25 september 2025
VR environment for the course "The Digital City"
This is a 3D reconstruction of Uilenburg in the 17th century, produced for the course "The Digital City: Architecture and History of Jewish Amsterdam". Includes neighbourhood layout and gables reconstructed by students of previous years. Students can compare and evaluate reconstructions based on the VR environment and historical materials. This helps understand historical houses, giving students a better sense than 2D historical maps. This model is accessible as a VR room using Hubs Cloud software (virtualplaces-uva.eu). For reproducability and reuse, consult the manual at https://doi.org/10.21942/uva.30490373 and follow the instructions to set up your own Hubs Cloud instance. For the relevant dataset, please use the link to the Zenodo deposition. Funding and context Virtual Past Places has been made possible by a grant, the 'Stimuleringsregeling Online Onderwijs' from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap, OCW), coordinated by SURF, the cooperative association of Dutch educational and research institutions. Virtual Past Places includes open access publication of all developed teaching materials as Open Educational Resources, the development of training materials, and the organisation of inspiration and counselling sessions for peers. In case you're interested in the results of this research project, and/or participate in it, please contact J.Waagen@uva.nl.
Chiara Piccoli, Gabri van Tussenbroek, Jitte Waagen, Markus Stoffer