The course focuses on an innovating cross-sector field and presents how digital technologies can be applied to the Humanities with a wide range of subjects linkable to architecture. The teaching deals with the methodologies of the Digital Humanities especially applied to the history of the architecture, and the history of the city and the territory.
On the matter of the Master this course focuses on cultural and social sustainable development: it is aimed to analyze and experience how the use of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can help to access information and make understandable the process of change of the built environment in order to share data and to achieve a sustainable development. In this purpose theoretical lessons and practice deal with specific themes of risk related to big changes. The case study focuses on the environmental changes following the High Aswan Dam in the 1960s-1970s, the UNESCO campaign for the rescue of temples, the changes of housing and social life of the Nubian villages.
The tasks of the teaching are both theoretical and practical. The student will learn both a theoretical approach to the methodologies presented by discussing case studies of Digital History and related literature, and will have a practical experience by applying some of these methodologies to a case study through a research training.
It should be noted that practice is an integrant part of this course and the expected learning; outcome also are an integrant part of the exam. Training is given only in the teaching semester.

The expected learning outcomes of the course concern notions on the main area of the Digital History especially applied to the built and humanized environment, the notion of a cultural landscape with its components, as well as notions of architectural culture and its various sources. Related to the case study, the expected learning outcomes concern the correct use of digital data and tools for the historical research and the presentation of the outcomes. Students will develop abilities in a strict approach to the matter, in implement a research, and creativity in conceiving and presenting their research.
The student is expected to develop peculiar expertise in producing and understanding how to present historical contents with Digital Humanities methodologies, how to recognize links between sources and digital representation of the research, how to manage historical data for understanding and representing the change and the risk. He/She will become able to study an area by a diachronic perspective with a digital historical approach by using direct and indirect sources, to search data and interpret data into an historical perspective, in order to use them for virtual re-constructions of the historical process of the changes. She/he finally will be able to adopt this approach in collecting and visualising data, and in creating an historical storytelling scientifically based on sources.

The students are expected starting the course with some previous basics on historical culture, on digital architectural drawing and 3D modeling (this course doesn’t teach 3D modeling!), and basics of software such as AutoCAD, SketchUp, 3DStudio Max, Revit, Blender, Rhino.

The course includes theoretical lessons on Digital Humanities presenting the interdisciplinary cultural debate, and methodologies. Lessons deal with the presentation and the analysis of case studies of spatialisation and visualization of historical contents and data for different uses and users. It will present digital historical products and digital platforms online and on site, such as virtual museums, databases, GIS, 3D models, websites by analysing the historical sources and the historical interpretation through the use of the tools (20 hours). After this starting the course deals with lessons on the matter of the case study by presenting the environment and the Western perception of its cultural landscape since the Napoleon campaign, the construction of the dams, the UNESCO campaign for the rescue of the temples, the building sites for the translation of temples. This part of the program present the case study into the context of the 19th-20th century Western architectural culture by focusing on a range of different sources open access on web. At the same time the matter will be developed as a research training by assisting students to develop their research on a specific case study related with the big change of the area (40 hours).
A second teacher will teach a part of the course (20 hours).

The theoretical concepts listed above will be taught by teaching lessons and coordinating workshops involving students in debate, experience, research and creation. Some visits will be organized in the period of the course (i.e. Museo Egizio). The research training is delivered as a workshop and concerns little groups of 3 students applying methodologies to a given case study. Digitized drawings and information, written texts and documents, and/or digital platforms to implement will be available for students in order to start their own research. The students, regularly assisted, will collect data, interpret sources and visualize historical information on previous conditions, risks, changes, and developments of the site.

1. Readings
Bandarin, R.van Oers, The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing Heritage in an Urban Century, Jhon Wiley &Sons, 2012
A. Burdick, J. Drucker, P. Lunenfeld, And T. Presner, J. Schnapp, Digital_Humanities, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012 https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262018470_Open_Access_Edition.pdf
R. Tamborrino (ed.), Telling the history of the city in the Age of the ICT Revolution, Rome: CROMA-Università di Roma Tre, 2014
2. Ancillary readings:
J. Guldi, ‘What is the Spatial Turn?’, Spatial Humanities, Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship, University of Virginia, http://spatial.scholarslab.org/spatial-turn/.
R. Tamborrino, ‘The Public Use of History in the Digital Society’, in Digitcult (May 2016), pp. 49-58, http://www.lim.di.unimi.it/subsites/digitcult/index.php/dc/article/view/39/31
J. Theibault, Visualization and Historical Arguments, in J. Dougherty-K. Nawrotzki (eds.), Writing History in the Digital Age, Ann Arbour: The University of Michigan Press, 2013, pp. 173-185
T. Weller (ed.), History in the digital age, London - New York, Routledge, 2013
3. Readings on the case study:
World Heritage Cultural Landscapes, UNESCO Paper Series 26 (2010), http://whc. unesco.org/en/series/26/
UNESCO, Monuments of Nubia-International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia http://whc.unesco.org/fr/activites/172/
Olga Prud'homme Farges, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, une passion égyptienne (52’), documentario prodotto da Catherine Dussart, Parigi 2009 https://vimeo.com/26365844

Rosa Tamborrino, Willeke Wendrich, ‘Cultural heritage in context: the temples of Nubia, digital technologies and the future of conservation’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation (Rouletge, UK) vol 40, 2, anniversary special issue, pp. 168-182 doi 10.1080/19455224.2017.1321562

A. Paolini, ‘Successes and Outcomes of the Nubia Campaign’, Museum International 57 (2005), n. 3, pp. 55-59

Rosa Tamborrino, Paolo Piumatti, Modeling the catastrophe, and beyond. Digital History and Visualization methods for multiscalar process description of the Nubia Temples flooding
in C. Gamardella (ed.) World Heritage And Disaster, XV International Forum 'Le Vie dei Mercanti', La Scuola di Pitagora editrice, Napoli 2017, pp. 1323-1330 ISBN 978-88-6542-582-4


Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, Victoire en Nubie: la Campagne internationale de sauvegarde d'Abou Simbel, de Philae et d'autres trésors culturels, 1992 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0009/000919/091978f.pdf
engl. trasl. Temples and tombs of ancient Nubia: the International Rescue Campaign at Abu Simbel, Philae and Other Sites, 1987

The exam includes a test on theory and an oral public presentation of the outcome of the practice.
The student will deliver for the exam: all digital products of his/her research including a report on sources and methodologies. In the report students are requested to specify fully the link to each source of information available for each digital product (hypertexts, movies, animations). At the dates of the exams on the POLITO portal students will deliver the materials mentioned above, and will face a written te2t on theoretical contents of the course (4 questions).
Teachers will evaluate the written tests and the deliverables; at the end of this evaluation, students will be admitted to show and discuss the achieved results during the group activity, by means of an oral presentation (about 1 week later). Each student will be individually evaluated by considering the wisdom autonomy, the study, research and communication ability and the specific abilities achieved during the teamwork. The final score will be the mean of the written and practical tests.
Students not attending the course shouldn’t access the exam. Nevertheless a special written test will be available for not attending students for some specific reasons. Candidates are expected answer to several questions on the 1.Readings plus at least one more reading among 2. Ancillary readings and one more reading among 3. Readings on the case study.