Anagrafe della ricerca

CRAFTED proposes prototyping an AI-enhanced digital infrastructure capable of processing, analyzing, and interrelating data related to construction techniques, materials, the geographical origins of components, historical and contemporary site actors (e.g., artisans, architects, engineers), and terminological practices. As an initial pilot, the project focuses on creating a dynamic glossary of historical construction techniques and technical terms used in Early Modern restoration projects. This glossary is compiled in English to ensure semantic coherence and international usability but is made accessible in multiple European languages to reflect regional variations and support inclusivity. This multilingual accessibility is central to the project’s goal of integrating diverse national restoration histories within a shared European knowledge framework. The glossary serves not only as a linguistic reference but also as a semantic core for a broader knowledge graph that maps interrelations among terms, materials, processes, and historical contexts. Artificial Intelligence, including Generative AI, supports terminology extraction and the inference of semantic relationships, enabling the glossary to scale over time and adapt to new sources, linguistic inputs, and user expertise. CRAFTED takes a consciously interdisciplinary approach, using methods from architectural history, heritage studies, digital humanities, computational linguistics, and AI. The project seeks to generate both theoretical insights and technological tools: it proposes a new digital epistemology for architectural and restoration knowledge, broadens the applicability of generative AI to historical and domain-specific language contexts, and introduces an innovative methodological framework for semantic modeling of heritage data. The project is inherently high-risk due to the variability, scarcity, and multilingual aspects of its source materials, along with the challenge of adapting generative AI to low-resource, semantically unstable domains. Nevertheless, its high-gain potential lies in its ability to create a transformative infrastructure for restoration knowledge—one that informs conservation practice, advances digital heritage research, and broadens public access to historical construction cultures. CRAFTED rethinks how it collects, interprets, and uses digitized restoration data. By creating an intelligent, multilingual archive rooted in historical expertise and computational innovation, the project establishes a new foundation for interdisciplinary research and sustainable cultural heritage preservation in Europe aligning with current research trajectories that emphasize the strategic role of digital tools, historical knowledge integration, and adaptive reuse in building resilient, sustainable frameworks for cultural heritage preservation.