Digital Cultural Heritage Conservation: Sampling Stilt Houses in Tai O Village

This paper discusses a digital conservation project in Tai O Village, Hong Kong. The research initiative uses a combined LiDAR and photogrammetry scanning technology to document a sample of architecturally distinct stilt houses in Tai O. These buildings support intangible cultural heritage of Tanka fishing culture, and are themselves tangible cultural heritage that is under threat of degradation or possible clearance in the future. This paper presents an effort to digitally preserve physical conditions in twenty of Tai O’s stilt houses, and discusses the steps and considerations of researchers’ digital conservation workflow. The paper contributes to scholarship as a description of a conservation process in a unique and threatened context, and as an advancement of digital documentation and conservation techniques for threatened architecture.