Virtual Museum as a New Reality: The Case of the “Paper Architectures” Rebuild

The will to experiment architectural design processes on a virtual space is the main feature of this project; in this case the typology of museums has been adopted to investigate the potential of virtual reality on architectural visualization. Its particle structure allows to host a multitude of different collections (3D digital arts, 3D model reconstructions…) and each one of them can be modified or increased during time thank to the flexibility and dynamic state of the museum. It could be seen as a “never-ending” project, or a continuously growing museum. In this contribution it will be presented the first collection prototype, created from the tridimensional reconstruction of some of, as they’re called, visionary architectures: it’s a selection of works, from 19th century to today, born “on paper” and never built. The aim of the first collection project is to experiment a different kind of approach in the field of historical “paper architectures”, trying to increase their value and their suggestive nature and sharing it through the museum structure. Basically the project gives this works the third dimension and through augmented reality allows them to be explored as a building inside a virtual world in which they don’t have to deal with technical issues, and in which creativity can take place as in their authors’ mind.