Comunicazione interattiva per l'architettura e il design. Interfacce per un sistema informativo su base tridimensionale. Interactive communication for Architecture and Design Interfaces for an information system based on 3D representation

MAED, Material library for Architecture and Design, is a material database with educational g, it is maneged by DIARC, University of Federico II of Naples. To design the website we have studied many of the existing material databases with similar purposes. We identified some databases that have similar goals like ArTec and we compared the different interfaces used. Some material database used TUI, Text-based User Interface, rather than GUI, Graphic User Interface, and no material library is linked with the application fields such as architecture and Design. MAED is a materials database with educational purposes, linked to the architecture and design, that uses an interface where the iconic code prevails over the verbal one. One of the priorities of the research was to define a front-end able to show the methodological criteria that guided the construction of the database. The interface is a metaphor to the discipline of knowledge to which it refers, the suitable metaphor to represent the architecture and design is the 3D model or its simulacrum. The experimentation made for MAED arises in an intermediate position between the two opposite ends where are placed all the interfaces that have been implemented in recent decades, between the writing and the world, between the hypertext and the three-dimensional representation of the reality, between wikipedia and google street view. According to the educational purpose of the project MAED we chose an iconic, an user friendly interface, that have to facilitate the access to the website and to simplify the navigation inside. We access the database through three main query: MATERIAL (materials library), ARCHITECTURE (for Architecture) and DESIGN (and Design). We can select one of the works that are in the database using the query ARCHITECTURE \ Unit architectural. An interface with a high level iconic is the way to access to different types of information connected to the unit architectural selected. The information was organized into five different types: Info, Pictures, and Video Drawings, provide general information on the work, while the selection of 3D Model provides access to an interactive PDF with 3D PDF, that is a tool to understand the structure of MAED and to facilitate the navigation inside. The PDF format, universally readable, has been used to build an interactive interface, capable to link the 3D model with the database MAED. The PDF becomes an additional tool to browse through the site, an user friendly interface, which, through links appropriately designed, allows us to navigate to another section of the same document or to return to the database. In particular, the home page of the PDF document is a kind of home page that allows us to explore 3D Model that is inside the document or to go to MAED to query the system using queries such as Material, Element Technical , Architectural Unit, Unit Technology. The graphical interface, is a pictographic figure that represents information, in which we linked text to image, in this case the text is intended to further clarify the organization criteria of the database that reflects the classification of the technological system based on the current legislation. So the Window is linked to Technology Unit, in particular the Closing Vertical, that is still connected to the class of Technical Elements, Vertical Window, and even to Basic Materials, Glass and Steel, and so the Structural System allows us to explore the website from the structure of the auditorium of Ravello to Concrete. The interactive PDF document, readable with Acrobat Reader, contains 3D models interactively explored, the 3D function is activated by simply clicking on the image, as well as interactive exploration of the model were created by the user links to the text so to make the image dynamic. In the PDF document we set up some different possibility to interact with the 3D model. Graphical interface, that is the Home Page of the PDF document, allows us to navigate in the document and to the database. We can access, through the links set up, to the Technological Units studied, in this case Structures elevation, Inclined Internal Partitions and vertical exterior closures, or to explore the Architectural Unit. In addition to free exploration by the user we set up a guided exploration too, that allows to facilitate the understanding of the behavior of dynamic image. In this way the exploration and enjoyment of the 3D model is not a "dead end" of the system but rather an interface capable of stimulating new queries and the website is not designed as a simple container, but rather like a cognitive machine, with educational aim but not only.