As extended reality continues to grow, new possibilities arise to provide users with novel ways to experience cultural heritage (CH). In particular, applications based on virtual reality (VR), such as virtual museums, have gained increasing popularity, since they can offer new ways for preserving and presenting CH content that are not feasible in physical museums. Despite the numerous benefits, the level of immersion and presence provided by VR experiences still present challenges that could hinder the effectiveness of this technology in the CH context. In this perspective, it is crucial to provide the users with high-fidelity experiences, in which also the interaction with the objects and the characters populating virtual environments are realistic and natural. This article focuses on this challenge and specifically investigates how the combined use of tangible and speech interfaces can help improve the overall experience. To this aim, a immersive VR experience is proposed, which allows the users to manipulate virtual objects belonging to a museum collection (in the specific case, Ancient Egypt remains) by physically operating on 3D printed replicas and to talk with a curator’s avatar to get explanations by using their voice. A user study was conducted to evaluate the impact of the considered interfaces on immersion, presence, user experience, usability, and intention to visit, comparing the richest configuration against simpler setups obtained by either removing the tangible interface, the speech interface, or both (and using only handheld controllers). The results show that the combined use of the two interfaces can effectively contribute at making the CH experience in VR more engaging.

The present research concerns the contextualisation and presentation of eleven small statues from the Tang era dated from the XI and XII centuries CE today housed at the Asian Art Museum in Turin (MAO). A multidisciplinary group with expertise in Asian art, digital representation, and information processing systems, with the support of VR@POLITO and MOD Lab Arch of the Politecnico di Torino is involved in the work. The goal is to present together several Tang-era pottery models not belonging to the same funerary outfit within the spaces of a coeval, philologically compatible hypogeal tomb. With a pronounced storytelling intent, the reconstructive 3D model represents a virtual exhibition project summarizing Tang art’s architectural, pictorial, and sculptural features. The pipeline was developed through photogrammetric acquisition with Structure from Motion (SfM) technology and 3D modeling of the artworks, reconstructive modeling and texturing of a Tang tomb as the ideal space of the statues, and communication through a virtual reality (VR) experience augmented with a set of information.

This paper presents the most recent developments in a project aimed to the documentation, storage and dissemination of the cultural heritage. The subject of the project are more than 70 Baroque atria in Turin, recognized by critics for their particular unitary vaulted systems Our research team is currently working on digitizing documents and studying ways to enhance and share these results through ICT. In particular, we want to explore possibilities for recognizing and tracing three-dimensional objects in augmented reality (AR) applications connected to the collected data. Recent developments in this field relate to the technology available on widespread mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, allowing for real-time 3D scanning. Using software prototypes, we want to introduce some problems involved in integrating this technology into digital archives.

Guarini first develops a rigorous and systematic discourse on vaulted systems. In three treatises: Architettura Civile, Euclides adauctus, and Modo di misurare le fabriche, he described the geometric nature of the vaults, the principles of geometry and their practices in the stereotomy, and the measurement of the vaults’ surfaces and volumes, respectively. In this paper, moving from previous studies, the significant relationships between the Architettura Civile and Modo di misurare le fabriche are deepened, also in light to the theoretical bases established in the Euclides adauctus. Graphical analyses and reconstructive digital models, linking the texts to the original diagrams and drawings of the treatises, allow to highlight the role of geometry in Guarini’s theorization and the logic of shapes’ composition at the basis of his inventions, and constitute a knowledge base to recognize and interpret the geometric structure of the vaults in Baroque built heritage.

This paper investigates and describes the parametric reconstruction of Palladio’s villas, using his treatise, I Quattro libri dell’architettura, as the primary source. The process starts with an extensive comparison of Palladio’s rooms’ ratios, the compositional rules of the villas’ plans, and the digital creation of parametric architectural elements. Finally, the process of parametric construction on three selected case studies of 5 by 3 villas—Villa Poiana, Villa Zeno, and Villa Thiene in Cicogna—is undertaken. The developed instrument offers an experimental laboratory in which different hypotheses of integration by the authors, or other scholars with reference to the sources, could be tested.