In the seventeenth century, Guarino Guarini, mathematician and architect, affirmed that architecture, a discipline that primarily deals with measures, relies on geometry: therefore, the architect needs to know at least its basic principles. On behalf of Guarini’s words, we designed a set of interdisciplinary teaching experiences, between mathematics (via a calculus course) and drawing (via our Architectural Drawing and Survey Laboratory courses) that we proposed to first-year under graduate students studying for an Architecture degree. The tasks concern mathematical and representational issues about vaulted roofing systems and are based on the use of physical models in conjunction with digital tools, in order to make the cognitive geometric process more effective, thus following a consolidated tradition of both disciplines.

In recent years the digital visualisation techniques, including 3D digital models of indoor spaces, saw an exponential increase in their applications, both in the fields of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) and of Cultural Heritage (CH). This growth is mainly due to the increasing affordability of tools for the acquisition and elaboration of three-dimensional digital survey/data management and to their increasing ‘user friendliness’.The research proposes a further step on research started some years ago by our group about the exploration of indoor mapping for the creation of the 3D virtual museum of our Institution, starting with the realisation of a virtual model of the university’s spaces (departments and halls). At first, the virtual museum will host the Curioni Digital Collection, which consist of circa 140 wooden models of building details, bridges, tunnels, and vaults designed by prof. G. Curioni during the second half of the XIX century as teaching aids for the Construction and Structural Design classes. A comparison between two main tools to support management and diffusion of geometrical, alphanumerical, and topological data will be given (Matterport and Unity). The parallel approach considering two tools is to provide a digital twin of a real collection placed in a real space, and, on the other hand, to use a real historical university space, virtualized, to host a virtual collection.

This contribution arises from the interest (on the themes of semiotics and communication of architecture, even in its deep meanings) derived from studies and comparisons with Renato De Fusco, Maria Luisa Scalvini, Pio Luigi Brusasco, Pier Tosoni, Alberto Borghini. A question has been confirmed: what can be the meanings of architecture, especially in the visual field? What are its own contents, and what are “other” contents? Around this subject a research team with scholars of the Politecnico di Torino (called “Alpha Group”) was constituted; which has now resumed in a convergent manner to investigate and experiment semiotic in architecture; paying attention to languages of vision. The approach of the chosen method is inspired (in a comparative experiment) to the Nouvelle Rhétorique, the Groupe μ of Liège (with Greimas, Hielmslev, Perelman) internationally known for the definition of an applied rhetoric model—a classic of the human sciences—dedicated to interdisciplinary research, which crosses the aesthetic approach with semiotics, theory of linguistics and visual communication. The first conclusion tends to reinforce the in-depth analysis of the method, and the enhancement of interdisciplinary comparisons, first of all the one with semiotic.

The potential of Virtual Heritage, with particular attention to the field of knowledge dissemination, not only in the educational and scientific field, of museum collections, which are very often not accessible, have long been at the centre of the digitisation policies of major national and international institutions. Within this framework, the proposed research is part of a broader research, involving scientific figures from different disciplinary fields for the definition of a workflow for the 3D acquisition, digitisation and creation of a virtual model of miniatures of architectural artefacts kept at the Polytechnic of Turin. The paper describes part of the experimentation conducted for the creation of 3D surveys carried out using different tools, such as a portable LIDAR, Mantis F6, a low cost LIDAR, iPhone 13 Pro, and a digital camera, Nikon Z5, evaluating their performance not only from a metric point of view, but also from a methodological point of view and the subsequent sharing of models in accessible digital environments. The conducted study therefore initiates a process of memory digitisation in order to create a digital platform in which to insert, in an organised and digitised manner, models, data, historical morphological information, material, documentary, etc., in order to make interaction with the virtual reconstructions possible, promoting a new accessibility, all this to test, standardise and define a possible working protocol for massive low-cost 3D artefacts acquisition.