In recent years, the concept of open heritage has assumed growing relevance in the field of conservation and valorisation of cultural heritage, especially in the context of architecture and design archives.^[1] Open heritage refers to public accessibility and free use of cultural and documentary resources intending to promote the dissemination of knowledge and the active participation of the community in safeguarding heritage. Along with it, the digital innovation and transformation promoted by the Italian Digital Agency (AgID),^[2] aimed towards public services and digital accessibility, offer new opportunities and challenge institutions to improve good practices. This approach represents a significant evolution for cultural institutions, compared to traditional conservation practices, which often limited access to archives to a restricted audience of scholars and specialists.

The collections of Archivio Progetti,^[3] the research and archival centre of the Università Iuav di Venezia and part of the Documentation and Library System Unit, cover the culture of design and architecture in its vast disciplinary articulations and scales, from landscape architecture and urban planning to furniture and industrial design, as well as photography, visual arts, and visual communication of the 20th and 21st centuries. Archivio Progetti Iauv serves as a shared space for the national and international scientific community by making available primary sources (authors’ drawings, grey literature, unpublished writings, and model collections) to balance conservation and enhance the value of the collections by creating research tools, publishing its outputs, and disseminating its heritage through exhibitions.

Sharing Culture Through Open Archive: ApOnline Integrated Digital Strategy

Our homepages and online catalogues serve as the primary digital platforms for accessing our collections. Users can download digitised materials, which are watermarked for copyright protection. Historically, our services have primarily served academics, while now, we are open to larger audiences and include public engagement activities.

When UNESCO published the report Towards Knowledge Societies for Peace and Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2013), one of the keynotes was on the importance of informal education and learning by mediating content via social media and digital platforms.

Therefore, we proposed and launched a project called the ApOnline integrated digital strategy, blending web, social media communication, and digital projects. The aim was to build an open system, with an editorial plan, multimodal approach, and design interactions with the users and so-called ‘extended visions’ on the collections, by quoting Herbert Bayer (Harvey, 2020; Lopes, 2021).

The Petit Tour Platform: Improving Visibility and Use of Digitalised Material

Traditionally, access to such heritage has been limited to physical spaces, which often restricts the audience to those who can visit the locations. Digital exhibitions have become increasingly important in the strategies of cultural institutions for producing and disseminating knowledge. They offer several advantages, including the ability to reach wider audiences, protect fragile documents, and extend the duration of public engagement with cultural artefacts. Moreover, digital platforms allow for the integration of multimedia elements, creating richer and more engaging user experiences.

To create the digital exhibition called Petit Tour,^[4] we developed an open-source platform in 2020 within the communication and IT office of our university during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the ApOnline digital strategy to enhance the visibility and accessibility of its collections. The platform was designed by using the Instagram graphic approach and made adaptable to various curatorial and communication needs, allowing for the creation of online exhibitions that could be accessed by a global audience.

The platform is based on a content management system (CMS), which consists of a back-end system for managing the resources and a content delivery application (CDA) for the front-end interface for public access.Each small online exhibition consists of a quote, the curator’s statement, and a set of 24 images presented with a dual visualization mode that fosters user interactivity, allowing both detailed and overall views. The platform also includes tools for social media integration, enhancing public engagement through interactive and visually appealing content.

An online exhibition presupposes a narrative construction of digital contents organised in chronological, biographical, thematic or semantic–associative iconographic order and allows users to:

• reconcile the potential of the media (text, images);
• reach a wider audience;
• protect documents with a fragile state of preservation;
• expose for a longer period.

Moreover, this tool:

• serves to enable learning and enrich knowledge;
• improves the public engagement of citizens;
• goes beyond academic walls and provides a better service for everyone.

Curating, designing, and producing an online exhibition involves the conciliation of humanistic and digital-technical skills, visual culture, and careful analysis of the methods of managing and communicating the content to satisfy the needs of different user groups.

We launched a call and invited professors, doctoral students, and researchers to present their research work to a wider audience. Overall, we received 11 proposals and published eight contributions. Thanks to the positive feedback, our in-residence researchers also curated an online exhibition as a scientific product and evidence of their work on the archival fund (Figure 1). The Petit Tour is an example of successful co-creation and collaboration between scientific coordinators and PhD students and archivists.

Case Study: Petit Tour ‘Colours of Women’

Our attention has been focused on investigating women’s contributions to cultural heritage in the 20th century. This research remains a work in progress, where we map well-known figures alongside others whose biographies are incomplete or even absent (Google Arts & Culture, n.d.). Many of these women were pioneers of radical and inspiring transformations that have shaped new generations of designers. In this context, we would like to highlight the two curated tours we organised on this subject.

The Petit Tour initiative, Colori delle donne. Le progettiste italiane dal fondo di Giorgio Casali, that we co-curated with Serena Maffioletti and Raimonda Riccini, thematically explores the archives of photographer Giorgio Casali, focusing on the vibrant women-led projects found within them (Figure 2). Both the Petit Tour and the video animation by Massimiliano Ciammaichella were presented online and on social media as part of the Italian Festival of Archives, Archivissima, and the Archive Night on 5 June 2020. The fourth edition of the festival, promoted by Promemoria, was dedicated to the theme ‘Women’ and featured stories of change and transformation. The social analytics showed a large visualisation of the exhibition (over 9,000 visualisations from Facebook, Instagram posts, and YouTube).

The collections of Archivio Progetti contain an archive of the first woman to graduate from the Iuav School of Architecture in 1928, Egle Renata Trincanato, who recognised photography as a valuable design language beyond the visual. This online exhibition Lo sguardo di Egle Renata Trincanato,^[5] which we curated in 2021, intended to position Trincanato’s contribution within the ‘history of gazes’ as defined by Roland Barthes, in the visual culture of contemporary architecture. That small e-exhibition is an example of how digital platforms can be used to discover underrepresented groups in cultural history, showcase the work of women, educate the public on the ongoing discourse on gender equality in the field of design, and move beyond (United Nations, n.d.).

Of late, we are facing a shift in producing and accessing our collections. The rapidity of digital developments has already allowed us to talk about ‘digital archaeology’ for the fast obsolescence of digital platforms. If, on one hand, digital tools enable broader access to collections, on the other hand, protocols for long-term preservation are still being developed. The primary goal is to maintain websites and digital platforms in their original state, ensuring that information remains accessible and usable over time. Second, it is crucial to guarantee the authenticity and integrity of metadata by mentioning its structure and usage rights to ensure legitimate access to information. An outstanding project developed by the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze on web archiving aims to collect, preserve, and guarantee accessibility to web content related to Italian history and culture. The access to website collections is organised thematically, and to perform automatic collections (harvesting), websites must allow access to the Archive-it bot.

In 2010 the term ‘phygital’ was officially recognised by the Accademia della Crusca in Italy, combining the terms physical and digital retail experience. This term now appears to be the new key to innovation in the cultural milieu as well.

The question remains as to what will happen next. It is certain that very soon, when applied to digital tools, online catalogues, and platforms, artificial intelligence (AI) will change the ontology of the structures of our activities and will considerably impact the way we present and produce exhibitions online. Furthermore, AI will be transformative in the way we manage architectural, design, and photographic collections.

For instance, AI-driven technologies like handwritten text recognition (HTR) and entity recognition (NER) enable the automatic transcription and identification of historical texts and locations, making archival materials more searchable and accessible to researchers and the public (Patton, 2024). However, AI integration into these processes raises significant copyright issues, as the use of AI-generated content may blur the lines between original and derivative works, potentially infringing on existing copyrights. The forthcoming EU AI Act 2025, which will be effective in August 2025, is expected to address some of these challenges by providing clearer guidelines on the use of AI in cultural contexts. This legislation could offer opportunities for more transparent and ethical AI applications, ensuring that AI tools respect intellectual property rights while promoting innovation in cultural heritage management.

Despite these potential benefits, there are limitations to consider. To effectively integrate AI tools into these processes, cultural institutions must adopt a balanced approach that respects both the creative potential of AI and the need to preserve cultural authenticity. This process involves developing AI systems that can work in tandem with curators to enhance user experiences without altering the core narrative of cultural artefacts. Moreover, the ethical considerations surrounding AI’s role in the field of cultural heritage are multifaceted and open to interdisciplinary contributions.

Needless to say, on one hand, AI can democratise access to cultural artefacts by making them more accessible to a broader audience with good digital literacy. On the other hand, there is a risk of cultural homogenising or misrepresentation if AI algorithms are not carefully designed to respect cultural diversity and contexts since these algorithms work only on the already available digital heritage.

Nevertheless, the AI Act 2025 also addresses ethical and deontological concerns by promoting transparency and accountability in AI applications. Meanwhile, cultural institutions will contribute to ethical and visual literacy regarding the management and safeguarding of the authenticity and integrity of cultural narratives.

Conclusion

The transition to digital platforms, as exemplified by the initiatives of Archivio Progetti, illustrates a significant paradigm shift in cultural heritage preservation and dissemination. The Petit Tour initiative showcases the advantages of digital exhibitions in reaching global audiences, safeguarding delicate materials, and fostering public engagement beyond academic circles. The case study on women’s contributions underscores the role of digital tools in addressing underrepresented narratives and advancing gender equality in design history. However, the dynamic nature of digital innovation, including the emergence of AI, poses challenges and opportunities that demand continuous adaptation and strategic foresight from cultural institutions. The convergence of physical and digital (phygital) experiences is poised to redefine the ontology of cultural activities, paving the way for innovative approaches in exhibition production.

References

Further Readings

Abstract

The concept of ‘open heritage’ has gained increasing importance in the field of cultural preservation and enhancement, particularly in architecture and design archives. This paper explores the evolution of accessibility in cultural institutions, with a focus on the digital initiatives of the Archivio Progetti at the Università Iuav di Venezia. The ApOnline integrated digital strategy exemplifies the blending of web platforms and social media to broaden public engagement, culminating in the creation of the Petit Tour platform. This platform utilises an open-source design to present curated online exhibitions, integrating multimedia elements and offering interactive, user-friendly interfaces. A notable case study, Petit Tour: Colours of Women, highlights efforts to uncover and celebrate women’s contributions to cultural heritage, demonstrating the transformative potential of digital platforms in promoting inclusivity and preserving fragile materials.

Keywords

Digital cultural heritage; Research tools; Online exhibitions; Exhibiting archives; Public engagement; Digital accessibility