Palimpsest Cities: Gamification and Storytelling for Architectural History and Cultural Heritage Awareness

As we recognized early on that if we want to foster meaningful cultural heritage awareness, we must begin by transforming educational practices. Starting from the higher education since most of th...

As we recognized early on that if we want to foster meaningful cultural heritage awareness, we must begin by transforming educational practices. Starting from the higher education since most of the project team is from academia, we firstly wanted to overcome the inefficiency of architectural history and cultural heritage courses. However, we simultaneously wanted to amplify the project’s reach through public workshops, guided tours, seminars, and a mobile guide designed to make architectural heritage accessible to a broad and inclusive audience. The Palimpsest Cities project aimed to enhance the academic and pedagogical competences of the project team through an interdisciplinary, innovative architectural history and cultural heritage course; foster greater awareness of urban history and architectural heritage among architecture students at partner (and other) universities; extend this impact to the wider public —particularly children, persons with disabilities, the elderly, and low-income groups— through free field trips and workshops; develop a modular course adaptable to other multi-layered cities worldwide; and integrate innovative digital and creative educational approaches to replace conventional instruction methods.