When a fire smells of future

Every day a part of our cultural heritage is worn out: time, weather events, human negligence can be the underlying causes. But sometimes, even an unpredictable fire can smell of future. In this article we will see how. 

Fire. I remember the fire in my eyes on the day I watched Notre Dame burn. I had the computer screen in front of my eyes and in a video they were showing how, slowly, the flames were shaping up.

Here is the video story. What you can see is the fire and the disbelief of the Parisienne tourists.

One year has passed already since when, in the late afternoon of the 15th of April 2019, a fire broke out in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It is pointless to linger on the reasons why it happened. What is undeniable is that today we only have the memory of the wooden Violet-Le-Duc steeple and the roof of the cathedral. Part of a masterpiece of our cultural heritage has gone up in smoke.

Developments: 3D reconstruction

A few days ago, I came by an interesting article on the newspaper Repubblica, which underlined that “if there will not be any new surprises, the reconstruction works will not begin before 2021”. And yet, in another article published on L’Avvenire,to the question “how will the internal structures be?” Father Henry de Villafranch -Chapalin of Notre-Dame and lecturer at itsf. aculty- answered: “The cathedral will be rebuilt exactly as it was, even the wooden interiors, thanks to an accurate 3D reconstruction that was made with precise measures a short time before. It is necessary to create a heavy roofing for the walls to stay up”. I exclamied to myself, how wonderful!

From these words emerges ever more the role that technology plays for cultural heritage and the importance of documenting, monitoring, studying the world’s cultural heritage through a rigorous development of recording techniques.  

Promoting the cultural heritage

AerariumChain, innovative startup, also devotes its energy to giving technology an essential role in the protection and promotion of the cultural heritage. In particular, it uses advanced technologies such as 3D scans, AI and blockchain to create a cloud tool in support of the digitalisation of the state of preservation and the processes of restauration and maintenance of the cultural heritage.

Specifically, the 3D scanning including all the data of the work of art is uploaded on the collaborative platform SweetHive so that every data can be protected and preserved in time. This way, the data can always be useful at the time when, in extreme cases of loss or destruction, we aim to retrive the visual knowledge of lost works of art and give back to the world the joy of the beautiful, with restorations that reproduce the author’s original idea.

The future is innovation

It is thanks to resources like this and other technological innovations now available to Macron and the French authorities that they hope to rebuild Notre Dame in time for the 2024 Olympics that will take place in Paris. And it will be the same for the works of art uploaded on AerariumChain, the innovative solution of SweetHive dedicated to art and the perfect way to protect our cultural heritage.