The Craft and Care of Reality Capture

“Why don’t you just use a technician?” Posed at a recent conference of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, this question was puzzling and, admittedly, a bit exasperating. Nonetheless, this is not the first encounter with skepticism concerning digi tal documentation techniques for architectural research. The conference session “The Digital Lens on the Past” centered on the use of digital technologies to record and represent aspects of built heritage, with emphasis on indicating a fourth dimension: time. This included the visualization of ruined or lost elements, unrealized interiors (e.g., Longwood in Natchez, Mississippi), rates of decay at heritage sites in severe peril, and seasonal changes in constructed landscapes.1 If formulated differently, it is not difficult to imagine that the attendee’s question would have instantly perplexed the room of architectural historians, cultural resource managers, and preservation professionals: why not hire someone to autonomously complete an analog survey of a building or site? That person could pass along the information, and the scholar would then advance all subsequent study and analysis. Between the two parties, there would be a linear and sequential project path, albeit entirely independent: technical data input and output from research professionals. In short, the conference attendee’s question placed elements of documentation practice and architectural scholarship at odds. If it is difficult for most professionals in the built environment to envision the success of a project in which analog survey and onsite experience are divorced from research and analysis, why has a hierarchical divide emerged with reference to digital documentation? This essay argues that when fully integrated into the discovery and analy sis phases of a project, digital documentation is a valuable, reliable, and exploratory practice that can combine information about the physical aspects of the built environment with additional archival, experiential, and technical layers. The incorporation of reality capture— the use of technical means to record and visualize elements from the physical world— offers new veins of exploration and analysis for the built environment, and it has been used in architectural history for decades. Yet there are ongoing hesitations and misinterpretations about the use of digital technology for documentation in the built environment. Foremost, digital documentation is viewed as a tool rather than a methodology, and some view its products solely as visualizations. Examples of digital documentation include 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and 360 imagery captures; each offers a different way of docu menting, visualizing, and studying a site, but they all require additional tools and software (Figures 1– 3). Architects, architectural historians, and DANIELLE S . WILLKENS