VisuApps
Famous sites and cities from documented data: time layers, reconstruction with degree of certainty, sections and figure-ground plans.
Apps
The Forum as a working model on the real ground plan: a time slider from the regal period via Campo Vaccino to today, buildings appear and disappear, a ground section shows the metres of fill. Every building with dating, dimensions, source and degree of certainty (standing, excavated, reconstruction); today's buildings from OpenStreetMap.
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Church 537, new dome 562, mosque from 1453, museum from 1934, mosque again from 2020: timeline with minarets and buttresses by date, furnishings for each use. Section with load path through pendentives and semi-domes, collapse of 558, view up into the floating dome with light through the ring of windows; surroundings from OpenStreetMap.
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Pantheon, Hagia Sophia, Florence Cathedral, St Peter's, Taj Mahal and St Paul's as sections at the same scale: side by side, overlaid or one at a time, with a person for scale. The span has hardly grown since the Pantheon; progress lies in construction and height. The Forces switch shows compression, hoop tension, thrust and what resists it.
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The Parthenon has almost no straight lines: curved steps and entablature, swelling columns tilted inwards, thicker corner columns and narrower corner bays. A slider exaggerates the deviations up to 100 times until you see them; measuring lines, axes up to their meeting point about 2.3 km up, theories about the purpose side by side, paint as a reconstruction.
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From Old St Peter's via Bramante, Raffael, Sangallo and Michelangelo to Maderno and Bernini: timeline 324 to today, designs morph into each other, plan as an architectural drawing, the Vatican today from OpenStreetMap. The view from the square at eye level measures why the façade hides Michelangelo's dome from close up – and how much a central plan would have shown.
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One square kilometre each from OpenStreetMap at the same scale: Rome, Venice, Stone Town, Barcelona, Manhattan, Paris, Stuttgart and Reutlingen. Figure-ground, streets or both, metrics such as built-up area and block size, plus the street rosette with orientation order after Boeing: grids show a cross, grown cities a circle.
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The complex from OpenStreetMap with the planning grid after Koch: charbagh garden, water axis and reflecting pool, mausoleum by the river rather than in the middle of the garden. Axial view from the great gate with reflection, section with the hidden inner dome, sun across the day and year. The only asymmetry: Shah Jahan's cenotaph.
World heritage & building historyTry itWant to use these apps in your courses? Let’s find out what works for you.
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