Vanished and Revived: Reimagining Kowloon Walled City Through Digital Storytelling in VR and AR
This digital cultural heritage project responds to the urgent need to document and reinterpret the rapidly changing landscape of Kowloon City District. Redevelopment schemes—such as the Nga Tsin Wai Road / Carpenter Road Development (KC-017)—are erasing long-standing shops, streetscapes, and architectural features, while symbolic acts like the reopening of Kai Tak Park evoke nostalgic reflections on the past.
Using digital and artistic methods, the project explores how memory, heritage, and identity are reshaped across disappearing and reappearing spaces. It will recreate selected sites through 3D modeling and virtual reality (VR), while specific cultural markers will be restored through augmented reality(AR), blending archival research with immersive storytelling.
This is a digitally driven cultural heritage project that investigates the shifting urban memory of Kowloon City District through immersive technologies. Combining spatial research with creative digital reconstruction, the project adopts 3D modeling, VR, and AR to document and reimagine sites threatened by redevelopment.
Project Start Year: 2025, Principal Investigator(s): GUO, Qiuzi
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Digital Heritage and Immersive Storytelling of Hong Kong’s Lost Landmarks in VR & AR
Project overview: This project focuses on preserving the cultural memory of Hong Kong’s disappearing shops and lost landmarks using Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Many historic seafood shops, tea houses, and traditional markets in Kowloon City are expected to disappear within the next decade due to urban redevelopment. At the same time, many significant cultural landmarks across Hong Kong have already been lost. This project will use VR to digitally reconstruct old shops, allowing users to experience them as they once were, and AR to overlay lost landmarks onto their original locations, blending reality with digital history.Project Components
1. VR Reconstruction of Old Shops in Kowloon City
• Method: Use 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and archival research to create detailed VR environments of seafood shops, tea houses, and traditional markets.
• Experience: Users can virtually explore these historical shops, interact with objects, and listen to oral histories from shop owners.
2. AR Restoration of Hong Kong’s Lost Cultural Landmarks
• Method: Develop an AR application that overlays 3D models and archival images onto present-day locations.
• Experience: When users visit these locations, they can see the past structures overlaid in real-time using their smartphones.
3. Public Engagement and Knowledge Transfer
• Workshops & Exhibitions: Organize events to educate the public about Hong Kong’s disappearing cultural heritage and train students on 3D modeling and immersive storytelling.
• Collaboration: Partner with historians, urban planners, and community organizations to ensure historical accuracy and increase public impact.
• Online Platform: Create a web portal and mobile app where users can explore VR models and access historical materials.
Project Start Year: 2025, Principal Investigator(s): GUO, Qiuzi
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