DIGITAL REVOLUTION, ARCHITECTURE, URBAN (RE)GENERATION, A CRITICAL OVERVIEW ON THE HARDWARE FOR THE "DIGITAL LAYER"

The contemporary town is a mix of transformations, intentions, need of knowledge, opportunities and difficult challenges. Even if global/general planning should be the main reference for organic development, interventions based on isolated intentions, occasional researches, specific investigations may bring positive and interesting contributions to the general debate and to the occasions of knowledge. In the recent years, with an ongoing growth, a digital layer is overlapping the various levels of the urbanscape. It exists "virtually" but with a more and more strong consistency in all the realities of the town. When William Gibson wrote "virtual space is where we are when we are at the telephone with someone else" he was maybe barely imaging how much the mobile communications and the Information Technology was going to transform the perception of the "real" world. In this context, the architect, the urbanist, the designer are called to operate, not as simple users, in which case they are at risk of losing a precious opportunity, but as promoters, members of the teams that should exploit the possibility offered by different tools, both on the front of gathering data, analyzing them, using to propose new solutions which hopefully will be tuned with the new reality. In the paper proposed here, a critical analysis about the Hardware tools that offer new possibility of knowledge and functioning in the middle of the digital revolution will be presented, reflecting on the new level of skills required for appropriate intervention on buildings and new urban assets. A specific taxonomy will be defined for the digital survey tools and the product they allow to generate (3d laser scanner, photogrammetry, Drone/UAV, diagnostic tools, sensors, personal devices for operators/users, etc...) as well as their state of implementation in the general architectural workflows.