Archive the Cultural Heritage with UAS 3D Modeling
Brief History
Radio Television Hong Kong Education Television Centre (ETV Centre) was built in 1971, by famed architect Eric Cumine, who designed famous architectures like Shaw Studio. With the help of London’s Centre for Educational Television Overseas, Hong Kong Government finally built a two-storey building, with area of 24,000 square foot in total. The budget was about HKD 3,200,000 at that time and the construction period was about 10 months.
From the day in 1971 to now, the story of this 50-year-old building in No.79 Broadcast Road is going to the last chapter. It is the first building in South East Asia targeted to produce educational television programmes. Like many other historical buildings in Hong Kong, the values were overlooked for a long time until it was planned to be demolished.
Status Nowadays
RTHK was noticed Education Bureau (EDB) was going to take back the building in May, 2020, and the building was vacated in September ahead of its reincarnation.
Lands Department announced that No. 79 Broadcast Road will be sold by public tender. It is expected that the land will be worth 1.35 billion. EDB mention that the land was already changed to residential land use in 1993, and based on the neighbour and planning, it is more appropriate to develop it as a residential area.
Similar to a lot of modern Hong Kong architecture, [the ETV Centre] was not assessed for its heritage value because its history does not date back long enough. And because research on local architectural history remains scant, the unique value for some symbolically significant architecture [projects] is only discovered when they are about to be demolished and redeveloped. But mostly, it is too late.”
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- the Urban Studies Institute
Why don't we try to protect our cultural heritage with Drone data, Mapping and 3D Modeling?
3D Modeling
Compared to flat floor plan, 3D model allows users to move around and zoom to view the building from different angles. In addition, the photorealistic models allows for improved visualization for the building or project, which enhances efficiency for urban planning and architectural designs, and importantly for presentations.
For presentation purpose, a high-quality 3D Model provides interactive and comprehensive view that can help demonstrate the details of architecture and structure of what the building is going to be like, for people to have better understanding
Conservation?
The building should be our treasure that it contains much not only in architecture style but also our collective attachment and memory in our student life. That is why the work of the archive is so important. We understand sometimes we cannot keep all the historical buildings because indeed our city needs to be developed, but at least we can digitise them into 3D models for purposes like education and research.