Understanding the Complexities of Cultural Heritage. Digital visualisation and interoperable communication for a deeper knowledge of architectures in minor historical centres, considering place perception.

Considering the historical landscape, as a stratified palimpsest in which natural, anthropic and cultural elements are interwoven, represents an essential key to interpreting the historical, social and environmental dynamics that shape territories. Within this framework, small historic centres offer a privileged test-bed for investigating the interaction between the natural environment, the built fabric and the daily life of communities, revealing sensitive balances and relations that have settled over time and are now often undermine by increasingly rapid transformations. This research is being conducted in the area of CEAR-10A, design, but it continuously collaborates with other disciplines, recognising the complexity that is characteristic of smaller historic centres: historical stratification, interaction with the natural landscape, the morphology of the urban fabric, and the socio-cultural substrate. Using morphological metric surveys as a starting point for recording the geometric memory of small historic centres, the research attempts to find a solution for recording urban data that goes beyond metrics, implementing a qualitative survey that uses perceptual questionnaires, the study of urban patterns, analysis of landscape transformations, and the study of architectural types. Combining data on community’s perception and integrated surveying methodologies, a three-dimensional virtual space is modeled, integrating in one tool quantitative and qualitative information. The research approach - based on an integrated reading of the territory, historical knowledge, direct observation and community involvement - is therefore intended to offer a methodology that can also be replicated in other similar contexts, promoting multidisciplinary and analysis of historical traces as key for future actions.