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# Auburn lab remakes Baroque palace art with a $500 printer and free A.I. trials
- URL: https://www.urgentmatter.press/auburn-lab-remakes-baroque-palace-art-with-a-500-printer-and-free-a-i-trials/
- Published: 2026-10-01T17:59:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T17:59:30.000Z
- Description: The Phygital Design Lab's founders said an A.I. tool couldn't recreate the Chigi family crest, so a student painted it by hand.
- Author: Adam Schrader
- Tags: Science and Technology, #public-access

An Auburn University lab is using a $500 3D printer, phone-based LiDAR scans and artificial intelligence to recreate pieces of Baroque art and architecture from a palace outside Rome.

Anna Ruth Gatlin and Georges Fares started the Phygital Design Lab in 2024 and treat the work as creative scholarship. Gatlin said Auburn counts creative work accepted at a peer-reviewed venue toward faculty scholarship in the same way as a journal article.

“In creative scholarship, it’s more about the process, the learning, and the exploration you did, and documenting it precisely so you can replicate or build on it, or someone else can,” Gatlin said in a Zoom interview with Urgent Matter on Friday.

The lab works with a small budget. Its 3D prints come off a Bambu Lab printer, and Fares said the lab has paid for a couple of A.I. tools but relies on free trials for others.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/IMG_1705.JPG)

Georges Fares is pictured using a phone to take a LiDAR scan of a bust of Pope Alexander VII at Palazzo Chigi. Photo courtesy of Auburn University

He said the budget limits them but also allows them to find different ways to do things.

The team scanned the palace with the LiDAR sensor on Gatlin’s phone, which was new in August 2024.

Some scans came out “a little blobby,” Gatlin said, so the team used an A.I. tool to sharpen them before printing. The lab plans to buy a scanner that captures more detail before its next trip, she said.

The lab used Adobe Aero, which Auburn provided free to faculty, for much of its augmented reality work. Adobe discontinued it, and the lab is looking for a free replacement, Fares said.

Purchases require state university approval. An Amazon order is simple, but a trip to Michael’s for Gatlin’s cross-stitch supplies means an hourlong meeting and paperwork, the professors said.

“To do everything we’re doing, you need a little extra money and some space for equipment, but there are many ways people can engage with this type of work at home,” Gatlin said.

“This is an illusion of order,” she said of the offices, which hold 3D printers and a laser cutter.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/IMG_2092.JPG)

Georges Fares is pictured assembling a 3D printed copy of a bust of Pope Alexander VII. Photo courtesy of Auburn University

The tools don’t always work. Gatlin said an A.I. tool could not accurately recreate the Chigi crest from a plate at the palace, and the lab’s laser cutter scuffed the blue-painted plate the team made. A student hand-painted a version instead.

“Ultimately, hand work is going to be better, more accurate, and more engaging,” Gatlin said.

Fares said the lab does not present technology as a replacement for the people who made the palace.

“Actually, we do point out every challenge and every problem with technology, and it’s part of our process,” Fares said.

“We like to think of AI as being a tool, like a mandolin in a kitchen, not the chef,” he said.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/two_plates_side_by_side.jpg)

Two versions of a plate bearing the Chigi family crest made by Auburn University's Phygital Design Lab: a student's hand-painted version, left, and a laser-etched version on a blue-painted plate, right. Photo courtesy of Auburn University

Gatlin said they are applying for a grant to bring in low-vision specialists to test the lab’s tactile prints.

“We want to make sure that what we think is accessible truly is,” she said.

The lab wants to take a second traveling exhibition to places such as schools for the blind. Gatlin said the current prototypes are where the work started.

“But it’s probably not where we’ll end up in a year, once we have someone more expert in translating 2D to 3D for someone with low vision,” she said.

Gatlin said the lab first planned a traveling exhibition in Alabama “to engage with the community members who may never go to this small town outside of Rome.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/frames-side-by-side.png)

Two 3D-printed versions of an ornamental frame by Auburn University's Phygital Design Lab: one printed from the team's original scan and painted gold, left, and one printed after an A.I. tool sharpened the scan, right. Photo courtesy of Auburn University

Auburn has run a campus in that town since 2009, where College of Human Sciences students spend a semester through a study abroad program, Auburn’s [news service reported](https://wire.auburn.edu/content/ocm/2026/09/141414-phygital-design-lab.php?ref=urgentmatter.press) on September 14.

The campus occupies one floor of the town’s Palazzo Chigi, and students are there most of the year, Gatlin said.

Bernini and his pupil Carlo Fontana rebuilt the palace in Ariccia for the Chigi family between 1664 and 1672, the lab’s [page on the palace](https://www.phygitallab.net/about-the-palazzo-chigi?ref=urgentmatter.press) says. The town bought it from Prince Agostino Chigi Albani della Rovere in 1988, and it now houses the Museo del Barocco Romano.

Gatlin, an associate professor who teaches interior design history, said she had visited the palace several times through the program.

“My interest was piqued as far as, knowing that there was a lot more to the palace than just our campus area,” she said. “There are two museum levels.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/20260904--Phygital-Lab-JE-4390.jpg)

A 3D-printed model of a ruined arch and columns inside Auburn University's Phygital Design Lab. Photo courtesy of Auburn University

An internal Auburn grant funds the work, which began with a December 2024 site visit, Gatlin said. Palace director Francesco Petrucci opened rooms and collections that visitors usually can’t visit, Auburn reported.

Fares, an assistant professor, described the trouble with explaining a fresco out loud.

“We could be standing next to someone who cannot see, and they have no idea what we’re saying, you know?” Fares said. “They don’t know, they can’t understand scale, they don’t understand the depth of things.”

The lab’s tactile prototypes turn painted scenes into relief, with arches, columns and a gate in the back and figures up front.

“We don’t want to feel the nose, but we want to understand there’s a head and a body,” Fares said of the simplified figures.

“Even when we gave them the piece, and it’s our piece, we were not allowed to touch it as long as it’s sitting inside of the museum,” Fares said of a show at a museum in town about a year ago.

“So all our work is meant to be grabbed and interacted with,” Fares said.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/scan-2.png)

A wireframe view of the 3D scan mesh of a bust of Pope Alexander VII at the Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, Italy, made by Auburn University's Phygital Design Lab. Photo courtesy of Auburn University

One early project started with Bernini’s 1663 sanguine drawing of St. Joseph and the Child, which hangs in the palace chapel, the lab’s website says.

“It’s in a small chapel, it’s very protected because of the nature of the work,” Gatlin said.

The team trained an A.I. on Bernini’s sculptural style, modeled the image as a bas-relief, and printed a half-scale version in four pieces. Fares learned to hide the seams across the face with gesso, then sanded and painted it.

He also scanned a bust of Pope Alexander VII, born Fabio Chigi, at the palace and printed a full-scale copy.

“As an unsighted person, you could never engage with it,” Gatlin said.

“I still have the same pope, but I’m able to touch it, the other one I can’t,” Fares said of the copy.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3c/26/3c26cf7a-2384-4a8d-82e1-f44702177698/content/images/2026/10/31900651-C671-4066-AB6B-B627640D083D.png)

The completed bust of Pope Alexander VII by the Phygital Lab. Photo courtesy of Auburn University

Gatlin said World War II bombing destroyed a set of palace murals. The team restored and recolored them with A.I. and added a QR code that animates them on a phone.

“The general population viewer doesn’t want to stand there and unpack what they’re seeing,” Gatlin said.

For one A.I. reconstruction, the team trained Google Gemini on neoclassical-era paint using photos taken in the palace and left the Gemini stamp in the corner, Gatlin said.

“We also make sure that we give credit when AI does something,” Gatlin said. The stamp stays, she said, “because we want to make sure that people know that we didn’t recolor it.”

The lab also rebuilt the Carriage of the Acorns, a gold-trimmed coach made for Cardinal Flavio Chigi. Only its carved finials, some window ornaments, one reused window frame and a small image in a painting of Piazza Navona survive, Auburn reported.

At Petrucci’s request, undergraduate research fellow Sarah Hill built a full 3D model, and the team placed it at full size outside the palace in augmented reality, the university’s story said.

The lab’s name joins “physical” and “digital.” Gatlin said her background was physical, including weaving, bead embroidery and quilting, while Fares worked mostly in digital.

In one project, Gatlin cross-stitched patterns onto 3D-printed grids. The team spent several weeks printing test grids to find a hole big enough for six strands of thread but small enough to disappear under the stitching, she said.

Fares said he once asked Gatlin how long one piece took. She said 200 to 300 hours for a panel of abstracted palace florals about 2 feet tall, an answer he said blew his mind.

The hours got the pair thinking about hidden labor and — it’s “dangerous to say in Alabama”— the gendered labor and feminist perspective, Gatlin said.

At a conference, the pair asked the audience to guess who did the cross-stitch and who did the augmented reality, and the question stunned the room, Gatlin said.

Fares built an augmented reality version that splits the piece into layers when scanned, each standing for 20 hours of stitching, she said.

Former undergraduate researcher Darby Huber made five sets of acrylic nails decorated with palace motifs, Auburn reported. Because a student made them alone, they could not count as the professors’ creative scholarship, Gatlin said.

“We have not done an exhaustive search, obviously, but as far as we know within our professional organization, and from what we have searched, there’s no one doing what we’re doing,” Gatlin said.

The team planned to return to Ariccia last summer with a projector to map restored paintings back onto the palace walls. “Different situations kind of stopped us from going,” Fares said.

They hope to go next year, the professors said.

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