Lines from the past: Non-photorealistic immersive virtual environments for the historical interpretation of unbuilt architectural drawings

The trajectory of virtual reality for architecture is towards photo-realism. While this may be effective for some contexts, we propose that abstraction is more appropriate for the purposes of a historian interpreting drawings of unbuilt works of architecture. The case study we are using to explore this proposition is the Palazzo Littorio competition set in 1934 Rome. We present two prototype immersive virtual reality (iVR) applications developed in Unity for Oculus Rift: the first uses an etching aesthetic to produce a quasi-realistic site context and an interface that enables the comparative evaluation of competition entries from key viewing positions; the second application takes an even more abstract approach, where the aim is to immerse the historian within a 3D drawing, along with other historical material (drawings, photos, paintings, narrations of texts) and uses spatialized sound to evoke the ambience of the period.