CREATION OF 3D ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES OF HISTORICAL SITES:CONCEPT, MAINTENANCE AND STORAGE OF LONGTERM PROJECTS – 3D ARCHITECTURAL STUDY OF CARIČIN GRAD – JUSTINIANA PRIMA

Abstract

For more than two decades now, software for multimedia allow experts from various fields to dive into re-creation of disappeared historical places and various monuments of the past. The quality of work has been in all times thoroughly scrutinised by the audience, especially by the scholarly community which is sensitive, for a good reason, about the approach to the work, the elaboration according to the available scientific data and, finally, the result which causes proper or wrong perception of the monument. In this way, there is no hiding place for the expert(s) whose knowledge and skills are exposed by the 3D architectural restitutions of individual edifices or urban agglomerations. The question of an acceptable quantity of “intelligent assumptions” and the ratio of “hypothetical ideas” will remain permanently present; it could not be generalised in terms of numbers but rather reconsidered from one project/monument to another. The experiences gathered in five successive projects, conceptualised as 3D architectural studies of the Early Byzantine city of Caričin Grad – Justiniana Prima, and realised within the Institute of Archaeology in Belgrade between 2002 and 2018, have revealed several premises that could serve well, or at least as a guidance, in further development of digitisation of ancient architecture as a hybrid archaeological and architectural discipline. These premises vary from case to case, depending on research concepts, whether the work on 3D re-creation follows the archaeological excavations or not, or if the project of 3D visualisation was conceived as a tentative study of different possibilities based on the so-far obtained data or as an attempt in comparative architectural analyses, etc. As a summarised 3D architectural study, Project for Caričin Grad reflects a changing methodology in approach, which has evolved in the last fifteen years, following new archaeological finds and the progress achieved through interdisciplinary research.