The Mathematical Table of the Palazzina Cinese in Palermo. Animation and Virtual Reality Techniques for an Edutainment Project

Abstract

The Palazzina Cinese of Palermo was built on a project by Venanzio Marvuglia in 1799 on behalf of Ferdinand IV of Borbone, when the royal family, fleeing from Naples following the establishment of the Parthenopean Republic, moved to Sicily. The building, known as “Chinese” due to its style, is full of particular architectural and decorative solutions. An element of particular interest is theMathematical Table, designed to avoid any contact between the living room and the kitchen below, isolating it from smells and servants. Thanks to a complex system of winches and pulleys, in fact, the dishes could be served by letting the central portion of the table and small circular areas fall into the space below in correspondence with the seats of the diners. Today the table is in good conditions, but despite the restoration, the mechanisms are not working. Therefore, it was decided to create visualization systems that allow to show their functioning, in order to develop an edutainment product, with various levels of interactivity, from digital animation to the development of a virtual experience in which the user decides the actions to be performed and observes their effects in real time. The workflow developed in various phases: survey, modeling, model optimization, texturing, animation, and scripting for use in VR.