Abstract:

High-end visualization has resurfaced as a platform for designers, most notably architects, to design, develop, and communicate their ideas for new construction in the built world. With each year the accessibility and potency of these advanced tools are rapidly increasing. Within architectural education, it is commonplace to have students apply their creativity and digital acumen in conjecturing their own new construction in any given studio course. While this has been a model of operation since the integration of computer aided design (CAD) in architectural praxis, there is also a great potential in the adoption of these technologies in recreating existing architectural work from the past. The use of these tools no longer needs to be isolated to design-studio curricula. In recent decades architectural history curricula has moved in a positive direction by mandating students use their CAD skills in the production of a set of drawings or models of a case study building. Though this pedagogical model has its benefits, the ability to create photorealistic interactive and experiential opportunities with ubiquitous computational design and visualization platforms can facilitate a greater sensitivity to phenomenological aspects of design. Recent events such as the Notre Dame fire and digital recreations in the video gaming industry have generated discussion on how these technologies can be used beyond creating new design work, but instead revisit architectural history.

This paper provides a brief literature review on architectural visualization of historic work. It then outlines a project developed as a collaboration among three different Canadian post-secondary institutions that utilizes advanced visualization technologies in a museum exhibit to reconnect the public with historic indigenous settlements.

Keywords:

Computer graphics, visualization, history, architecture, indigenous architecture.