Rebuilding the Past from the City of Santiago de Cali, Colombia, South America. An Example of Virtual Heritage Preservation

Once called the "heaven’s branch" and a cultural, industrial and political lead from Colombia; during the last three decades, the city of Santiago de Cali (Cali), capital of the region known as Valle del Cauca, has been suffering of a progressive value and identity loss process which has immersed it in a cultural crisis. Within this crisis a big portion of the cultural heritage has been either lost or put aside. For example, old important personalities and their works are in the oblivion, museums displaying local artists’ works have been moved to other cities, and architectural heritage has been demolished to give place to empty fields or modern buildings. Nevertheless, a few groups are trying to build a renewed identity. That is the case of a group that inspired in the virtual three dimensional (3D) computer reconstructions seen at the Roman Baths in Bath, UK and at the Tower of London, decided to start a development aimed to recreate different eras from the historical centre from the city of Cali, using computer graphics, software engineering and programming techniques. Particularly, a methodology to recreate a cultural era has been proposed. This paper describes the making and the results from the first phase of the work and how the methodology was applied. Here, an object oriented approach from an earlier work was used; also, the Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) was chosen to make interactive reconstructions of the city centre’s architecture. It is important to note, that the first implemented age chosen was present time. From this point it is expected that in future phases the environment will work as an interactive time machine which located at the local archaeological museum (La Merced Museum), will allow people to travel to different eras.