3D PRINTING AND AUGMENTED REALITY: THE PROJECT FOR THE SECOND COMPETITION FOR THE ITALIAN PARLIAMENT BY ERNESTO BASILE

Abstract. The project for the second competition for the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, drawn up between 1888 and 1889 sees Ernesto Basile (Palermo 1857-1932) as winner ex aequo. Basile's project envisages the construction of a large monumental building (182.70 m by 171.40 m), in which the three halls, the Chamber, the Senate and the Royal Sessions Hall, develop around a large central courtyard; it will not be realized due to the fall of the Crispi government in 1891, but presents, in embryo, solutions adopted in the expansion of Palazzo Montecitorio (1903 - 1918), entrusted to Basile, in which the Chamber of Deputies, still existing today, is may consider “a sort of budding, from the organism of his second Parliament Building” (Mauro, Sessa 2000b).

The original drawings are kept and cataloged in the Basile Endowment of the Scientific Collections of the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo, edited by Professor Ettore Sessa (Mauro, Sessa, 2000a; Sessa, 2014, Mauro, Sessa, 2015).

In a first phase, the conjectural reconstruction and digital modeling was carried out (Avella, 2020), and in a second phase, a first 3D printing model was created, limited to the main front, which involved the design of the decomposition and assembly according to criteria respectful of architectural parties (Avella, 2021).

This work presents the progress of the work, extended to the bodies containing the Chamber of Deputies and that of the Senate and the integration with Augmented Reality systems, in view of the future permanent exhibition at the premises of the Basile Endowment. The integration with Augmented Reality visualization systems stems from the desire to allow the observer to visualize the external envelope of the physical model and the internal spaces of the parliamentary halls.