Nuove mappe tra singolare e plurale. Le opportunità sincretiche delle tecnologie digitali

The following article presents a number of research projects dealing with architectural and urban-historical themes, directed towards the experimentation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which are usually employed only in territorial field. All these research projects are founded on one premise: the connection of the individual artefact to its territorial location is an increment of knowledge itself. The main aim, rather than a qualitative collection of data, is a systematic understanding of heritage, aimed at identifying all the interactions between the artefact and its context. In this framework, the “map” is the main place where information is processed, in order to join different levels of knowledge. According to this, in all the research projects here presented: i) the data were linked to the map space; ii) different information were organized in databases; iii) standard procedures were identified for the realization of 2D and 3D accurate models, geo-referenced and interfaced to an external DBMS. The final goal has been the promotion of heritage through knowledge sharing. For this reason the research projects were oriented towards the study of relationships between GIS and the web and friendly interfaces based on criteria of perception, through which generate an improvement of interaction’s levels between the user and the map. Obviously all these experimentations were possible thanks to the abrupt development of digital technologies. But at the same time these new opportunities may cause other problematic issues, which were considered in the different researches development, two of which are here highlighted. The first issue is the figurative redundancy. Its risk is a decrease of emotional power for each single image, whose ultimate consequence can be the dematerialization of the “sense of place”. The second issue is the reliability of information. It can be related to the quality of metrical, geometrical and surface data and to the communication of contents and management of transitions between different informative levels.