Themes
Ultralightweight building
Cultural history represents a competitive advantage for cities and towns in North-West Europe. To exploit these potentials to the maximum, protection of cultural heritage and archaeology should go hand in hand with economic development and the creation of profit zones. The PORTICO partners aim to commonly develop and test archaeology-friendly building techniques, e.g. on ultralightweight building and subsurface development, allowing for the further development of these sensitive places.
Time travel machine
One of the attractions of visiting historic cities is the experience of actually sensing the past and getting in touch with past generations. The challenge is to offer such an experience, based on a combination of really old, authentic and preserved heritage and virtual real life impressions of life in the city in former times. PORTICO will invest in the development of techniques which allow time travel through the past of North-West Europe.
Heritage and urban development
The relation between cultural history and economic development is straightforward. However, there are hardly any quantitative data which support this statement. The results of PORTICO will help to support the crucial role of cultural heritage with NWE. This will contribute to better positioning the competitive advantage of cultural history.
Part of the strategic aims of the Portico-partners is to sustainably exploit their cultural heritage assets for economic development, thus improving competitiveness. To attract investors and to provide decision makers with evidence, information and confidence that they take the right decision by investing in innovative archaeologically friendly building techniques and the experience economy, the partners will carry out a study to the impacts of investments in cultural heritage in general and the impacts of the Portico investments in particular. They will also work together on generating R&D developments to reconcile conservation and development aims and stimulate economic development, integrating references to cultural history into public space and creating awareness on European roots, especially amoung youth.