3D as a Content, 3D as a Metaphor.

Overview & Synopsis

The importance we attach to 3D is probably related to the manner we perceive the world. Humans in general seem attracted by all types of representations that are close to their perception. They represent objects and preserve information that seems important to them (ex. architecture). Archiving 3D data has at all times been a matter of will more that a matter of means. Since the XIXth century considerable efforts have been made to keep trace of 3D artefacts with the development of photogrammetry. The creation, the use and the archiving of 3D content is today at a technological and methodological crossroad, with a number of sustainability challenges clearly still open. With more technologies available and a renewed eagerness of data holders to develop spatial interfaces (including within GIS systems), the perennial handling of 3D content and associated information has become a challenge in itself. Indeed, 3D models have for now two decades flourished in and around the field of architecture and especially when seen as heritage. But their making, often “in spontaneous generation”, and the variety of their uses leaves researchers and practitioners with a number of unanswered questions on: - how to handle the growing heterogeneity of 3D data acquisition procedures, - how to distribute and access information inside 3D models / metaphors. In this contribution we wish to focus on the artefact itself (i.e. a 3D phenomenon) and on how to gain insight on its creation and its transformation. Our claim is that understanding of architectural artefact requires an analysis of evidence that does comprise 3D data, but that obviously requires much more than that. Accordingly we very briefly consider the “3D as a content” issue in the first section, and then detail various experiments where 3D act as a mean to distribute in time and space what in our mind should be the centre of our concern : the information about the artefact.