Documentation of Cultural Heritage – From Analog to Digital: Online Certificate Course by CHC

The Center for Heritage Conservation (CHC) at CRDF introduced Documentation of Cultural Heritage – From Analog to Digital: A four-week online certificate course held in November - December 2020. The course, held for four consecutive Saturdays aimed to provide the participants exposure and training to the methods of manual and digital documentation of cultural heritage.

The course targeted Architects involved with documentation of cultural heritage sites, teachers and researchers of Architecture, Urban Design, and conservation. Course tutors included academicians, conservation, and architecture experts. Practice, research, and academic engagement of Architecture, often, include methodical recording and documentation of the existing form of cultural heritage. Traditionally these processes have heavily depended upon rigorously measured drawings and keen human observations.  

As technology continues to evolve with time, digital tools are providing increasingly detailed and accurate information within a relatively shorter time span. Choice of these tools, manual or digital, is often dependent on many contingencies of the site and resources. Through this course, practitioners and researchers were enabled to decide on the appropriate tools and methods to use for the documentation of cultural heritage, especially in the Indian context.

It was designed to accommodate three modules that took a deep dive into the documentation of cultural heritage. Participants went through lectures from experts, videos, and case studies to understand the nuts and bolts of the subject. There were four exercises aimed at giving participants, hands-on training as they continued to delve during the duration of the different modules. The three modules included Measured Drawing; Digital Documentation I; Digital Documentation II; and Documenting Urban Sites.