Page - 5 - in Analogue Meets Digital - History and Present IT Augmentation of Europe’s Largest Landscape Relief Model in Villach, Austria

MultimodalTechnol. Interact.2019, 3, 44 5of12 on11February1915 in itscapitalKlagenfurt. Althoughhe learnedtheartof terrainmodellingasan autodidact, he may be considered the best Austrian modeler (although the world-famous geosculptor ToniMair, 30April1940–8August2015,wholivedinSwitzerland,wasactuallyalsoanAustriancitizen, born near Meran but grown up in Innsbruck). He used the same techniques as the famous Swiss relief-modelartistsof that timetocreateatotalof37 landscapereliefmodels. Apart fromin-depthfield surveysresultinginnumerouslandscapesketches,healsousedaself-constructedtheodolite. Hisrelief modelof theAnkogel-HochalmMassif (1889),where theOberlercherspitze (3051m)wasnamedafter him,broughthiminternational recognition. In1894,hefinishedhismainwork, the large-sizemodel (7.0 m×3.5 m) of the Großglockner, Austria’s highest peak, at a scale of 1:2000. In the following years, he created numerous landscape relief models of regions in and outside Europe, frequently only based on the information of moderately reliable maps and few pictures. Many of them were then copied for universities and museums. More than 100 copies of his Schulrelief von Kärnten (Carinthia) (1893/94) went into theschoolsofCarinthia (cf. also [5,6]). Oberlercher emphasized the rocks in relation to the surrounding terrain by using distinct brownish-greycolors,andglaciershadthemostnaturalappearance. Also, individual rockyledges (German: Schrofen), talus slopes, and high-altitude alpine pastures got their specific, natural colors. The coniferous forests of the Alps were painted in a darker green, river forests in the valleys and fields got lighter green hues, and swamps a brownish green color. Running waters were drawn in dark, standing waters colored in light blue, a pinkish grey color was used for settlements, and even isolated farmsteads of alpine farmers were precisely indicated in order to give an impression of the altitude of theproductivesoil. Incontrast tocontemporarymaps, railwayswerenotpainted inblackbut in the most intenseofallcolors, inred,whereasroadsandpathswere, for identicalreasons, indicatedinblack. The artistic and realistic painting, which was completed in laborious manual labor, allowed us to experience the landscape relief model from the surrounding floor as a sort of micro-scenery and from thegalleryaboveasasortofmapprojection(cf. [1]). The actual painting was limited to the 1913 extent of Carinthia including the border seam to East Tyrol(German: Osttirol)inordertoallowacompletecoherentsurfacerepresentationoftheGroßglockner Massif. The neighboringHabsburgcountries ofSalzburg, Styria (German: Steiermark), SlovenianKranj (German: Krain), as well as Italy were left white. The former Habsburgian Crown Land Carinthia (Kärnten) also comprehended the Mieß (Slovenian: Meza) Valley, the region of Seeland (Slovenian: Jezersko), and the Kanaltal (Italian: Val Canale) down to Pontafel (Italian: Pontebba). After World War I, these regions were assigned to Yugoslavia and Italy. This is why, today, the landscape relief model shows a rather wide borderseam in the South. In 1918/1919, the regions conveyed away were whitewashed. WheninWorldWarIIUpperKranj (German: Oberkrain), thepartofSloveniaannexed bythe DeutschesReich was, for ashort time, supposed tobeassignedto GauCarinthia (German: Gau Kärnten, theNaziGermanyadministrativedivision), the ideacameuptoextendthe landscaperelief model correspondingly. Fortunately, this has been postponed by the municipal administration of Villachuntil “nachdemEndsieg” (after the UltimateVictory), so that today’ssituationremained[4]. Inorder toobtainamostnatural (over)viewof the landscape, acatwalkorgalleryat aheightof about 3 m was built. From its elevated positions, the vertical exaggeration recedes, and the impression of the landscape relief becomes sort of normal, like from a prominent peak. Further, the size and theelevatedviewingpossibilityallowforbothanexcellentoverviewaswellasaquickorientation, and the distortion due to the height exaggeration vanishes. With its final size of 182 m2, the landscape reliefmodelofCarinthiawas,andstill is, the largestof itskindinEurope. Today,both thesheltering structureandthereliefmodelareprotectedmonuments. The“Reliefgebäude“or”Pavillon“(shelterbuilding)wasconstructed in1912,basedontheplans of theVillachCityBaurat (anAustriantitle formunicipalconstructionengineers), thecivil engineer Rudolf Müller. Initially, it received natural light through a large glass roof (Figure 2a–c). Since this sort of natural illumination did not prove itself in practice due to interaction with the sun radiation, only a fewyears later, thebuildinggotaroofmembranemadeof tinandanelectric lighting(Figure3) [4].