In 2017, the Knight Foundation awarded Vizcaya Museum and Gardens a Museums and Technology grant to turn preservation-grade 3D documentation into public interpretation. I was working at Vizcaya as its digital strategist and helped implement the technology program.
The project focused on two of Vizcaya’s most significant but difficult-to-access features: the Barge in Biscayne Bay, decorated with sculpture by Alexander Stirling Calder, and Robert Winthrop Chanler’s swimming-pool grotto ceiling. Both were important to the site, both were vulnerable, and neither could be experienced closely by most visitors.
Note: This post reflects my own professional experience and perspective. It does not represent an official position of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.
The problem was not scanning
By the time of the grant, laser scanning and photogrammetry could already produce extremely detailed records of historic places. The harder problem was translation: preservation data was large, technically demanding and created for accuracy rather than visitor interaction. The project asked whether the same source data could support conservation, web access, gallery interpretation, virtual experiences and tactile learning without rebuilding the project from scratch for every use.
That distinction mattered. A preservation-quality point cloud might contain exactly the information a conservator needs and still be far too heavy to manipulate smoothly on a museum kiosk or tablet. Turning documentation into interpretation required choices about file formats, point budgets, graphics performance, hardware, interface design and the amount of detail that could be retained without making the experience unusable.
A network of partners and formats
The work became a multi-institutional pipeline. University partners captured laser scans and photogrammetry. Files moved among preservation and interpretive formats including E57, PLY, OBJ and STL. Daruma Tech developed interactive experiences from those assets. Florida International University helped translate models into 3D-printable objects. National Park Service Historic American Buildings Survey staff reviewed an alpha version and advised on terminology, interaction, software conversion and point-cloud performance.
The kiosk software used open-source tools including Potree, PotreeConverter and three.js. The project documentation and implementation were maintained in GitHub, and the final report explicitly described the development approach as open and replicable, with project materials released under the MIT License.
What actually got built
The grant produced more than one visitor interface. Vizcaya developed a large 4K touchscreen kiosk, portable Surface-based kiosk experiences for the Barge and Grotto, an online Virtual Vizcaya experience drawing point clouds from Amazon S3, virtual-reality assets based on photogrammetry, and 3D-printed replicas for tactile interpretation. Staff evaluated the main kiosk through observation, time-lapse capture and built-in analytics.
In practice: exploring the Barge on a kiosk
This short phone recording captures me demonstrating the interactive 3D model during the project’s final stages. I explain how visitors could examine the Barge from viewpoints that were inaccessible in person, bringing the artistic details of the structure into reach through a touchscreen.
Video transcript (1:00)Read the timestamped recording
Edited lightly for punctuation and recognition errors, including Vizcaya’s name.
0:01 I’m at work today at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, Florida, where I work as director of technology and digital initiatives. We’re wrapping up a project funded by the Knight Foundation to virtualize spaces that visitors can’t currently get to. And I’ll show you an example of that.
0:20 One of the more noted ones is called the Barge. It’s basically a big stone boat that is located behind the main house and museum in the bay. So visitors can’t get to it. So they spend a lot of time staring at it, probably wondering what it’s like to be on it. This gives them that opportunity.
0:38 The Barge can be manipulated, looked at from all sides.
0:47 It’s a really interesting structure with lots of artistic qualities. So in a future video, I’ll tell you a little bit more about its history, as well as introducing you to the actual place.
At the waterfront: why the Barge matters
In a companion recording made behind Vizcaya’s main house, I explain what visitors were seeing across the bay. The Barge was a sculptural landscape and a setting for gatherings, but it also served as a breakwater protecting the waterfront house. Visitor studies found that people lingered at this vantage point, curious about a structure they could not visit. The recording also documents visible storm damage after Hurricane Irma, connecting the interpretive challenge directly to conservation.
Barge waterfront video transcript (2:01)Read the timestamped on-location explanation
Lightly edited for punctuation and obvious speech-recognition errors; the phrasing otherwise follows the recording.
0:02 I’m standing at the back side of the main house at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, and you see that balcony right behind me. Behind the window in that balcony was the shaving pedestal of the founder. And every morning as he was shaving, he had a magnificent view to take in. I’ll let you take a look at that.
0:30 So if you saw my previous video on the work that Vizcaya is doing to virtualize spaces that visitors can’t currently get to, it’s funded by the Knight Foundation. The view behind me is going to look familiar. This is the Barge. It was sculpted by Alexander Stirling Calder and carved from local stone.
0:49 It had two primary purposes. One was as kind of a party barge. It was landscaped. There was a gazebo on top of it. The founder and his guests would have parties there sometimes.
1:01 And also it has a very important secondary function, and that is to serve as a breakwater. So we have storm surge, some hurricanes occasionally; this breaks the waves so that they don’t reach the house, which is very close to the bay. It’s a magnificent structure.
1:24 We do visitor studies, and we see that there’s lots of dwell time in this spot. So visitors spend a lot of time taking a look at the Barge, wondering what it’s like to be on it. And that’s the reason that we’ve decided to create the 3D models.
1:38 Because of its very practical secondary function, it also suffers a lot of damage and has conservation issues. Take a look at it. There’s a little bit of rubble currently on top of the Barge. That was from Hurricane Irma. And I’m going to show you a little bit more about that when we go back to the kiosk.
The project also exposed the limits of the technology. Even powerful Surface hardware required the number of rendered points to be reduced substantially. Native preservation point clouds did not move cleanly into every virtual-reality environment. Different uses required different conversions. “One scan, many uses” was possible only because a translation layer existed between the archival data and each public experience.
Why openness mattered
The proposal had always framed replicability as part of the project, but the final report shows that this became a real implementation choice. Rather than treating the kiosk as a proprietary end product, the team documented the stack, shared code and recorded the conversions and dependencies another institution would need to reproduce the work.
That was an important shift in emphasis. The useful artifact was not only a kiosk sitting at Vizcaya. It was a documented pathway from preservation capture to public experience.
What I see now
Looking back, this was one of the points where my thinking about preservation technology widened into systems thinking. The scan itself was no longer the end product. Its value increased when the same underlying knowledge could move through conservation, interpretation, accessibility, learning, web delivery, physical replication and institutional partnerships. The project was really about building relationships among data, people and uses.
That also explains why some of the technology has aged while the approach has not. Platforms come and go. File standards evolve. Hardware becomes inadequate. But the architectural question remains: can an institution create digital assets once, preserve them well, and then responsibly adapt them for many forms of public meaning?
If you want a primer on the underlying technologies, see 3D Documentation: A Primer for Cultural Heritage.
Case Study at a Glance
A scannable reading of the case, with each conclusion tied back to the supporting passage in the essay.
Context: Vizcaya wanted to make two vulnerable, inaccessible site features—the Barge and Chanler grotto ceiling—available for closer public exploration. Highlight the Supporting Passage
Challenge: Preservation-grade 3D data was too large and technically specialized to function directly as a visitor experience. Highlight the Supporting Passage
Practice: A cross-institutional team translated scan data through multiple formats and open-source tools into web, kiosk, virtual and physical experiences. Highlight the Supporting Passage
Outcome: The project produced fixed and portable kiosks, an online point-cloud experience, VR assets, 3D prints and a documented open implementation pathway. Highlight the Supporting Passage
What this case suggests: The lasting value of preservation technology grows when one body of high-quality documentation can support many institutional and public uses instead of remaining a specialist endpoint. Highlight the Supporting Passage
Supporting Documents & Sources
View related technical context & surviving project evidence
- 3D Documentation: A Primer for Cultural Heritage — companion explanation of the technologies and workflows behind the project.
- The case draws on the surviving grant proposal, technical reporting, implementation records, and public project documentation described in the essay.
Archive Note / Provenance
View what the grant record reveals beyond the original announcement
The original grant announcement captured the excitement of receiving resources to attempt the project. The surviving proposal and technical reporting make the more important story visible: what began as a 3D-documentation initiative became a test of how preservation data could move through an institutional ecosystem.
The strongest lesson is the separation between source data and delivery platform. Preserve the richest documentation possible, then build adaptable pathways that let different audiences and systems use it. The kiosk, headset, website, or print is not the cultural record itself.
Critical Questions + Add to the Record
- How do we make knowledge more accessible without losing its meaning?
- What happens when useful tools become systems we depend on?
- How do we preserve memory when the systems carrying it keep changing?
Application here: the project tested whether one high-quality preservation record could be translated into many public uses without confusing any single interface with the underlying cultural data that needed to endure.
Did you work on this 3D documentation project, use one of its public interfaces, or preserve technical documentation from it? Add firsthand knowledge, corrections or surviving evidence to this record.
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