Accessing monumental architecture and documenting World Heritage sites in India, Italy, and the Vatican City since 2010, the DHARMA team has been using state of the art technologies such as large-scale laser scanning and subsequent point-cloud optimization to assemble a base of operation and visualization of the heritage sites for the public, and especially educators. The team aims to deliver interactive experiences that support multiple modes of exploration and examination of the 3D models: including comparing reconstruction with historical survey maps, isolating individual models for high-resolution rendering, and acquiring contextual documentation of historical building stages.

 
         
 

 

    The Roman Forum, Italy    

 Point-cloud scan and reconstruction

This showcase is an example of the interactive visualization tool developed by DHARMA visualization team since 2021. Our program was designed to primarily focus on education, and thus obtains a lighter-data delivery using Portree and WebGL. Our visualization team designed visualization structure along with our research projects and documentation of the Roman Forum to integrate archaeological context, high-resolution photography, digital reconstruction, and high-accuracy 3D scan of the majority of the site to capture and deliver a user-friendly platform to navigate and examine the prominent historical site in a greater academic context and architectural detail. More detailed record and discussion are accessible in the published book "From Pen to Pixel".

Access Interactive Page           

 
 

 

 

    The Cortile del Belvedere, Vatican City    

 Construction phases

The onsite work for documenting the Belvedere started in Fall 2016. Over multiple days (over 12-to-14-hour days) of intense surveys of the site where digital cloud data was collected. The site was surveyed using 4 different documentation techniques. These include, 1) 3D Laser Scanning, 2) Gigapan, 3) Hand survey 4) Field notes. 23 laser scan positions using P20 laser from Leica Geosystems were captured to create a detailed scan survey of the site. The Rhino reconstruction overlays were added during a study from 2019 to 2022. 

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    Taj Mahal, Agra, India   

 Visualization Tool in Development

The Taj study was initiated in 2015 with multiple visits to the site to document the site with methodologies stated in the above projects. The scale of the Taj complex is the largest in our work till date. 

 
 

     Our Visualization Team    

 
 

Dr. Krupali Uplekar Krusche
Associate Professor
School of Architecture
University of Notre Dame

 

 

Giovanna Lenzi-Sandusky
Director of Relations
School of Architecture
University of Notre Dame

   
 

Dr. Chaoli Wang
Associate Professor
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Notre Dame

 

 

 

Chase Brown
Alumni
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Notre Dame

Siyuan Yao
PhD Candidate
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Notre Dame

 
 

Chad Brown
Undergraduate Student
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Notre Dame

Blake Caven
Undergraduate Student
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Notre Dame

Margaret Zhang
PhD Candidate
Architectural Design and Computation
Massachusetts Institute of Technology