Archinect - News

"Georectification," historical urban photography, and archiving Foursquare check-ins: Inside the New York City's "urban memory infrastructure" bank

2019-08-06T09:06:00-04:00

In 2011, the New York Public Library established an official unit for digital experimentation—NYPL Labs. Over the six years that followed, what began as a small research and development outfit for special digital projects grew into a visionary think-and-do tank for making the library’s two centuries of collections digital and usable for the years to come. A hybrid team of technologists, librarians, and designers would start to assemble the building blocks of an urban memory infrastructure.

Shannon Mattern, associate professor of media studies at The New School, and Ben Vershbow, founder of NYPL Labs, discuss the recent digitalization efforts undertaken by the New York Public Library system as it works to turn the library's "vast collections into usable data, connecting maps, photographs, menus and community memories, NYPL Labs created a series of multilayered projects that point the way to a new information ecosystem."

In this fascinating and thought-provoking conversation, Mattern and Vershbow touch on the library's efforts to stitch together insurance maps to create scrollable, Google Maps-like resources, the NYPL's store of digitized and translated restaurant menus, and the New York City tree census, among many topics.

Describing the fundamental role libraries play in preserving cultural and spatial memories, Vershbow says, "Libraries fill a need for historic preservation, a memory function. And I think that a community without access to its history is sort of li...

Google's Open Heritage project applies cutting edge technology to architectural preservation

2018-04-30T15:43:00-04:00

Google provides open access to 3D digital archives of historic sites around the globe, which have been recorded by CyArk for preservation purposes. CyArk, a non profit organization founded in 2003, has been working to digitally record, archive, and share immersive sites with people online. Through 3D models, Street Views, and VR, viewers can experience these important sites in new and relevant ways. So far, the group has 26 sites that are digitally preserved and downloadable.

3D Laser Scan data cutaway of the interior of Tudor Place. Image: CyArk.

CyArk has recorded over 200 monuments on all 7 continents, while assisting other conservationists through engineering drawings and detailed maps. The data is archived using state of the art processes to ensure continued availability.

Editor's Picks #446

2016-05-23T09:19:00-04:00

Robert Urquhart spoke with curators Jack Self, Shumi Bose and Finn Williams, previewing their British Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Biennale.

As they explained;

"We’re interested in the influence of bureaucratic apparatus like the Terms & Conditions of Airbnb, the semantics of a mortgage, or the lifespan of product warranties, on the design of the home. But rather than seeing these as constraints, we want to show these as fields where architecture can expand its agency."

Plus, Julia Ingalls h ad a chance to visit Snøhetta's expanded SFMOMA. Her conclusion, that it "elegantly achieves its stated goals of being accessible and welcoming to all, if not necessarily being a stunning piece of architecture in its own right." LiMX liked what he read "Good review, not the boring contrarianism I've read elsewhere."

News
In late April the Vanna Venturi House, was sold after more than nine months on the open market. In response quondam…, Orhan Ayyüce and others, explored whether a building as "volumi...

Preserving Central Asia's ancient architecture through code

2016-04-07T13:58:00-04:00

It is not enough to just catalogue these [structures] in photos and videos, it is our aim to break down the logic of these patterns, and recreate them in code in order to make them more accessible and possibly allowing them to find new life in contemporary applications. By building an open source library, accessible to architects, artists, mathematicians, and software engineers, we can carry these patterns and traditions forward for future generations.

Lauren Connell (architect at BIG), Alexis Burson (associate at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners), and Baris Yuksel (Google senior engineer) share their architectural and computer engineering perspectives on Project Agama. The collaboration aims to document and digitally preserve the intricate geometric patterns and tilework of ancient Central Asian architecture by converting the patterns to code, which will eventually become a accessible resource for architects to potentially apply in new applications.

Of death and Facebook

2016-02-12T13:50:00-05:00

dying online is open to anyone willing to share his or her end with the blogosphere. [...] This dissolving of the barriers between the public and the intimate is death’s vital new upgrade... death has acquired a “neurotic separation” from daily life, and this separation has been identified as part of the “malaise of the late twentieth century.” But thanks to the internet, death might be losing some of its pariah status.

Prompted by the recent mass internet-public mourning of David Bowie, as well as a few agencies that offer post-death social media updates to perpetuate the online persona of your late loved-ones, Adrian Shaughnessy (graphic designer at the Royal College of Art) reflects on how a death shared online gets us that one step closer to immortality, "or for as long as the links keep working."

The new Monument Men: with 3D cameras and GPS data against cultural annihilation in Syria and beyond

2015-11-12T19:00:00-05:00

That’s why a team from the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) is turning to the next best option—using technology to protect cultural heritage. Founded in 2012 by Roger Michel, IDA is a joint effort between Harvard University and Oxford University to create an open-source database of high-resolution images and three-dimensional graphics of things like paper and papyrus documents, epigraphs and small artifacts. Work on what IDA has named the Million Image Database began in early 2015.

The photo shows the Baal Shamin temple prior to its destruction. Volunteers of the Institute for Digital Archaeology were able to digitally archive the 2,000-year-old structure for the Million Image Database project just in time before ISIS fighters seized control of Palmyra's historic site.

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PBS' premiere of "Time Scanners" brings 3D digital preservation technology to a wider audience

2014-07-01T13:53:00-04:00

PBS taps into the growing presence of 3D digital preservation on their new show, Time Scanners, which will premiere its first episode tonight at 8 p.m. ET. The three-part series will peruse the ancient iconic sites of the Egyptian Pyramids, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and the city of Petra in Jordan through the use of 3D laser-scanning technology.

Hosted by Dallas Campbell, each episode will follow Steve Burrows — the notable structural engineer known for working on the Bird's Nest Stadium at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics — and his team of investigators as they discover each landmark's physical and forensic history and scientific secrets.

Below are summaries of each episode:

July 1, Egyptian Pyramids: "The team travels to Egypt to scan the pyramids to find out how the necropoles evolved from simple mud-brick structures to the most impressive buildings in the ancient world. They use their laser technology to scan Djoser’s Step Pyramid at Saqqara, Meidum’s collapsed pyramid, the m...

CyArk's "500 Challenge" aims to digitally preserve 500 at-risk cultural heritage sites in 5 years

2013-10-23T15:14:00-04:00

Non-profit organization CyArk and its partners are on an ambitious mission against time to digitally preserve 500 cultural heritage sites around the world before they are destroyed by natural disasters, human aggression, climate change, urban sprawl, and other threats. The "CyArk 500 Challenge" officially launched on Oct. 21 at the Tower of London and will continue for the next five years to create a fully detailed digital archive that can be used for future educational and research purposes.

To survey the sites, CyArk uses a portable and precise 3D laser-scanning system invented by the organization's founder, Ben Kacyra, who launched the 500 Challenge. Ideally, the physical preservation of each of the world's cultural heritage sites would be possible. But as we all know, there isn't enough time or money and going digital has become the next best and quickest thing.

So far, CyArk has digitally preserved 40 cultural sites including the Tower of London, the statues of Easte...