TETRAGON
TETRAGON was founded in 1999 by the architects Eleni Vretzaki, Giotis Ioannidis, and Ilias Papadopoulos. It is the continuation of the company TETRAS, which was established in 1984 and was active primarily in the field of exhibition architecture. Since then, the company has expanded its range of activities with successful collaborations and projects throughout Greece and abroad. TETRAGON is a member of the OCTANORM global network (OSPI Partner) and the ECSITE European network of science centers and museums; it participated in HELEXPRO Exhibition Constructions S.A., a subsidiary of HELEXPO, and is certified with ISO 9001:2008.
Its key personnel are members of ICOM (International Council of Museums), while the company’s workforce numbers 25 people. Its creative departments are composed of architects, museologists, historians, archaeologists, designers, interior designers, graphic designers, and technicians, possessing high scientific training, expertise, and experience.
CERTH – ITI
The CERTH team (The Multimedia Knowledge and Social Media Analytics Laboratory – MKLab – http://mklab.iti.gr of the Information Technologies Institute – ITI) has been working on content management systems since 2012 within the framework of:
a) e-government programs allowing citizens to preview 3D models of future public works—such as schools, bridges, and outdoor gyms—using augmented reality methods, enabling them to vote on the construction of projects before they are implemented (project [Live+Gov]);
b) digital archaeology projects for creating virtual experiences aimed at augmenting the experience of a museum visit, e.g., project [DigiArt];
c) Architecture projects where multiple specialties (Architects, Civil Engineers, and Electrical/Mechanical Engineers) can work in parallel on the same design, such as project [PrismArch], and multimedia software construction projects like [MediaVerse].
In 2015, the CERTH team built a plugin for the Joomla content management system that achieves the easy conversion of a business directory website into an augmented reality mobile application, allowing users to view the nearest businesses in a more navigation-friendly format. The application was awarded in 2016 as one of the 16 best applications from EU research programs. Since 2017, the team has been working on the development of a web-based 3D scene composition tool named WPUnity, which requires no programming and aims to democratize exhibition design through the simplification of composition processes, e.g., via drag-and-drop techniques [Demo]. The WPUnity tool was developed within the framework of three European Horizon research projects [DigiArt, ENVISAGE, Helios] and continues to be developed within the framework of the [PrismArch] and [MediaVerse] projects. This software will constitute the basis for the development of the VRExpo platform.
[Live+Gov] 2012-2015, FP7, “Reality Sensing, Mining and Augmentation for Mobile Citizen–eGovernment Dialogue”. Augmented reality for e-government with dialogue via mobile phones. URL: [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/288815]
[DigiArt] 2015-2019: The Internet of Historical Things and Building New 3D Cultural Worlds. [http://digiart-project.eu, https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/665066].
[ENVISAGE] 2016-2018: Enhance virtual learning spaces using applied gaming in education. [http://www.envisage-h2020.eu].
[Helios] 2019-2021: A Context-aware Distributed Social Networking Framework. A social networking framework with decentralized management. [http://helios-social.eu].
[PrismArch], 2020-2022, H2020, “Virtual reality aided design blending cross-disciplinary aspects of architecture in a multi-simulation environment”. Design and simulation tools for Architecture via virtual reality that unify all visualizations of every involved specialty. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/952002]
[MediaVerse], 2020-2023, H2020. A universe of media assets and co-creation opportunities at your fingertips. [https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/957252].