Studying Tian Hock Keng's architectural heritage through the lens of interaction through digital design
Authors: Hong Luo , Xinyan Kang , Sheng Li , Yangmengliu Zhou 
Published: June 2023

The history of human civilization has formed a large number of precious architectural heritage, which reflects a country's achievements in engineering technology, social development, culture, art, etc. This architectural heritage also covers the concepts of architectural design planning. However, with the changes in the environment and the influence of human activities, cultural heritage is inevitably eroded and destroyed. The distribution of architectural cultural heritage is wide and large, and the resources for architectural protection are given priority to projects with higher value, and it is impossible to cover all. Under the background of the digital age, the digital preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage have gradually become an inevitable trend. Digital cultural heritage technologies supported by technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3D modeling provides rich means for digital recording, preservation, display, and inheritance of cultural heritage, and expand the connotation of traditional cultural heritage protection.Virtual reality technology has been widely used in the protection and dissemination of architectural cultural heritage. As a national key cultural relics protection unit in Singapore, THK has a long history and rich ancient architectural resources. The research aims to digitally preserve THK from inevitable physical damage by creating 3D interactive models, which can restore the historical, cultural, and aesthetic value of THK's architectural heritage. With breakthroughs in perceptual interaction technology in recent years, the mode of natural interaction in VR has more possibilities. This research mainly focuses on the application of natural interaction modes based on eye and hand movement tracking on architectural cultural heritage dissemination. Meanwhile, it also explores the application in the dissemination of architectural cultural heritage and summarizes the interactive designing strategy. As the eye movement and hand movement tracking modules are applied to the virtual interactive display of THK, we have the following objectives. Firstly, we will analyze the characteristics of information dissemination which is in various forms in natural interaction. Moreover, we will validate design strategies for natural interactions with experiments, optimizing the user experience of the audience who are experiencing the interaction. Particularly, the 3D interactive mode can interactively transport users back in time. Although both the aesthetic elements and the architectural space have evolved through time, users can still interact with them. To experience the history and culture, target users can watch and interact with THK digital architecture models on their mobile phones from anywhere. This study can improve the impact of information spreading and make helpful explorations of the digital dissemination method of cultural heritage, as well as have positive effects on the distribution of spatial structural information and historical and cultural information about architectural heritage.