In architectural design, models—whether physical or digital—take on the role of a manipulable “twin.” A twin that is not so much an exact replica of a physical object as the classical “digital twin,” but rather a “concept,” which is modeled using digital tools and including geometric, kinematic, and logical data. Until this concept takes shape in a built architecture, the digital model undergoes several transformations and lifecycle phases in an iterative process in which several twins are created. The advantage of these twins is that they can be used—in conjunction with the real requirements and data—to experimentally test the development states (of the architecture) within dynamic interrelationships between the physical, the real, and the modeled, the digital. But what happens when a digital model experiences the materialization of its data, or vice versa: when a physical model, or even the built architecture, is transformed back into a digitalized proxy?

Interdisciplinary research with the aim of teams generate and share large amounts of data developing innovative concepts and methods using the latest technologies. The results of collaborative scientific reports supported by data work are usually summarised in visualisations. The original data itself mostly ekes out an existence in the But is it not the benefit of storage of an internal university server. scientific knowledge that it can be consulted for research–as the American engineer Vannevar Bush post-war years?1 In the classical definition, repositories are storage already demanded in the locations for today’s digital objects.2 This includes survey and measurement data, technical processes in the form of software, or data on domain-specific objects of investigation such as in a repository in the form buildings. Researchers deposit their knowledge of a publication that is accessible and thus available to others, can be reused and referenced as a source. In this way, science and research build an imaginary data building where more than storage can take place, in fact, the collective exchange and exploration of data in the field.

This paper addresses the barriers to data-driven research: In addition to the power and control of institutions over the availability or unavailability of data, interoperability presents significant difficulties and barriers to its effective use due to proprietary or unstructured data formats. Taking two case studies from urban and construction research, we outline the processes and lifecycles of data and sources that we are investigating as part of the DFG-funded development of the specialist information service BAUdigital. In doing so, we aim to illustrate the importance of accessible and available data for addressing current social and environmental challenges in theory and practice.

The specialised information service FID BAUdigital develops a 3D scanning and data publishing service for architectural models. Starting with an automatic acquisition procedure featuring photogrammetric methods implemented in the CultArm3D it goes on to postprocessing and data enrichment and further to a repository infrastructure providing access guided by FAIR data principles. Such an undertaking demands a metadata model informed by the digitized objects and utilisation of the resulting digital assets in architectural research. Therefore, this contribution identifies at least four relevant perspectives on digital architectural models: 1. As digital objects as result of a scanning procedure. 2. As representation of artifacts emerging from a certain cultural context. 3. As items within a collection. 4. As representations of build or unbuild architecture. These perspectives have to be taken into account in metadata models and as starting points for open linked data. Examples are given reflecting these perspectives as well as use-cases for digitised models. These digital versions provide more access to architectural models and more interoperability for semantic web applications. But they are not exclusively seen as medium for scholarly or museal use but as research data allowing new digital methods. The FID BAUdigital aims to further develop this service alongside with suitable metadata models driven by the demands of the research community.

Developing participatory computational design systems for a wider professional community of architects is a key enabler to explore the benefits of massively-collaborative creative design search and discovery. In this paper we formulate three principles to increase the creative control of non-expert users when developing participatory computational design systems. We present an overview of four existing strategies for encoding design content into digital modeling environments and introduce a fifth one, assisted sculpting, that uses iso-surfacing and constraint-solving. Finally, we describe our technical implementation of an assisted sculpting digital environment with potential applications in creating massing models and schematic designs.