Providing a new approach to the archiving and presentation of Heritage Building, Virtual Planning has been working with VEPS project partners The Environment Agency of England and Wales and the University of Western England on the creation of a new kind of model for The Museum of Welsh Life at St. Fagan’s in Cardiff.

In their most ambitious project to date, the Museum has recently moved the abandoned medieval church of St Teilo’s from a remote hillside in Llandeilo Tal-y-bont to St Fagan’s open-air museum in Cardiff. A major reconstruction and refurbishment project, conducted in full view of the public, is now underway. The process, believed to be the first of its kind in the UK, will make use of traditional building methods and see the church of St Fagan’s, which dates back to the 13th century, restored to resemble how it would have looked during the pre-Reformation heyday of c. 1510 – 1530.

Workflow – illustration of the data processing stages

Socially and architecturally significant, the Church of St Teilo’s has prompted the adoption of new methods for archiving and presentation. VEPs collaborators will be applying their expertise of using virtual reality to represent ever changing environments to catalogue the building and map out the changes it has been though over time. Using LIDAR scanning technology, The Virtual Planning Group at the University of Salford in association with FusionGFX, has already re-created a 3D model of the building structure right down using remaining evidence to re-create many original features, which have since been lost.

Currently we are working with the Environment Agency to integrate the virtual model with aerial scanned data of the original site, gathered by the Environment Agency of England and Wales, to show the church in its original setting. Together with expert heritage building advice provided by the University of Western England, the complete interactive virtual environment will be used in the visitor centre at the Museum, enabling visitors to engage with the Church in ways that were not previously thought possible.

Optimised: 3D model placed onto a 2D drawing plan to compare the whole surrounding area of modelled building

Next step: Model integrated with airborne LIDAR and Ordinance Survey data.

Initial models were completed during the summertime of 2006 and we envisage the project will be completed towards the end of 2007. So keep checking back for updates!
(Updated February 2007)