Dür.air is a mobile augmented reality application conceived as a field-based extension of the scientific and epistemological framework developed within the n-Dame_Heritage project. Its name reflects its core ambition: the digital unfolding of reality through augmented interpretative representation. The system is designed to reconciling observation, interpretation, and documentation at the very place and moment where scientific observation is produced, by embedding spatial, temporal, and semantic information directly within the act of in situ investigation. In disciplines such as archaeology, conservation–restoration, architectural history, materials science, and landscape studies, knowledge emerges through situated practices: careful inspection, comparison across viewpoints and time, measurement, annotation, and the progressive construction of interpretative hypotheses. Reality is not simply recorded; it is progressively unfolded through observation, selection, and interpretation. With the generalisation of 3D digitisation, these practices have increasingly relied on data-intensive pipelines in which acquisition and interpretation are separated in time and space. Dür.air proposes an alternative paradigm, in which geometry, semantics, and observation remain tightly coupled within a single, mobile, and autonomous environment, allowing reality to be explored and interpreted as it is being digitally constructed.

By combining persistent augmented reality tracking, real-time LiDAR sensing, and on-device photogrammetric reconstruction, dür.air enables a continuous articulation between the physical world and its digital counterparts. Observations are spatially anchored, semantically enriched, and preserved across successive field sessions. Annotations, measurements, and interpretative hypotheses are created directly in the context where they emerge and remain coherently aligned with the environment over time. In this sense, the system supports a progressive “unfolding” of the object or site, in which each new observation, each new viewpoint, and each new semantic layer contributes to an evolving augmented representation. The platform integrates, on a single tablet device and without reliance on network connectivity, the complete chain of field documentation: in situ and ex situ annotation, structured semantic description, metric measurement, dense 3D modelling, orthophoto and profile computation, interactive 2D and 3D analysis, and the replay of spatio-temporal observation trajectories. Geometry is not treated as an end product, but as a support for interpretation, memory, and cumulative reasoning, enabling the digital representation to grow and to be reinterpreted across time.

Beta testing program

The beta testing program will allow a limited number of heritage researchers and professionals to test the  dür.air mobile app.

Registrations will be available from Spring 2026.