up digital collections: 

from policy to implementation 

Fig. 1: Schematic drawing of the MINT module of MINISIS. 

Fig. 2: Schematic drawing of the authorities. 

Fig. 3:Schematic drawing of the Collection 

Information System linked to the NAI repository 

and external repositories and interface 

of the Collection Management System. 

images 

341

16 ? 

342 

image archive: a hybrid structure for the 

enhancement of architecture videos 

Fig. 1: “Post Barnsley”, squint/opera, architecture 

by Alsop Architects, UK 2003. 

Fig. 2: “Botha House”, dbox and ARC574, architecture by 

Thomas Phifer and Partners, US 2003. 

Fig. 3: “Altstetten Church”, Takehiko Nagakura, architecture 

by Alvar Aalto, US 2003. 

browsing architecture

Fig. 4: “Bo-Bo”, archi media, FR 2003. 

Fig. 5: “Rooftecture”, Shuhei Endo, JP 2003. 

Fig. 6: “Words, Images and Spaces”, Kyong Park, US 2002. 

Fig. 7: “Park Avenue”, Florent Rougemont, NL 2003. 

images 

343

17 ? 


the facetag engine: a semantic collaborative 

tagging tool 

Fig. 1: The two axes of Information Architecture. 

Fig. 5: The administrative interface for adding resources 

to FaceTag.

Fig. 2: FaceTag main page, with the most recent resources 

and the facet containers. 

Fig. 3: Searching for resources. The user chose “information 

architecture” and facet containers and tag lists adjust. Stickers 

for the engaged tag appear in the status bar (top, grey). 

Fig. 4: Empty facet containers and greyed out pertaining 

terms at the end of a search session. 

images 

345

19 ? 


save the bubble: the architectural archive 

in the digital age 

Fig. 1. 

Fig. 2. 

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4. 

Fig. 5. 

Fig. 6. 

Fig. 7. 

images 

347

19 

Fig. 8. 

Fig. 9. 

Fig. 10. 

Fig. 11. 

348 browsing architecture

20 

a classification system for construction units 

and products: methodological hypothesis 

and application testing on pre-modern building 

Fig.1: Contemporary Technical Information: current scenario. 

Fig. 2: Notation in relation to the Category tables. 

images 

349

20 

Fig. 3: UML scheme. 


21 

the probado framework: a repository 

for architectural 3d-models 

Fig. 1: Overall system architecture of the PROBADO framework. 

Fig. 2: Main parts of the 3D metadata model. 

images 

351

21 

Fig. 3: Components of the PROBADO 

3D repository. 


Fig. 4: Room connectivity graph and results from the database. 

Fig.5: Query by 3D sketching for content-based 

global search of the PROBADO 3D repository.

22 

mimoa: an interactive architecture guide 

Fig. 1: MIMOA home page. 

Fig. 2: MIMOA European map. 

images 

353

22 

Fig. 3: MIMOA project detail page. 

Fig. 4: MIMOA project detail page photo. 


Fig. 5: MIMOA selected guides. 

Fig. 6: MIMOA weblog. 

images 

355

23 ? 


nextroom: the european hub 

for contemporary architecture 

Fig. 1: nextcard #1: Blindgänger, Hof am Leithaberge, Austria, Architects: the POOR BOYS 

ENTERPRISE (Margherita Spiluttini © ). 

Fig. 2: Screenshot nextroom.at (Margherita Spiluttini © ).

Fig. 3: Screenshot nextroom.at (Rupert Steiner © ). 

Fig. 4: Screenshot nextroom.at (Robert Leš © ). 

Fig. 5: nextroom.at advertisment. 

images 

357

24 ? 


the lafis project: managing publicly induced data 

into a scholar environment 

Fig. 1. 

Fig. 2.

Fig. 3. 

Fig. 4. 

images 

359

24 

Fig. 5. 

Fig. 6. 


Fig. 7. 

images 

361

25 ? 

362 

a database of architectural repositories: 

criteria for selection and evaluation 

Fig. 1: Screenshot of the (internal) repository listing website. 

Fig. 2: Collage of homepages for some of the referenced repositories. 

Fig. 3: Automatically generated mind map from the repository database. 

browsing architecture

26 

cultural heritage repositories: digital archives 

for conservation and management 

Fig. 1: Aachen Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 

Germany (photograph by M. Santana Quintero©). 

Fig. 2: Record Longevity (from Alonzo Addison 2006). 

Fig. 3: UNESCO World Heritage portal. 

Fig. 4: A World Heritage Property sub-page details, UNESCO World Heritage Centre. 

images 

363


advertising 22 

architectural history 12 

architectural repositories 25 

architecture 3 9 10 

archival description 14 

archival management 14 

archive 16 

archiving 22 

best practice for preservation 15 

born-digital data 19 

cam 3 

check the transmission state of record 15 

circulation 16 

cities 22 

classification 17 25 

classification system 20 

cognitive models 2 

collaborative work space 9 

collection information system 13 

community 22 

compatibility 15 

computer integrated 18 

contemporary architecture 23 

contemporary fabrication 18 

content 3 22 25 

content-based indexing 21 

content-based search 21 

364 

browsing architecture 

content management 24 

construction 18 

copyrights 22 

creative commons 22 

credits 22 

crowds 22 

cultural heritage 26 

culture 22 

database 20 22 

de facto standard format for preservation 15 

design 22 

design information 18 

design learning 2 

design meaning 2 

design models 2 

design practice 2 

design process 2 

digital architectural record 14 

digital collections 13 

digital design 19 

digital drawing 14 

digital graphics representation 10 

digital libraries 1 

digital modeling systems 9 

digital production chain 19 

digital records reference 14 

digital repositories 7

digitisation 14 

documentation 19 

domain-specific architectures 1 

education 5 9 25 

e-learning 6 9 

electronic records in an architectural practice 15 

Europe 22 

facetagging 17 

faceted classification 17 

facoltà Quaroni 5 

features 22 

feedback 27 

file naming 15 

film 16 

folksonomies 17 

gallery 24 

guide 22 

harvesting 3 

heritage 9 

housing studies 7 

hub 23 

ict 9 

identification and retrieval of electronic records 15 

identity metadata 15 

image 24 

indices 6 

information architecture 5 17 


information technology 5 

innovation 16 

institutional repository 11 

integration digital tools with traditional approaches 12 

integrity of electronic records 15 

interaction 22 

interaction design 4 

interactive data exploration and discovery 1 

interface 22 

interoperability 1 3 

it revolution in architecture 5 

knowledge management 20 

learning objects 10 

learning paths 10 

longevity of removable media and hard-drive 15 

mace 3 4 

management 26 

mapping 22 

matrix of terms 6 

media 15 

media and hard-drive 15 

media-database 6 

mental images 2 

metadata 3 4 11 15 16 22 23 24 

methodology 20 

migration of media 15 

modern 22 

365

index of terms - folksonomy 

monitor electronic records and profiles 15 

multidisciplinarity 9 

multimedia 15 16 

natural heritage 26 

nextroom 23 

niche 22 

oai 3 

open 22 

open source 24 

original 19 

orders of columns 6 

photography 22 24 

portfolio 22 

precedent based design 2 

preservation 19 

protection 26 

protocol analysis 2 

repository 3 11 21 26 

record management 15 

recovery strategy 19 

reliability and authenticity of electronic records 15 

rss 3 

scaffolding procedure 2 

scaffolding tools 2 

scripting 24 

selection of hardware and software 15 

semiotics 2 

shared tools 22 


significant process 2 

sketching 2 

social classification 17 

social construction 11 

stability of electronic records 15 

studio 11 

tag 17 

tagging 17 

tangible interface 4 

teacher 5 

team-based project 12 

traveling 22 

tutorial discourse 2 

università La Sapienza 5 

user experience 4 

user interface 1 

users 22 

video 16 

virtual design studios 7 

visual browsing 6 

web 5 

web-based collaborative learning 7 

web resources 24 

wiki 9 12 

winds 3 

world heritage 26 

3d model 21 

3d modelling 24

This book has been published on occasion 

of the International Conference 

On-line repositories in architecture 

Venice, Italy, 20-21 September, 2008 

Curator of the International Conference 

On-line repositories in architecture 

Furio Barzon (Collaboratorio, Italy) 

Scientific Committee 

Herman Neuckermans, coordinator (eaae, Belgium) 

Markus Eisenhauer (Fraunhofer fit, Germany) 

Alberto Giretti (Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy) 

Erik Duval (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) 

Markus Specht (Open University Netherlands, Netherlands) 

Martin Wolpers (Fraunhofer fit, Germany) 

Mario Santana Quintero (eaae, Belgium) 

Ezio Arlati (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) 

edited by 

Matteo Zambelli 

Anna Helena Janowiak 

(Collaboratorio, Italy) 

Herman Neuckermans 

(eaae, Belgium) 

produced by 

mace Consortium 

colb Collaboratorio snc, Italy 

dfki Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz, Germany 

eaae European Association of Architectural Education, Belgium 

fhp Fachhochschule Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, Germany 

fit Fraunhofer Institut für Angewandte Informationstechnik, Germany 

irb Fraunhofer Informationszentrum Raum und Bau, Germany 

kul Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium 

hum Humance ag, Germany 

nau Nautes srl, Italy 

ounl Open University Netherlands, Netherlands 

polimi Politecnico di Milano, Italy 

univpm Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy 

iuav University IUAV of Venice, Italy 

upc Technical University of Catalonia, Spain 

powered by 

Collaboratorio, Italy 

eaae European Association of Architectural Education, Belgium 

published and distributed by 

Fraunhofer irb Verlag, Germany 

supported by 

European Commission, eContentplus Program 

thanks to 

Alessandro Miniussi, Italy (typesetting) 

Nick Simcock, England (English check) 

Hans-Martin Barth and Klaus Kaiser, Germany (publishing) 

This book is part of the series 

eaae Transactions on Architectural Education no. 40

www.mace-project.eu

MACE book - European association for architectural education

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