The ARC Project: Creating logical models of Gothic cathedrals using natural language processing

The ARC project (for Architecture Represented Computationally) is an attempt to reproduce in computer form the architectural historian’s mental model of the Gothic cathedral. This model includes the background information necessary to understand a natural language architectural description. Our first task is to formalize the description of Gothic cathedrals in a logical language, and provide a means for translating into this language from natural language. Such a system could then be used by architectural historians and others to facilitate the task of gathering and using information from architectural descriptions. We believe the ARC Project will represent an important contribution to the preservation of cultural heritage, because it will offer a logical framework for understanding the description of landmark monuments of the past. This paper presents an outline of our plan for the ARC system, and examines some of the issues we face in implementing it.