From Plans to Experience: Reconstructing Early 20th-Century Department Stores as 3D and AR Models

At the start of the twentieth century, department stores in Europe and North America had developed a built style. New buildings spanning city blocks, with pane after pane of glass windows, lit with electricity, enticed shoppers into open showrooms filled with mass produced goods. Over the course of the twentieth century, many of these buildings have been destroyed or remodeled. Where architectural plans, drawings, and pictures exist, we can reconstruct these stores using 3D modeling programs as part of the research process and the dissemination of that research. This project uses two models, built from plans of stores in Sheffield, UK and Cologne, Germany, to provide a comparative analysis of the use and meaning of space in department stores in the early twentieth century. AR versions of these models provide a key point of interaction for public audiences, in and outside of those communities, to communicate the construction of built spaces, their meanings, and uses.