Digital Archives for Preserving and Communicating Architectural Drawings

Archives created by architects and engineers are unique and significant sources for scientific research, in relation with multiple disciplines. Contemporary architectural archives, as a documentary evidence, contain relations which cannot easily be read and contextualized because of the documents organization and order, given by the archival necessities and the producers' working activity. According to the archival science, the documents reorganization is forbidden even if it could be helpful for their analyses, so the use of digital databases at microscopic and macroscopic scale allows the contextualization of the archival data, in order to elaborate information and acquire relations. Digital archives are the virtual place in which researchers could play an active role in the discovering of innovative and unprecedented interpretations about the architectural documentation; such free interpretations are advanced by the critical use and support of the representation techniques and technologies, restoring the building image in a more synthetic or analytic level.