Layered Morphologies and Latent Structures _BLAD

Introduction Architecture and Coevolutionary Rural-Urban Form: Persistence, Uniqueness and Rewriting

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The relationship between architecture and the city, knowledge and project, ancient and new writing has always established a shifting but crucial dialectic in the renewal process of architecture and the city as a whole while, specifically, providing a distinctive and constant feature of the Italian tradition of project and studies.

The research presented in this book was inspired by inescapable questions resulting emblematically from the case study of Fenghuang ‘Cultural Famous Historical Town’ (Zhashui, Shaanxi)1, selected for the ‘Heritage-Led Design’ yearly workshop 2, and left unanswered by current literature. This in turn solicited an in-depth study of the ontology of the settlement forms of Chinese villages and at the same time the development of a methodology of reading through the actuality of the case study. According to a historic Milan-based tradition of studies 3, which relies on the project as a specific tool of knowledge and views architecture as urban architecture 4, a design workshop only has a full educational meaning when the dimension of architectural, urban and landscape design, by relying on the reading of the context and its settlement characters, presents and critically questions an issue that is at the same time site-specific but, by analogy, can always be referred to more general theoretical questions, thereby developing an appropriate response.

The fact that rural villages and small towns are the locus of the persistence of Chinese settlement forms and not just that of local vernacular traditions and xiangchou 5 seems evident. Nonetheless, present reading methods and studies appear insufficient to read and decode, along with style, construction techniques and vernacular traditions, also the settlements facts in the relationship between type and topos, the principles that constitute the urban-rural form and even more their underlying formal structures 6. These are crucial for unveiling an archaic internal order as well as appropriate operational principles that, within a coherent framework, can guide the present transformation processes in a critical and informed approach.

Conservation, planning and architectures alone, if separated from the understanding of the structural matrixes of the settlement, the layered morphological structure and the forma urbis-form agris relationship, are unable to redeem the loss of sense in urban form and rural landscape we currently experience in Chinese modern settlements.

During these last four years of field observations, the economic and cultural attention for rural villages and towns has grown exponentially 7, strenghtening a cultural awareness as well as advancing a number of economic interests towards the countryside with the aim of rebalancing the development gap between urban and rural. The term rurban (urban-rural) will be used to describe a hybrid and specific spatial and landscape condition experienced in rural and mountainous contexts where former villages are increasingly co-penetrating with urban-like features, and developing extensively horizontally on farmland, thereby becoming the fulcrum of a territorial system, whereas the fringe areas of that system tend to depopulate 8 .

Fig. 1.15. Fenghuang. Landscape of old and new roofs looking eastward. In the foreground the Old Street with its courtyard houses together with modern infills.

Fig. 1.16-17. Landscape view of the farmlands located along the northern bank of Shechuan River with the rurban fringe in the background.

Fig. 1.18. Landscape view of the courtyard roofs with modern infills and buildings in the background, looking northward.

Fig. 1.19. View of the old narrow lane between the courtyards n. 344 and 340.

Fig. 1.20. View of the backyards and orchards pertaining to the Erlang Temple.

Fig. 1.21. View of the modern buildings of the fringe emerging from the old roofs, looking westward.

Fig. 1.22. View of the roof of the courtyard n. 338 looking southward, showing some modern high-rise infills into the old morphology.

The lacuna:

Fig. 4.74. The lacuna left by the fire that razed down one and a half courtyard overnight (2-3 May 2016).

(Source: http://www.sohu.com/ a/73310617_119877)

Fig. 4.75. On the left of the concretebrick structure, the main hall of the Erlang Temple (that now is collapsed) can be seen from the road behind the backyards of the southern courtyards of the Old Street, looking eastward (March 2009).

Unlike the picture took in 2017 (fig. 4.76), the western slope of the Temple's roof in 2009 is still existing.

The picture also shows the modern infill (building n. 163) along the Old Street and the four-storeys building (next to building n. 167).

(Source: https://pp.fengniao.com/160691. html)

The fragment of the Erlang Temple in 2017 and in 2018:

Fig. 4.76. Inner side of the collapsed facade, looking towards the courtyard (2017).

Fig. 4.77. Frescoed wall inside the main hall (May 2018). The facade still existing in 2017 has now disappeared and frescoes are severely threatened due to the absence of necessary protection measures.

Fig. 4.78. Aerial view (2017).

Fig. 4.79. View of the courtyard (2017).

(Sources: http://www.sohu.com/ a/190079849_ 469537; drone survey made during the PoliMi-XAUAT Workshop in May 2018)

2

4

A zoning based on three standard areas that homogenise landscape features and morphotypes automatically represents a threat to the built landscape, its rural features and social content.

The ‘structuring morphological units’ established by the synchronic layering of the historical sections feature, indeed, not just a particular urban landscape but also a social component and use patterns.

Reducing the conservation plan exclusively to the Protection Unit of the zhai yuan in the Old Street (and mainly to the entrance building or to its reconstruction) and simplifying its ‘ setting ’ by dividing it into a buffer zone now ‘surgically’ sterilised (although it has been affected by all sorts of interventions) and a controlled development zone where all sorts of interventions will be allowed (provided they comply to the stereotype of ‘stylistic rules’) is a simplification that can only result in the destruction of the historical environment and its attendant landscape.

Morphological

constituted by the triple relationship between the type, the morphology and the farmlands radial system defined by the limitatio of the householdings' walls and agrarian patterns.

(Elaboration by the author)

Preserving the Old Street regardless of its structure and its morphological relationships is a terrible mistake for the consequences it would have on the landscape and on the Street itself. No conservation or new quality architecture, if lacking the understanding of the forma urbis-forma agris relationship and of the landscape it generated, could ever hope to redeem the loss of meaning of the urban form and its rural landscape.

On the other hand, the Old Street itself is made of buildings already largely compromised or even replaced that could never return to their original stylistic ‘purity’, a revival that would be entirely a-historical now.

We can recognise, instead, differentiated morphologic-structuring units which are semantic units, to be further explored along the radial strips and enhanced in the dialectics between preservation and modification. The ones within the so-called buffer zone, due to their complexity, presence of vegetable gardens, traditional

linked to a now ceased historic reason (Chap. 1).

The sedimentation of time’s action, as mentioned before (Chap. 3-4), has rather expressed itself through other types and settlement forms or through alterations of this typology. It has its own historical, sometimes even aesthetic, value that, once recognised, must be enhanced for their uniqueness.

The traditional earthen buildings, the example of a ‘seal dwelling’ type ( yi keyin), the radial drywalls or earthen walls, the materials, the vegetation, the vegetable gardens, the ditches, the metrical logic that underlies the placements and whatever characterises the quiet rural landscape and the HCP fails to consider, deserve in turn to be protected and enhanced in a dynamic and changing space.

This layering of morphologies is a resource for the integrated conservation and modification project, because it encourages the design project to operate within historical layering for a more complex urban structure. Such an approach has a cultural meaning even where architecture is simple or rough. The sequence of those structures testifies to the historical making and undoing of landscape in Fenghuang, which is also part of Chinese history.

Therefore, the Plan-Project and the Integrated Plan aim at establishing a coherent strategy.

While planning constraints are static (they prevent certain actions on precise portions of territory) and top-down (initiated at a higher level), a plan based on the recognition of principles (whose reading is based on a long tradition of urban studies and projects later extended even to territorial government)34 and rules stimulates the awareness of the heritage and encourages local populations to take care of and actively protect the collective heritage.

As villagers are directly involved in construction and retrofit processes, building some pilot projects would be important to show them positive alternatives to ongoing practices while raising their awareness of their present and long-term benefits.The first stage should be managed by professionals with a holistic approach to the urban, architectural, social, and economic context. The second stage could be implemented by the villagers themselves, promoting the development of qualified local professionals in the field of conservation and construction.

The present draft of the Integrated Plan re-evaluates preservation units on the basis of the different morphotypes and integrates them with enhancement and development of the whole historicised urban-rural landscape.

A-B – Old Street and Zhai Yuan Morphotype Protection Units

The Unit corresponds to the linear organism-figure of the Old Street, formed by the combination of the zhai yuan courtyard typologies, considered by the Plan in their inseparable identity with the entire radial morphotype it establishes with their accessory backyards.

While the current HCP reconnects every different building in the Protection Unit to one ideal type, thus abstract and generic, the reality of the zhai yuan, as revealed by the morphological survey, offers several substantial variations – Every single building presents some kind of alteration from the layout of the ideal type.

Since the beginning, each building resulted from a number of derogations and deformations of the type that has absorbed many other additions, subtractions and transformations over time. This impurity of time

(Elaboration

Fig. 7.14. Status quo. Longitudinal section through Dang Courtyard (n. 334/335).

Fig. 7.15. Design. Axonometrical view of the design for the radial strips morphotype, including the backyards of Dang and Meng Courtyards, adjacent courtyard buildings and the unique 'seal type' house.

Fig. 7.16. Design. Longitudinal section and plan of the first floor of the radial strip of Dang Courtyard house.

Fig. 7.17. Design view of the Dang Courtyard house backyard design, looking southward.

Fig. 7.50. Design for the facades, plans and sections of the mixed-use residential prototypes, showing two variations.

Fig. 7.51. Sample of some radial strips after design. Axonometry and ground plan showing the sequence of landscapes: the 'new road', the farmlands with the new prototypes and the river with scenic pavilions and the 'beach'.

图书在版编目（ＣＩＰ）数据

层次形态与潜在结构 : 解读与改写提升历史乡村景

观 = Layered Morphologies and Latent Structures: Reading, Decoding and Rewriting to Enhance Historic Rurb : 英文 / (意) 劳拉·安娜佩泽编著. --

上海 : 同济大学出版社, 2019.11

ISBN 978-7-5608-8800-2

Ⅰ. ①层… Ⅱ. ①劳… Ⅲ. ①乡村－景观－研究－陕

西－英文 Ⅳ. ①TU986.2

中国版本图书馆CIP数据核字(2019)第247579号

层次形态与潜在结构：解读与改写提升历史乡村景观

[意]劳拉•安娜佩泽 编著

Layered Morphologies and Latent Structures: Reading, Decoding and Rewriting to Enhance Historic Rurban Landscape

Laura Anna Pezzetti

出 品 人:华春荣

责任编辑:袁佳麟

装帧设计: Laura Anna Pezzetti

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