Mediating fragile ecologies through digital technologies for sustainable tourism

Natural environments such as the rainforest, mangrove and marine ecologies are part of Malaysia’s natural resources. Other than being useful for their physical contents, the contexts too are highly valuable. These ecologies are priceless in the tourism industry. However, mass tourism affects these fragile ecologies in negative ways. Unchecked tourists’ behaviors are known to destroy marine life such as the corals. Whilst totally stopping visitors into the fragile environments might not be practicable in the nearest future, there has to be an alternative mechanism whereby foreign intrusions into the sensitive ecologies could be toned down. This paper highlights an architectural experiment where digital technologies are utilised to mediate the highly sensitive natural environments. First, architectural design schemes are proposed within the context of the rainforest, mangrove and marine ecologies. Next the experiment looks at the tourists’ receptivity towards experiencing the proposed designs within the fragile ecologies via 3D digital simulation. The results from this experiment will provide the insights into using this approach as an alternative mechanism for designing towards sustainable tourism.