Reseach On Digital Archive Design Of The Folk Architecture In Taicang Shaxi Ancient Town

Shaxi Ancient Town,representative of Shaxi culture, is an old cultural town with a history of more than 1300 years, which kept a completed ancient town structure and unique folk architecture style——a river,two streets and three bridges, with great vale in both culture and history.Folk architecture is formed at a particular period and a representative of culture at that time,due to Shaxi river, many merchants transfer goods or do business at Shaxi Ancient town during Ming and Qing dynasties, therefore Shaxi Ancient Town combined characteristics of Jiangnan and Huizhou.With development of society and economy,folk architecture is disappearing gradually.The inner structures and characteristics of these folk architecture has been changed due to unreasonable exploration of tourism and villagers’ wrongly usage.Recovery is difficult. Information technology brings a new opportunity for Shaxi architecture. Digital archive can recover folk architecture of Shaxi, which provide us a window to see history and culture and to understand folk architecture and story behind it.Digital archives simulate architecture through film making, digital modeling and material interpretation,stored these in digital format. Combined these digital material with smart search engine, digital archive provide us a knowledge and resources sharing platform. Conserving Shaxi’s architecture through digital archive not only help us understand Shaxi’s culture, but also laid foundations for further research.This research is on how to conserve Shaxi’s architecture. It is the first step to keep traditional folk architecture. In the future, we want to maximize the value of archive digital in architecture conservations.