The city that doesn´t exist: multimedia reconstruction of Latin American cities

Since 1995, our research group has used multimedia systems to investigate the city as a physical footprint of the social dynamics of cultural, economic, political and social activities. The original contribution of this research is the study of symbolic structures that define the evolution of cities. This investigation focuses mainly on attributes related to buildings and public spaces. We based the multimedia systems on historical 3D digital models of two Latin-American cities: Havana, Cuba and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Through these models, we collected and restored their urban structures in different historical periods to facilitate the understanding and analysis of the evolution of each city´s identity. This research is part of a project called “Evolution of the Symbolic Systems of the Latin-American City”. The central purpose of this study is the development of a hypermedia application-an analytical system rather than a descriptive one. This application will enable a creative reading of symbolic structures´ meanings, in terms of their cultural value in the city´s form and of the collective understanding of the urban image. The investigation tries to break down separate treatments of the different levels of exploring the city: the large, general territorial plan; the urban structure of the squares, streets and public spaces; and the architectural structures. We undertook the hypermedia presentation as a new way to represent urban and architectural analysis