Virtual tour Diwan Khanah

The Rashid Agha Diwan Khanah in the Citadel is chosen as it holds a significant position. In fact, the Diwan Khanah is one of the most fascinating and beautiful houses for two things; its place located along the exterior wall of the citadel and its distinguished embellishments.This luxuriously decorated room makes the Rashid Agha’s Diwan Khanah one of the most valuable houses in the Citadel. Inside the Diwan Khanah, the brick’s face is distinctive due to the existence of substructures with somewhat acute arches on pillars that support the balcony, a number of windows and the top masonry designed with embellishing pattern. The general structure of the Diwan Khanah with the rooms and the balcony looking onto the courtyard, looks like the prestigious houses of the 19th century Ottoman houses. The embellishing motifs resemble the traditional architectural designs while with simpler methods that can be seen from the upper part and lower part of the pillars. According to the Italian project that was done in the Citadel specifically on the Rashid Agha Diwan Khanah that the floors, walls and roofs have identified the existence of worthy stones just in the veranda while the rest were lately rebuilt with ordinary building materials. The ceiling of the loggia has geometrical decorations which is made of wood and not the original ceiling but the decoration with dyed background is recreated and is very delicate and not very stable. This ceiling has circles and star shapes remade by wood coloured in black as almost appearing like a smeared glass window. One of its valuable features is the wall with the richest decorations, filled with frescoes. The wall has an architectural touch that resonates the structure of mihrab (an arch shaped niche inside the wall with frames and geometrical star shapes for decoration, especially in mosques) on the east side wall. Furthermore, this mihrab has been altered during recent repairs and stucco of cement are inserted into the arch. As mentioned before, the reason behind choosing this place is the fact that Erbil Citadel is a cultural heritage site and being one of the oldest places inhabited by people with a substantial history. Additionally, this house sticks out the most in the Citadel due its attractive motif even though distorted during the restoration processes.
A virtual tour is created by using a 360 degrees 3D Lidar. Using a Lidar-Lite v3 device with Arduino Microcontroller and couple of servo motors, to enable the scanning of the main guest room within the Rashid Agha's Diwan Khanah in 360 degrees, to obtain the point cloud. Software tools (Meshlab) and algorithms (Poisson Surface Reconstruction) are used for the reconstruction and virtualisation of the point cloud as 3D model. After that Unity Software was used to develop the VR application of the room with adding an audio source in the background providing the information on the Diwan Khanah.