Digital archiving of perceptual experiences of an architectural space with computer-aided methods

The importance of the preservation of historical heritage has been valued and emphasized, and efforts to achieve this have been continually made in many countries. Historical architecture is always in danger of being damaged or demolished by natural or man-made causes. Therefore, documenting heritage buildings with drawings and photos is important for archiving and preserving cultural heritage. Advances in digital imaging technologies such as photogrammetric modeling have enabled measurements of architectural heritage with high precision. However, the data archived for historical heritage still focuses on the physical properties of the architecture and less on the spatial perception of the visitor. The goal of this study is to develop a methodology to use technologies of digital photography to record the visual perception of an architectural scene that can invoke the perceptual memory of the heritage building. Hypotheses of frequency and maximal information were explored to identify the canonical perspective views of an architectural space. Behavioral mapping and a computer-aided method of Space Syntax were used to identify the canonical perspective views based on these two hypotheses. Perceptual studies were conducted, and the result revealed that the most frequently viewed scenes identified by behavioral mapping were most representative when subjects were asked to recall the architectural space. Meanwhile, computational analysis performed by Space Syntax can identify a location that is most frequently viewed and can view the most space. Possible methods to utilize technologies of digital photography to archive the perceptual experiences of an architectural space based on the viewpoint identified by the two approaches are proposed in this paper.