documentaBIM: a prototype for the valorization of the Archivio storico della Presidenza della Repubblica

The current digital ubiquity of archives imposes an increasingly sophisticated reading and use of archival tools. Simultaneously, it multiplies the possibilities and methods for supporting the public use of documentary memory, even though computable conceptual models of descriptions, and progressively transforms archival data usage into knowledge usage. In this research scenario, the present paper focuses on conception of an interface for the use of digital archives, shaped by the encounter of two distinct informational typologies: the architecture and the document. Specifically, the disciplinary tools of architectural representation, in their most current digital declinations, are here employed to develop the user experience of the new archives, adopting computable conceptual models (ontologies) adaptable to multiple informational models. The proposed method – that we called documentaBIM – adopts the current structure of Building Information Modelling (BIM), proposing a theoretical and methodological shift. The traditional workflow of Heritage BIM – in its most updated version substantiated by the application of ontologies – is, here, applied in reverse as a tool to access and enable the spatial and semantic interrogation of archival data, related to the three-dimensional representation of an architectural model. The first prototype of documentaBIM is developed for the Archivio storico della Presidenza della Repubblica (ASPR) and, once adequately implemented and tested, will be integrated into a specific Section of the Portale of the ASPR and populated through the digital objects preserved in the associated Digital Library.