The House that Speaks

How can digital and analogue methods be combined to produce new, low-threshold forms of mediating architectural heritage? This proof of concept examines the question through a single case: a historic farmhouse from Adelboden, relocated to the Ballenberg open-air museum, configured as a conversational partner for its visitors. A 450-page doctoral thesis on the building constitutes the sole knowledge base for its responses. A persona layer supplies register and narrative stance — playful about the relocation, nostalgic about former inhabitants — while retrieval constrains that voice to the source material. Scholarship that remains largely inaccessible to museum audiences is thereby reframed as a brief, situated exchange with the exhibit itself.