Sognare a occhi aperti. La città storica verticale e l’accessibilità per tutti/Daydreaming. The Vertical Historical City and Accessibility for All

Giovanni Battista Cocco;Caterina Giannattasio;Nicola Paba;Andrea Pinna;Marco Tanca

2021-01-01

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Abstract

As part of the activities of the nascent Accessibility-Lab, recently activated at the University of Cagliari, the work aims to present an innovative application capable of promoting ‘increased cognitive accessibility’, proposing a device, experimented in the historic city of Sardinia’s capital, aimed at making available ‘precluded views’. In fact, through immersive film footage to be viewed in VR mode, this device might provide the possibility of visiting inaccessible places - towers, ramparts, historic buildings, etc. - from three different angles: the view of the monument, the view from the monument, and the fanciful view. Conceptually, in line with the rêverie movement, the proposal considers the historical structure as the subject of our exploration, a place where and from which visitors project themselves, emphasizing a dream-like dimension. “Daydreaming” is a way of offering people with disabilities the opportunity to be where they cannot be physically, traversing elements of inaccessible heritage and, therefore, experiencing emotions along the virtual itinerary. Thus, the project intends to read and to render readable the urban space through (im)possible itineraries, which enable one to broaden one’s vision of the real, between the virtual and the fanciful, also providing the opportunity for able-bodied individuals, to imagine new relationships between parts of the city. These tools could be enriched with narrative, playful and didactic expedients in order to implement the aspects regarding cognitive accessibility.