Visualisation and geometric modelling are today widely applied to the field of architecture. However, they remain often considered as means to communicate about the edifice rather than means to investigate the edifice. Our research focuses on the issues raised by the development of visualisation and modelling techniques on the Internet for documenting and representing edifices of the architectural heritage. Our position is that 3D representations can greatly favour the readability and the accessibility of data related to an edifice, on the condition that this representation shows architectural concepts before geometrical ones. Such interpretative visualisations of edifices can then be used to analyse simulations of buildings partly or totally destroyed. What is more, such visualisations can facilitate the construction of an information system about the architectural heritage, in which 3D models are used as interfaces to a database.
The global disposal we propose to discuss includes:
• An object-oriented model of architectural concepts,
• A VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) architectural modeller,
• A resource database containing data on the edifices represented,
• Interfaces to the database on Internet, among which VRML models.
Our contribution details those various aspects and the experiments we have carried out on chosen buildings of the city of Cracow.