RESUrRECT – AiD develops sustainable and safe virtual reality teaching methods of historical building restoration

The REnewable and SUstainable REhabilitation of Cultural and HisToric buildings After Disaster - more familiarly known as RESUrRECT AiD - project continues the collaboration between the universities on digital teaching tools. RESUrRECT AiD builds on the results of the BENEDICT project, which achieved promising outcomes regarding defining principles for a BIM-enabled learning environment, for example.

The RESUrRECT AiD project focuses on the safe and sustainable restoration of historic buildings while promoting lean construction principles, such as eliminating unnecessary steps in processes, takt production, and unrelenting process improvement. The project's researchers see artificial intelligence and VR as effective tools for teaching these skills, as they enable more accurate depiction of damage, making it easier to select appropriate repair methods and communicate them clearly to builders.

“This also relates to the results of the LiveCol project, which showed that augmented reality technologies can be used to examine the construction site and its plans at the same time, seeing both the real structure and the desired solution. This helps reduce construction errors,” says Tampere University’s University Instructor Toni Teittinen.

Each university has its own pilot

The project is now at the stage where each university has to select its own pilot site, which will be used to build and test teaching platforms. Tampere University’s pilot site is the Harju School in Rahola.

“We chose one of the Harju School buildings as our pilot because it meets all our criteria being an at least a hundred-year-old historically important building. It is also close to our students, which allows us to easily visit the site and test the teaching platforms in practice,” Teittinen explains.

First the researchers collect information about the pilot sites and then they transfer them to a teaching software. Finally, the data is processed, and the further development of VR applications that support teaching can begin.

“We received access to a large amount of design data about the Harju School, which is rare and truly fantastic! It allows us to distribute information correctly for the needs of this project,” Teittinen emphasizes.

“While focusing on the pilot, several new perspectives have already emerged, such as how the inventory of structural elements and the observations collected from it could be linked directly to objects rather than spaces and photographs, enabling a more coherent flow of information throughout the building’s lifecycle. This would require the data to be stored so that it can be accessed in the right context. Such an approach could enable new use cases in renovation and new ways of utilizing technologies without changing the architect’s workflow. I am looking forward to that,” Teittinen adds.

RESUrRECT - AiD is funded by the European Union's Erasmus + programme with a total sum of 400 000 euros.