HBIM and VR: Strategies for Digital Reconstruction of Brazil’s National Museum
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Abstract
To reconstruct the Brazilian National Museum’s bi-centenary palace from its ruins, a historical building information model (HBIM) was created, with the purpose of preserving and retrieving graphic, technical, and historical data of the building that housed the first and most important museum in Brazil. This paper presents the process and products created from the HBIM model, aiming to demonstrate how digital tools can be used to safeguard documents, architecture, and the memory of destroyed spaces. The model of the National Museum’s palace presents three hypotheses for the building's older phases, from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and an additional phase representing the impact of the fire that destroyed it in 2018. The HBIM model highlights the connection between architecture and the country’s political history, as it was the residence of the Portuguese king D. João VI and the Brazilian monarchs D. Pedro I and D. Pedro II, until it was converted into a National Museum in 1818. This work made it possible to revisit the museum building on a digital platform, allowing the public to experience its now non-existent spaces and to access historical data of the palace’s structures through parametric objects modeled. Based on the HBIM model, the project successfully created internal views of iconic areas of the building (as they were before the fire) in virtual reality, providing a deep immersion in a 3D digital environment. The results obtained through these digital strategies integrated into a historical research methodology are important drivers for the much-needed promotion and digital preservation of the palace and its memory as built cultural heritage and as a symbol of Brazilian national history and architecture.
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