Implementing IoT in Historical Carpentry Education: The TRAWCOE Project

The customers of the TRAWCOE project are primarily vocational schools offering carpentry and architectural training, as well as construction trade representatives, architectural practices, and timber processing companies. These organizations are interested in preserving and promoting the knowledge and skills associated with traditional timber building. The project also serves non-profit organizations active in the field of preservation of historic monuments and traditional crafts. The customers are spread across seven European countries: France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The project's online platform allows these diverse customers to access and interact with the educational content regardless of their geographical location.

The 'Traditional Wooden Constructions of Europe – TRAWCOE' project, funded by the European Commission, aimed to develop an innovative educational and technical solution for vocational education and training in Traditional Timber Building. The project was initiated by EK Association and involved a broad partnership of construction trade representatives, architectural practices, timber processing companies, vocational schools, and non-profit organizations from seven European countries. The consortium aimed to create an online educational tool dealing with timber constructions of heritage importance selected from the countries of the partnership. The challenge was to develop an appropriate educational methodology while providing informal technological solutions for the key issues raised by each structure. The goal was to create a working prototype that could be developed for similar initiatives in the future.

The solution was to build an online-accessible 'Virtual Museum' of selected timber structures modelled in 3D. Each model provided a narrative about the architectural and technical solutions applied in them, as well as the associated cultural and historical context and technical references. The learning device evolved by blending an informal learning approach with formal techniques used in institutional education and with BIM-derived solutions. The project aimed to achieve a set of complex technical solutions that BIM offers for architects and others involved with the building industry, but through a simple web-browser window, without having to install any additional software or applications. The TRAWCOE project assembled a broad knowledge-set relevant to the individual historic structures, condensing all into one single virtual environment. The facts and definitions were designed to be accessed through mouse clicks in the model, or by using a detailed and well-structured menu system.

• The TRAWCOE project successfully created an online 'Virtual Museum' of 3D modelled timber structures, providing a comprehensive overview of European carpentry heritage. The project developed a unique blend of informal and formal learning approaches, leveraging BIM-derived solutions to offer a complex set of technical solutions through a simple web-browser window. The project's online platform, accessible through play.trawcoe.com, offers a largely multilingual homepage with a responsive design that provides access to the separate workshops of the different building models. It also hosts a map of Europe, illustrating the original location of the chosen timber buildings, a gallery of timber joints used in each of the 3D models, and a multilingual technical dictionary. This innovative approach to vocational education and training in traditional timber building has set a precedent for similar initiatives in the future.