Tactile maps for historical buildings: design methods and approaches

The Main Building of the University of Pavia has been a centre of learning for about 650 years. It is a large building used daily by students, professors, researchers and admin staff, but also by tourists who visit Pavia and want to see the University halls where Alessandro Volta and Ugo Foscolo (to name just a few) used to teach. It also contains a museum, a library, a bookshop and it is considered the most important cultural and conference centre for the town. The Main Building is open every day to allow people to visit the courtyards and to pass through to move in the different part of the town around, but the historical and prestigious Halls cannot be always visited, because they are still used for lessons, final thesis discussions or they are closed during the week-end. The University of Pavia decided to improve the accessibility of some historical Halls placing small tactile maps for information, including geometry and morphology of the indoor spaces, at the entrances of some historical Great Halls (such as Aula Volta, Aula Foscolo, Aula Scarpa, the Museum, etc.). The maps show the presence of the original furnishings and significant decorations and there is a key in capital letters and Braille. They were developed with the advice of a blind person, helping to mould the tactile maps in order to give much information. The aim of this project is not only to promote the perception of the university spaces by blind and visually impaired people, but it proposes to offer a new opportunity to know the historical building and its main spaces, regardless of their opening or use at the time of tourists visit. Allowing to know the indoor space of rooms through a plant in relief, placed in the adjacency of the main entrance and sheltered from the severe weather thanks to the colonnade, is certainly a significant opportunity to improve the usability and the knowledge of the Main Building, reinforcing the process of removing the architectural and sensorial barriers in the University of Pavia.