3D Modelling Of A Famosa Fortress, Malaysia Based on Comparison of Textual and Visual Data

M.Izani, A. BridgesDept. of ArchitectureStrathclyde University

131 Rottenrow G4 0NG UK (mohamad.zainal-abidin , a.h.bridges)@strath.ac.uk

A. RazakFaculty of Information Technology

Multimedia UniversityCyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia

aishah@mmu.edu.my

Abstract— This paper presents an attempt to model the “A Famosa Fortress” in Malaysia into 3D. This building was built in 1511 by the Portuguese and went through several architectural developments and changes before being largely destroyed during the British occupation in 1824. The biggest challenge in this research is to determine the original fortress layout due to the lack of any authoritative documentation pertaining to the fortress. Detail analysis has been conducted to identify reliable sources for references which are available in the form of text and visual. In this paper, we focus on comparison of selected textual and visual data to come out with a verifiable conjectural layout of the fortress. We then pre-visualized the layout in 3D model. Some samples of the model are presented here however there are still rooms for improvements before it is finalized. The output of this research will be tested for application in tourism and education.

Keywords- A Famosa,3D model, fortress

I. INTRODUCTION

Historically, Melaka’s strategic position in South East Asia has made it as an important centre of commerce [1]. The traders used to trade various items such as spices, cloth, tin, silk, porcelain and many more. These traders came from all over the world: India, China, Borneo, Arabia and Europe. Melaka’s popularity attracted the Portuguese to expand their power in commercial dealings, military occupation and religion. The Portuguese believed that by controlling Melaka, they could monopolise spice trading which was a very valuable item in Europe and expand their military power. One said that whoever is lord of Melaka has his hand on the throat of Venice [2]. Besides, one of the Portuguese’s objectives was to expand the influence of Christianity in this region and this could only be done by seizing Melaka. In 1511, the Portuguese, with fifteen small and great sails and with sixteen hundred fighting men laid siege to Melaka [3]. With advanced strategy and weapons, the Portuguese managed to capture Melaka within three weeks and, on August 10th, 1511 Melaka fell into Portuguese hands [4]. Albuquerque was the captain for the new Portuguese government in Melaka. He immediately ordered a fortress to be built for defensive purpose [5]. With this success, it also attracted the Dutch with the monopoly of the trading in

South East Asia. The fortress of Melaka continued its architectural development over this time. Prior to the occupation of the Dutch, they heavily bombarded the fortress which has critically destroyed part of the fortress. After they succeeded to conquer Melaka in 1641, the Dutch carried out major reconstruction on the fortress as part of their strategy to strengthen their power. This reconstruction involved the extension of the fortress walls and bastions [6]. When the British took over the Dutch’s position in 1824, the British captain in Melaka, William Farquhar instructed the fortress to be destroyed. As the result, the only evidence left today is a gate to access the fortress which is known as Porta de Santiago (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Remnant of Old Portuguese fortress in Melaka, Porta de Santiago [7]

A. Motivation

In 2003, the foundation of the Santiago bastion, part of the walls of the Fortress Melaka was discovered during piling works for the Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall project in Bandar Hilir. In November 2006, while the Melaka Government was building the 120 meters high “Melaka Tower” project just inside the heritage zone, besides the Melaka river, the piles of the tower hit something hard below the ground. Only upon excavation, the workers discovered the walls and foundations of another fortress bastion identified as Middleburgh. This new discovery was so important that the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage has allocated more than RM 12 million to excavate and do research of this new founding. However, work to uncover

more of the buried wall, despite its historical significance and potential to draw more tourists into the area, may not be feasible as it would involve tearing up the major road that links the old town with the new commercial area. Hence, only certain part of the fortress can be reconstructed. In order to solve this problem, we propose to digitally reconstruct this fortress in form of 3D model which can be navigated in the virtual world. Since the fortress itself has faced several changes in its design and layout, by reconstructing it in 3D allows the researchers to investigate and study the development of these changes from architectural and historical aspects.

II. DATA COLLECTION

After getting our resources, we started to extract the relevant data and classified it into different forms. They are listed below.

A. Visual data such as drawings, paintings and map

We have extracted and collected a lot of visual data related to A Famosa from books, journals and even direct from the national archives. Among them are old drawings dated from year 1500 to 1700 recorded by various artists, draftsmen and architects from the Portuguese era until the British era. Unlike the drawings from the Portuguese era most of the drawings during Dutch era are more precise. They are in the form of plans, drawn according to scale with specific measurement unit. However, the measurement unit used are old units such chain, rod, furlong and fathoms which are no longer used nowadays. Besides that, even the same unit might use different conversion value such as listed in Table 1 below.

TABLE I. CONVERSION OF OLD UNITS [8]

B. Textual descriptions

Drawings extracted from the reports, books, journals, paper and etc are usually further explained in textual forms. Even though the information is quite scattered compared to the visual from, proper extraction can give important information on the fortress material, height, position, elements and functions which can give better understanding of the fortress. This can be an important reference and support data for translating the visual data.

C. Physical data

The physical data of the fortress is the most accurate data to represent the fortress. Initially, the only available remain of the fortress after the British era is Porta de Santiago, which was one of the gates to the fortified city of Melaka. Figure 2 gives detail plan of the Santiago date extracted from the original site.

Figure 2. Detail plan of Porta de Santiago [9]

However, after years of excavation works, a bastion known as Middleburgh has been successfully reconstructed. Figure 3 gives the detail plan of the Middleburgh bastion, received from the excavation team.

Figure 3. Detail plan of the Middleburgh bastion, received from the excavation team.

At the moment, the excavation team is working on reconstructing another bastion, known as Frederick Hendrick. The data we obtained from the physical inspection of the fortress can be used as our main reference in our analysis and can be projected to the findings from visual and textual data in order to get a complete accurate data of the whole fortress wall.

Name Conversion (1 unit equivalent)

Dutch foot11 Dutch inches

11 3/8 English inches

English foot 12 inches

Dutch rod Sometimes 11,12 13 Dutch feet

English rod 16.6 English feet

III. DETERMINATION OF FORTRESS LAYOUT

A. Translating textual description into visual

Based on the collected information, we tried to construct a verifiable conjectural layout of A Famosa fortress. In our first approach, we have tried to construct the layout based on the report of Governor Balthasar Bort in Malacca dated 1678 [10] and description given by Manuel Godinho De Eredia in 1604 [5]. A detail analysis has been done to compare and verify the given data [11]. Based on the findings, we have constructed the A Famosa layout as in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Complete visualization of innermost polygon and the outermost line of A Famosa including the bastions

B. Procrustes analysis

To compare the layout that we have constructed in Figure 4 with the visual data that we have collected, we decided to apply Procrustes analysis approach. Procrustes analysis is a rigid shape analysis that uses isomorphic scaling, translation, and rotation to find the “best” fit between two or more landmarked shapes. In our case, we perform a least-squares orthogonal generalized Procrustes analysis (least-squares orthogonal mapping). It applies nonlinear mapping algorithm to find best fit, i.e. to find a reference cluster of landmarks, so that the distance of each reference landmark to it's corresponding experimental landmark is minimized. Detail discussion on this approach is presented in [12]. Based on the result from Procrustes analysis, we decided to use Map A and Map B (out of 12 maps selected earlier) as the main visual reference in our attempt to model this fortress in 3D. These maps are presented in Figure 5.

Map ATitle: Map of the city and fort at

Malakka, 1780 [13]

Map BTitle: Plan of Malacca fort, ca. 1792, (after Reimer and Elias)

[14]

Figure 5. Selected map for visual reference

Information that we get from the map is very helpful in modeling the 3D model of A Famosa. This is because it visualizes the bastions shape and size, the fortress layout and other details, which is not available in the textual report or description. However, the visual data, might not give the most accurate information in terms of measurement [15, 16]. Thus in order to get the most accurate measurement for our model, comparison of visual and textual is necessary.

C. Comparison of measurement from textual and visual data

In the next step, we intended to compare point to point measurement of the visual data (Figure 4, Map A and Map B) to the textual data (Balthasar's report and Eredia’s description). One problem for this task is to determine the start and end point for the measurement. The reason for this is because we do not know where is the start and end point for the measurement given by the textual data. Thus to reduce the error resulted from different start and end points, we have done some trial and error measurement with several combination of start and end point. Based on the findings, we come out with the points given Figure 6.

Figure 6. Rough point to point measurement

Another attempt to reduce this problem is to reduce the number of measurement points. This is done by grouping the fortress into 2 groups. Group 1 consists of the part of the fortress which has been modified during the Dutch occupation. This group consists of the measurement from Frederick Hendrick to the bastion of Emelia. The circumference for this group is denoted as L1. Group 2 consists of the part of the fortress which has not been modified during the Dutch occupation and it consists of the measurement from Emelia to the bastion of Frederick Hendrick. The circumference for this group is denoted as L2.Two readings are made from each measurement which are: 1) Detail point to point measurement connecting each landmarks in Figure 6 (considering every curve and corner).2) Rough point to point measurement, connecting each point as shown in the outermost line in Figure 6. The reason for taking the rough measurement is based on our assumption that measuring device at that time is limited and detail measurement might not be available. This assumption is further supported by the fact that both Balthasar's report and Eredia’s description does not describe in detail the size of each bastion.

IV. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Figure 7 presents the comparison of point to point measurement of textual and visual data. Even though we can see that the value shows some variation for different sources, in general it can be seen that the variation for Group 2 is small compared to Group 1. This confirms that the data for this part of the fortress is consistence in the visual and textual form thus there is no need for further clarification.

Figure 7. Comparison of point to point measurement of different sources

For the case of Group 1, we can see that Eredia's description gives the smallest value compared to other sources, including the Balthasar's report. This is expected due to the modification that was made during Dutch era as mentioned in the Balthasar's report. In Balthasar's report [10], he reported that some modifications were done on the fortress during his time such as the bastion of Victoria was extended to 1/3 of it’s original size and the addition of Middleburgh bastion, which is not exist during the Portuguese era. Further analysis shown that the measurement reported in Balthasar's report is smaller compared to the value calculated from the visual description. One explanation for this is given by [14]. He stated that measured drawings may be rare for sixteenth century machine drawings, fortifications plans are littered with the numbers and calculations, from the preparatory to the final drawings. Early engineering drawings from the 14th and 15th centuries have been preserved almost exclusively in the context of the production of presentational manuscripts. All of the drawings of the 15th and 16th centuries may appear unprofessional to a modern beholder. They in no way resemble the orthographical plans and schematics that engineers trace and employ today. This also explains why

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

Balthasar's report

Eredia's description

Figure 4 detail

Figure 4 rough

Map A detail

Map A rough

Map B detail

Map B rough

the rough measurement of the visual data is closer to the value reported in Balthasar's report compared to the detail measurement.

Further explanation is found in [13] which stated that most of the early drawings, whether project drawings or memory records, could not have been working plans. The drawings had limited utility as practical guides, lacking technical specifications such as scale and jointing stones. At the beginning of work on most medieval buildings the architect was probably in a position to give his patron only a general notion of what his building look like on completion. He worked out details subsequently, in the course of construction; meanwhile he had to be in steady attendance to instruct the workers so they could realize his intentions, which he carried around only in his head. Based on this explanation, we decided that the textual descriptions might be more accurate in terms of measurement compared to the visual descriptions, thus it will be our main reference. This is because as explained previously, drawing technology during that time is limited and merely dependent on the skills of the artists. However the measurements calculated from the visual descriptions (map A and map B) can be a guide in verifying the conjectural layout that we have produced in Figure 4.

V. CONVERTING THE LAYOUT TO 3D MODEL

Based on the verified conjectural layout of A Famosa that we have constructed in Figure 4, and the visual data from Map A and Map B, we have started to model the layout into 3D. Figure 8 and Figure 9 present the top view and perspective view of the whole A Famosa in 3D respectively. In these two figures, we have included the element of sea and land surrounding the fortress and also the hilly terrain inside of the fortress wall.

Figure 10 presents the complete 3D modeling of Porta de Santiago, shown in Figure 1. This is the only remnant of the fortress which is still available today, thus the easiest part to model. Figure 11 illustrates the bastion of Middelburgh which is currently being reconstructed on site by the conservation team. To complete the detail of the other part of the fortress need further study which include visits to other Portuguese fortress which are still available today such as those in Goa, India and Sri Langka, Bangladesh. In this research, we intend to focus on the fortress wall only, Detail study on the material, elements on the wall such as gates, irons, breastwork and etc are necessary in order to complete the 3D modeling of the fortress.

Figure 8. Top view of A Famosa Fortress in 3D

Figure 9. Perspective view of A Famosa Fortress in 3D

Figure 10. 3D modeling of Porta de Santiago of A Famosa fortress in Melaka, Malaysia

Figure 11. 3D modeling of Middelburgh bastion

VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS

Since the remains of the fortress are very minimal, the only appropriate reconstruction method for this research is traditional 3D polygonal modeling. The use of advanced methods such as photogrammetry and 3D laser scanning are not practical due to these methods requiring physical objects to be measured. Thus, the biggest challenge in this research is to come out with a verifiable conjectural layout of A Famosa. This is due to the lack of any authoritative documentation pertaining to the fortress. Extensive verification approaches have been adopted to verify all collected data and to determine the most accurate layout for our reference in modeling the 3D model of A Famosa. Some of the developed models have been presented in this paper. However, there are still many details to be added to the model such as the elements of the fortress walls and the material of the wall. Once we have completed the model, we would run some human evaluation test to identify the accuracy and efficiency of the model to be used in education and tourism industry.

REFERENCES

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[8] Murray Hoffman (1862). Treatise Upon the Estate and Rights of the Corporation of the City of New York, E. Jones & Co.

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