This work reflects on an ongoing research collaboration with Japanese universities, which began in 2019 and is still active. A key moment in this exchange was the research visit to Nagoya University in March 2024, which offered an opportunity to explore the relationship between stillness and movement, technology and tradition. The fieldwork took place at Little World Museum of Man in Inuyama, an open-air museum dedicated to celebration of cultures from around the world. Its various exhibitions focus on aspects such as evolution, communication, human relationships, and spirituality and there over 30 historic buildings have been relocated and reconstructed, including a replica of the iconic trulli from Alberobello. This project became a space for comparison between Italian and Japanese approaches to surveying and documenting cultural heritage, forming part of a broader interdisciplinary study on the digital preservation of heritage. The research also raised questions about the role of architectural replicas, common in Japan, as places where physical and cultural landscapes merge. Through the lens of the Urban/Nomadic oxymoron, these replicas challenge our ideas of authenticity and permanence. They suggest that copies can act not just as substitutes, but as tools to open up new narratives—spaces where heritage is experienced as fluid, adaptable, and always in dialogue with the present.
