Acanthus leaves, shell reliefs, rosettes, vine tendrils: Europe's historic buildings are covered in ornament. Yet these motifs have never been documented at European scale, and there is no searchable, cross-border repository of them. ORNAMENTA (AI-Powered Pan-European Repository of Architectural Ornamental Motifs) is a 36-month project that will create the first AI-powered, pan-European open research environment for these motifs.

Three building blocks

• A European Motif Ontology: a shared, interoperable classification linking each motif to the building it decorates, its materials and its historical context.
• An AI classification engine, trained on that ontology, to recognise motifs in photographs.
• A citizen science platform and app, where anyone can photograph, geolocate and share the ornaments they spot on the buildings they visit, feeding an open knowledge base that keeps growing. The full dataset will be published as Linked Open Data.

CARARE's role: from the ontology to Europeana

CARARE's job is to make sure that what ORNAMENTA collects stays easy to find long after the project ends. As an accredited Europeana aggregator for archaeological and architectural heritage, CARARE will:

• lead the mapping of the Motif Ontology to the Europeana Data Model (EDM) and its structuring as Linked Open Data;
• advise the platform developers on the technical link to Europeana and run a first test aggregation of 500 records;
• bring at least 5,000 verified ORNAMENTA records to Europeana before the end of the project;
• keep aggregating new verified records after the project ends, as part of its regular work;
• share the project's results with its network of heritage institutions and the digital heritage community.

Kate Fernie, Henk Alkemade and Nick Mols make up the CARARE team on the project. Nick, an architectural historian, adds expertise right at the heart of the subject.

The consortium

ORNAMENTA brings together ten partners from seven countries, covering the whole chain from ontology design to AI, platform development, citizen engagement and outreach to professionals. Alongside the coordinator, the University of Technology and Arts in Applied Sciences (ATA) in Warsaw, Poland, the partners are: the Architects' Council of Europe (Belgium), CARARE (Ireland), CNR ISPC (Italy), UCAM Catholic University of Murcia (Spain), Museum Plantin-Moretus (Belgium), Beneluxsoft (Belgium), Amaranta (Netherlands), Vidipost (Estonia) and Vinexa (Poland). Through its professional partners, the project reaches more than 580,000 architects across Europe.

We look forward to helping Europe's ornaments find their place on Europeana. Stay tuned for updates as the project gets under way.

ORNAMENTA is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.