The Project
Future On The Past
From early 20th century architecture photography collection to database: digital humanities applied to investigate local seismic, flood, fire culture
Project financed by UEFISCDI following the PCE competition - Exploratory Research Projects 2021, through PNCDI III, sub-programme P4 Fundamental and frontier research, Grant agreement no. PN-III-P4-PCE-2021-0609.
Project Duration: 30 months: June 2nd, 2022 - December 31st, 2024
Principal Investigator: Maria Boștenaru-Dan, PhD Architect, Scientific Researcher
Research field and areas
Main Domain - SH. SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES
Subdomain - SH5. Cultures and Cultural Production: Literature, philology, cultural studies, study of the arts, philosophy
Research Areas
SH5_12. Computational modelling and digitisation in the cultural sphere
SH5_6. History of art and architecture, arts-based research
SH5_8. Cultural studies, cultural identities and memories, cultural heritage
Executive Summary
The project proposes the transformation of the collection of photographs of early 20th century architecture (Art Nouveau and Modernism across Europe) gathered by the applicant over about 30 years of travel, into a database by answering the research question on how threats from the hazards of earthquake, flood and fire can be answered taking into account the local culture in the European countries covered, for buildings from a period when the architecture styles were global already that time. For this purpose digital humanities methods of image annotation (including architectural volumetric analysis) and mapping are employed. Apart of the mapping which takes also the form of story maps, being thus in dialogue with literature analysis methods of the relationship between traditional and modern in crisis times, also online exhibitions will be created. The subject is innovative as only recently the role of humanities in the fields of history and art history started to deal with the subject of catastrophes, following social sciences which entered this field of engineering and natural sciences. With this aim evaluation criteria will be developed considering the decisions which can be taken to prioritize the retrofit interventions depending on the geographic positions of the buildings. The analysis methods of philosophy of materials and technology history of these architecture objects are important, the theory of the shape from the time, but also phenomenology and the philosophy of Deleuze.
Heritage Database (to be completed 2024)
The Team
Dipl.-eng. (architecture/TH), PhD Scientific Researcher, IMUAU
+ 20 years research experience
20th century heritage, disaster management, digital architecture history
PhD Architect, Habil. Urban Planner, IMUAU Professor
+ 25 years research experience
landscape design, landscape urban planning
PhD Architect, Lecturer,
Built Heritage Consultant
Built Heritage expertise on Art Nouveau
PhD Architect, Scientific Researcher, IMUAU
ecosystemic architecture, eco-design and circularity, institutional management, entrepreneurship