A 3D digital model of the Medici Palace in Florence is being built to test whether engineering-grade modelling tools can finally make virtual reconstructions credible for humanities research. Art and architectural historians have long struggled with 3D models that lack transparent documentation, making them unusable as serious research outputs alongside peer-reviewed articles. Current projects remain isolated, short-lived, and divorced from scholarly questions. This disconnect means the field’s potential—to capture a building’s changing form, its dispersed artworks, and conflicting interpretations over time—is rarely realised. If successful, the project will establish a best-practice methodology for object-oriented 3D modelling in the humanities, using the same Building Information Modeling standards (EN ISO 19650-1:2018) that civil engineers rely on. By linking model objects to Linked Open Data resources, the approach would make digital reconstructions traceable, interoperable, and archivable. This could transform how scholars publish, share, and validate research on complex monuments, moving 3D models from an “unserious” fringe to a credible, scalable research tool. The immediate impact is methodological rather than commercial, but the infrastructure it tests could reshape how cultural heritage knowledge is produced and preserved.
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Context: Recent technological developments in the fields of data acquisition and data processing (computer graphics and knowledge representation) open up exciting possibilities for object-oriented disciplines, in particular the history of art and architecture. The drive to reconstruct historic contexts has accelerated with accessible rendering programmes and powerful computer graphics. However, without embedded and transparent metadata and paradata, 3D-models still lack credibility as valid research outputs alongside conventional peer-reviewed articles and books. While widely recognized, the transformational potential of 3D modelling and visualisation tools for humanities research is thus rarely realised. Challenges: Present work is held back by unresolved issues of documentation, traceability (validation), interoperability, accessibility and long-term availability. Isolated projects with limited lifespans discourage engagement from humanities researchers. Current trajectories show these trends persisting and deepening, with 3D for Cultural Heritage focused on documentation, divorced from humanities research. Practice falls far short of recommended scientific practice, fostering negative and persistent perceptions amongst humanities scholars of 3D models as an ‘unserious’ field. It has been clear for some time that negotiating this impasse will require digital practitioners in AAH to move beyond historic reconstruction and superficial visualization, to engage in sustained discussion with architectural engineers and data scientists around technical standards and platforms. Aims and Objectives: Serious 3D in Art and Architectural History aims to overcome this stubborn disconnect between potential and practice with an innovative approach, drawing on established collaborative and interoperable technologies from civil engineering cross-referenced with Linked Open Data Resources. We demonstrate proof of concept with a building-scale model of an iconic art historical monument, the Palazzo Medici (Medici palace) in Florence. This case study – with excellent documentation, exceptionally rich scholarly literature, and a diaspora of major artworks commissioned for its interior – will demonstrate how a HBIM 3D-model can provide an open research environment for a highly complex monument, capturing its chronological stratification, relevant historic sources, dispersed contents, and diverse (often conflicting) scholarly analyses with their attendant uncertainties. An interdisciplinary team of art and architectural historians, engineers and data scientists will investigate the requirements for data acquisition, data processing, data publication and storage using the example of the Palazzo Medici in Florence. Using this tangible example of a Renaissance building containing extensive material for research in art and architecture history, the project seeks to test the extent to which the tools for complex and interdisciplinary planning and documentation of construction and operation processes can be applied to humanities research; re-thinking approaches to object-oriented research, interpretation, dissemination and access to the knowledge (publication). Potential Applications and Benefits: Of central importance is the development and evaluation of a research methodology based on normative structuring, object-oriented 3D modelling, and role-/model-based communication using established standards Building Information Modeling (EN ISO 19650-1:2018), establishing a best practice paradigm which will be applicable and scalable across the discipline. By linking objects with further relevant Linked Open Data resources beyond the structured data model of the 3D model, the model enables further contextualisation of the model in regard to the FAIR principles. Opportunities for publication and long-term archiving of the generated digital research data will be explored and exploited, incorporating existing and emerging infrastructure systems and services of engaged partners and supporting institutions and initiatives.
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