Building History

As highly complex three-dimensional objects, historical buildings generally have an equally multifaceted object biography. The field of historical building research has established suitable formats and quality standards for the documentation of historical buildings, especially for the analog work over decades. The effective transfer of these standards into efficient digital workflows that take into account the diverse informative value of the source genre, the ongoing and at the same time considered integration of rapidly developing technical documentation and analysis methods as well as the full utilization of the potential of data processing technologies represent immense tasks for the discipline. Yet it ensures its future viability and opens up new fields of research. Other than in the case of artefacts that can be deposited or museumized, historical buildings are generally in continuous use. Documentation and analysis results from historical building research therefore not only provide primary data for cultural-historical classification, but also form an essential basis for building conservation. Therefore, historical building research is not only involved in purely academic research, but also plays a significant role in active planning processes. With regards to the object biography and corresponding research data cycles, the Community Cluster Building Research will incorporate the special features of historical architecture as an object category described above at relevant positions in the entire NFDI4Objects work program. Another goal is the close integration of the subject’s concerns and results into related neighboring disciplines with the help of a collaborative, networked RDM.