Turin 1911, the World's Fair in Italy. Ephemeral Architectures and Digital Technologies
by Cristina Della Coletta, Filiberto Chiabrando, and Alessandra Spreafico
March 26, 2026 at 11 AM ET
Turin (Italy), 1911: the International Exhibition transforms Valentino Park to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Italy’s unification, with pavilions and attractions. But what remains of all this today? How can we preserve the past? Using geomatics and digital technologies, we will take you on a journey to rediscover a long-lost exhibition.
Cristina Della Coletta (University of California, San Diego, USA), Alessandra Spreafico and Filiberto Chiabrando (Politecnico di Torino, Italy) will illustrate the “Turin 1911” digital project https://italyworldsfairs.org/
Cristina Della Coletta is Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities and Chancellor's Associates Chair in Italian Studies at UC San Diego. She is the author of the books When Stories Travel: Cross-Cultural Encounters Between Fiction and Film (Johns Hopkins UP 2012); World’s Fairs Italian-Style: The Great Expositions in Turin and Their Narratives (Toronto UP, 2006); and Plotting the Past: Metamorphoses of Historical Narrative in Modern Italian Fiction (Purdue UP, 1996). Professor Della Coletta is the P.I. for this project.
Filiberto Chiabrando is an Associate Professor in Geomatics at the Polytechnic University of Turin (Italy) Department of Architecture and Design (DAD) and Adjunct Associate Professor at Michigan Technological University - Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering (USA). His main research interests are related to photogrammetry, unmanned aerial systems, laser scanning, 3D reconstruction, 3D modeling, Virtual Reality/Augmented reality, rapid mapping, and sensor integration often connected to Cultural Heritage documentation in architectural and archaeological contexts.
Alessandra Spreafico is a research assistant at the Polytechnic University of Turin with a Ph.D. in Geomatics. In her studies, she focuses on the documentation of cultural heritage materials combining historical resources and Geomatics techniques to virtually reconstruct architectural structures that are no longer existing. Her research focuses on the integration of visualization systems related to historical and cultural heritage, in particular WebGIS.