10. Typo-morphology in the Cognition of Traditional Landscape Region—Case Study of Urban Design Project in Changting Town, China

About Changting old town. The ancient city of Changting was built in the 24th year of the Tang Dynasty (736), and the city wall expanded during its development, and gradually matured and settled in the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Most of the residents in the ancient city lived along the river and gradually spread to the west of the city at the foot of the mountain, while most of the houses in the ancient city are traditional residential functions in the form of courtyards, which were one-story buildings, mainly made of rammed earth and wooden structures. From Song to Ming and Qing dynasties (1279–1912), since commercial trade was frequent along the Ting River, the population grew dramatically and the urban area gradually expanded to a large area outside the city on the east bank of the Ting River. At this time, a number of courtyards with front retail stores and lower-store-upper-house building types appeared along some streets near the Ting River both inside and outside the city. So far, it was found that the ancient city is adjacent to Wolong Mountain in the north and the Ting River in the east, showing a pattern of Buddha hanging beads as a whole. In the period of the Republic of China (1913–1949), there appeared a form of the courtyard with a front arcade learning from Xiamen city on the east side of Ting River, where trade was also frequent. Then, due to economic constraints caused by national conditions and the reduction of family members during the planned economy (1950–1978), many complete plots of traditional courtyards began to accommodate multiple families. Therefore, some residents have begun to renovate traditional buildings with inexpensive materials by themselves such as concrete or tiled sheds and to open up the yards of privately owned traditional houses to create passageways that can be shared by multiple families. Since the reform and opening up policy (1979–), affected by the cultural diversity of the new era, the increasing living needs of residents, and the capital erosion of developers, more large-scale building types appeared on the combined parcels with more flexible functions, size, material and number of stories, such as apartments, schools, hospitals, and other public buildings, which have contributed to the promotion of modern civilized life for the residents (Huang 1967; Changting County Local Chronicle Compilation Committee 1993; Changting County Urban and Rural Planning and Construction Bureau 2008; Chinese Tingzhou Hakka Research Center 2010).

Investigation objects. To identify traditional landscape areas, we concerned with traditional courtyard houses and non-courtyard houses including other old traditional houses and renovated private houses that have been mutated from the original courtyard house plots. The area where these two types of houses are clustered should be classified as a traditional landscape area. Then a field visit to the area was conducted. The research scope of the old city is from Wolong Mountain in the north, outside the city wall site in the west, Baozhu Road in the south, and Ting River Island in the east, with a total area of 178.82 ha. Bounded by Ting River and Zhaozheng Road, the entire old town is divided into three large areas, and 58 numbered areas (Fig. 10.2a) were further divided according to the walkable streets, and 4819 building units within the area were investigated. Each building along streets was numbered and carefully inspected through map markings, photography, audio and video recording, and size recording to investigate its basic information. Then the information such as the floors, material of structure and facade, the form of wall, whether there is a door decoration or a yard, construction area, building ownership were recorded in a table for further reference.

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First of all, for the traditional courtyard houses, 464 well-preserved traditional-style courtyards were identified, 153 in Area A, 210 in Area B and 101 in Area C. Among these courtyards, there are 14 courtyards with the wing-room. Most of these courtyards are distributed along the Ting River. Inside the city wall, they are distributed densely on the east part of Areas A and B, and scattered on the west part of Area B; outside the city wall, they are distributed densely on the whole of Area C (Fig. 10.2b, c). The width of each courtyard, the depth of 1 Jin, and the number of Jin were analyzed and counted (Fig. 10.2d, e). The traditional courtyards were found to be mainly 3 Jian, with a few wealthy families having 5 Jian. Nearly 80% of these courtyards are between 9.22 and 14.71 m wide, with an average width of 11.97 m, while those with a width of 15 m or more are primarily ancestral halls or houses of wealthy families. For the 1 Jin depth, nearly 80% values are concentrated between 7.52 and 14.49 m, with an average of 11.01 m. If the depth of the lower hall is smaller, the 1 Jin depth will be <7 m, and if the depth of the main hall is greater, the 1-Jin depth will be >15 m. The number of courtyard Jin in the street block ranges from 1 to 7, with the majority of courtyards having 1–3 Jin and an average of 2 Jin. The courtyards with 6 and 7 Jin are found in the largest B23.

As in Fig. 10.3, No. 17 house with 1 Jin (Fig. 10.3a) represents the basic extension unit. The Zhang’s House (Fig. 10.3b) is a standard 3-Jian, 2-Jin courtyard. The Hui’s House (Fig. 10.3c) is extended vertically into a 4-Jin courtyard with no front room and direct access into the front yard. It also has a half-Jin yard as the service space. Six-Jin and 7-Jin ancient courtyards appear in Area B23 (Fig. 10.3d, d–1). Li’s family temple (Fig. 10.3e) is the total ancestral hall of the surrounding Li’s family and the room size is much larger. It also has a front ancestral outside space. It often provides space for family members to attend rituals and accommodation for those doing business and studying (Chinese Tingzhou Hakka Research Center 2010). Qiu’s House (Fig. 10.3f) has a front outdoor space, which is used for parking, livestock, activities, or a garden. The wing room and back room of the house also provide accommodation for students who come to the old town to study (Chai 2013). Lai’s house (Fig. 10.3g) and Wang’s house (Fig. 10.3h) are also characterized by the spatial arrangement of wealthy families. At the level of spatial perception, wall forms of traditional courtyards along streets are mainly cornice, and the cornice, gable, and yard wall are mixed in the whole research area. Building facades and structures are mainly made of brick, rammed earth and timber, and less stone. In addition, the entrances of courtyards are marked with distinctive door decorations with different materials to indicate the courtyard’s hierarchy and to reflect the social status of the family. Distinctive door decorations are mostly located on the facades of traditional materials, cornice wall form facing the street, and are strongly associated with the traditional courtyard (Fig. 10.3i). In general, the basic expansion unit of courtyards in the town is the courtyard with 1 Jin, and there are two types of vertical and horizontal expansion (Fig. 10.3j). Besides, traditional types also include 1-Jin courtyards built by the government due to national policy, the courtyard forms of front-store-back-houses and courtyards with front arcades that arose due to commercial development (Fig. 10.3k).

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Secondly, for the non-courtyard housing types, on the one hand, the traditional period produced housing forms that included lower-store-upper-houses, L-shaped houses, religious buildings and Western-style villas. Specifically, during the ancient period, the demand for more retail stores and the competing relationships led to more expensive land rents and a reduction in plot size, limiting the size of shop fronts, which were often half the size of traditional courtyard fronts. As a result, several independent stores were set up along the roadside. This also made some people live on the second floor of the store for the convenience of selling, forming a lower-store-upper-house building type (Fig. 10.4a1). Then, in the period of planned economy, restricted by the plots, the government built a number of L-shaped courtyards made of bricks and mainly with two stories at the foot of the mountain and on the southern edge of the town, which has traditional and modern two construction ways (Fig. 10.4a2). In addition, during the Republican period, two types of buildings, churches, and villas, emerged under the influence of Western culture (Fig. 10.4a3, a4).

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On the other hand, a study of destroyed traditional buildings and renovated private houses on the traditional courtyards plots revealed these self-built houses have a comparable footprint to traditional courtyards, except that they are refurbished with new materials and added additional stories on the plots of the original traditional buildings to form a more flexible layout. Among them, regarding the destroyed houses, the entrances and even the front part still retain their traditional forms and even retain their door decorations, except that the interior and the back part of the courtyard have been replaced by modern practices, and people have opened up the yards as a shared transportation use space for multiple families (Fig. 10.4b1). In addition to this, there are renovated private houses that have completely replaced the traditional courtyard and their construction ways are completely modern (Fig. 10.4b2).

Overall, the total number of traditional buildings surveyed, including the courtyards and traditional buildings in non-courtyards, was 3856. The total number of houses that were once traditional courtyards but are now replaced by renovated private houses on their original plots is 7639.

Since some parts of the existing building tissue have been fragmented, we present the investigation results based on GIS platform in order to make the presentation of building tissue characteristics clearer and more scientific. Before the characteristics to be presented, we need to assign and transformed the investigation information. We have assigned values to two types of objects based on the database, one is the building attributes and the other is the building façade attributes along the street.

Assignment and meaning of building attributes. Using a single building as the assignment and presentation unit, this study assigns values to multiple aspects of building attributes and graphically presents the attribute values based on a GIS platform. The building attributes include the number of stories, building structure materials, courtyard type, etc. The specific contents, intervals, and meanings of the assigned values can be found in Table 10.1. Traditional building fabric has unique attributes that can distinguish modern building fabric in terms of the number of stories, building structure materials, and corresponding courtyard type.

Assignment and meaning of building façade attributes along the street. As shown in Table 10.2, based on the information collected from the pedestrian’s perspective, we assign and present the attributes of the street facade as a unit to complement the individual building attributes. Building façade attributes along the street include the facade wall form, facade material, and door decorations along the street. Among them, the form of the wall along the street reflects the way the traditional building is connected to the street, the material of the façade reflects whether the building appearance retains its traditional style, while the door decoration reflects the distinctive characteristic of traditional houses in Changting.

In this study, the B23 area will be selected as an example (Fig. 10.2a), and the investigated housing types will be presented in the GIS platform in terms of both building aggregation characteristics and spatial perception characteristics, and statistical and data overlay analysis will be conducted.

Presentation of basic characteristics. Through the investigation, we use the GIS platform to present the characteristics of building stories, building structure materials, and accessible courtyards on the plane, and to present the characteristics of the facade wall shapes, the facade materials, and the door decoration along streets that we feel when walking in the streets on the spatial perception level (Fig. 10.5). According to the aforementioned set of building types to be included in the traditional style area, we should pay more attention to the area where the gathered buildings, with 1–2 stories, traditional structural materials including wood, brick and rammed earth, accessible courtyards, traditional façade wall forms, traditional façade materials, and buildings with traditional door decorations.

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Presentation of overlaying characteristics. By overlaying some of the building attributes with the building façade attributes along the street, a richer analysis of the traditional style characteristics can be made (Fig. 10.6). The areas where the courtyards are clustered and the areas where the buildings with door decorations are clustered are both traditional areas. However, some buildings have been destroyed and renovated during the development process due to changes in the nature of use, and the back part of the building has even mutated in type, requiring other characteristic elements to support and help us identify a complete traditional building on the plot of a former courtyard house. Firstly, the area where the courtyard gathers must be a traditional area. In area B23, the door decorations distribution characteristics were overlaid on the courtyard distribution characteristics, and it was found that 86% of the door decorations fell in accessible courtyards, while some door decorations fell in front of non-courtyard buildings, but door decorations are one of the characteristics of traditional houses, so the non-courtyard buildings reconstructed on the original plots were once also traditional courtyards. Then, by overlaying the façade material characteristics on the accessible courtyard distribution characteristics, it was found that some traditional and mixed façade materials did not fall on the accessible courtyard, but the buildings corresponding to these façade materials should also be included in the traditional style zone. Similarly, by overlaying the facade wall form characteristics with the courtyard distribution characteristics, the buildings corresponding to the façade wall form of the gable and cornice that did not fall on the accessible courtyards also need to be included in the traditional style area. Secondly, the area where the buildings with door decorations gather must also be the traditional area. Overlaying the building structure material characteristics on the door decoration characteristics, it shows that nearly 90% of the door decorations are located at the entrances of traditional structure material buildings, while some other door decorations are located at the entrances of modern structure material buildings, but these buildings that still retain their door decorations used to belong to traditional courtyard type buildings, while the area where the buildings with traditional structure material without excellent door decorations aggregate is also a traditional area, some parts of which are renovated with modern structure and material. Both kinds of buildings should be included in the traditional style area. Next, the façade material distribution characteristics are superimposed on the doorway distribution characteristics, and the largest metric area of the corresponding building of the two should be taken as the traditional style area. The type perception and the fabric analysis are reflected in Fig. 10.7h. And the next step is the scientific data analysis of the building fabric characteristics in the B23 area.

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Some of the building attributes together with the superposition of the building façade attributes along the street constitute the cognition of information about the traditional landscape characteristics. What’s more, to make the characteristic presentation more scientific, overlay statistical analysis of data is performed for different aspects of characteristics. Specifically, on the one hand, in the B23 area, further divisions were made based on streets to obtain subdivided street blocks from B23-01 to B23-07 (Fig. 10.7a), and different characteristics in each street block were counted to recognize traditional landscape style. These overlay analysis characteristics include the area of the 1 or 2-story building footprint on each block, the area of buildings with traditional structural materials, the footprint of accessible courtyard houses, plus the length of the façade wall shape, the length of the traditional façade materials, and the number of traditional door decoration in each block. Each of these six types of data is compared to the area of the street block and represented in a bar stack (Fig. 10.7b). Among them, it can be seen that more than 70% of the buildings in these seven blocks are kept at 1–2 stories in height, while more than half of the buildings in the B23-01, B23-03, B23-05, and B23-07 street blocks are made of traditional structure materials, and the number of accessible courtyards is also more than that of the other street blocks, reaching more than 30%; within the B23-01 and B23-03 blocks, there are also more branch roads with traditional landscape style. In this way, the street blocks with different degrees of traditional characteristics are shown in color block maps with different concentrations (Fig. 10.7c). We divided the index into six levels, index >2 for level 1, 1.6–2.0 for level 2, 1.2–1.6 for level 3, 0.8–1.2 for level 4, 0.4–0.8 for level 5, and 0–0.4 for level 6, and took the areas of 1, 2, and 3 levels as the traditional landscape style area based on data analysis. From the results obtained from overlay analysis, it can be seen that in the B23 area, the B23-01 street block has the strongest degree of traditional style characteristics, followed by street blocks B23-03, B23-05, and B23-07. The least traditional style characteristic is the B23-02 street block, which in actuality is a modern public service building, a kindergarten, and is also consistent with the analysis results. On the other hand, in terms of walking experience sense, each street around the subdivided street blocks in the B23 area was numbered, and this paper divided it into 18 roads (Fig. 10.7d), and the length of traditional façade materials on both sides of each road, and the number of traditional door decoration were counted. These two types of data were then compared to the length of each road and also accumulated on a histogram to see the degree of traditional landscape characteristics each road has (Fig. 10.7e). From this, it is found that the traditional facade materials including wood, brick, and rammed earth on both sides of roads 1, 8, and 18 are the most clustered, accounting for 72, 75, and 72%, respectively, while building surfaces along roads 5, 6, 11, 14, 15, and 16 have no traditional material facade at all and very few on road 2; and as for the number of door decorations on both sides of the road, the number of door decorations on roads 3, 5, 7, 8, and 15 has a density of more than 10%, compared to the number of door decorations on other roads. Then it is also reflected on the plan according to the relevant level of overlaying, which is represented by lines with corresponding different transparency (Fig. 10.7f). It can be seen that road 8 is the road with the highest degree of traditional landscape characteristics. Meanwhile, roads with a higher degree of traditional style characteristics than the average also include roads 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 17, and 18.

Then next, a more scientific traditional-style characteristics area can be obtained by combining the building aggregation characteristics and spatial perception characteristics (Fig. 10.7g). Such a current result has sorted out the modern and disorganized tissue of Changting Town into a more orderly traditional landscape area. On this basis, it can be combined with the classical tissue analysis to be able to include the traditional building fabric that has been missed. Specifically, learning from the GIS presentation of investigation characteristics (Figs. 10.5 and 10.6), it is possible to summarize the distribution characteristics of the two main types of building fabric: traditional courtyard and traditional non-courtyard buildings, and private houses renovated along traditional house plots. As can be seen, it is still the B23-01 street block that has the most traditional courtyard buildings, but both parts of the area where traditional buildings and renovated private houses are gathered in a regular manner in the B23-01 and B23-03–B23-07 street blocks, should be included in the traditional landscape region. Based on this characteristic, the merged areas of these two types of building fabric and the remaining areas of modern building fabric were identified (Fig. 10.7h). After obtaining the results of the two kinds of traditional style areas of data overlay analysis and classical tissue analysis, and then combining them, a more accurate and scientific traditional landscape region is obtained (Fig. 10.7i).

Similar to the overlay analysis in area B23 above, the data overlay analysis of the whole research area (Fig. 10.8a) as well as the building fabric analysis can be conducted (Fig. 10.8c). As for data overlay analysis, the block areas with the first three index levels are densely clustered around the Ting Rive (Fig. 10.8b). In terms of the perception of the building fabric, several types of areas can be identified, including the traditional building type, the renovated private house type along the original house plot, and the modern building type. Most of the traditional fabric is also distributed along the Ting River. And finally, the combined morphology of the two types of traditional landscape areas is also presented (Fig. 10.8d).

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The above analysis of traditional landscape regions can help us make an objective and scientific traditional landscape zoning according to the characteristics of data overlay analysis and building fabric analysis. However, from a practical perspective of urban renewal design, the recognition of traditional landscape areas should go beyond the scope of traditional areas delineated by type alone. This is because, with the development of society, many traditional houses have been destroyed, some refurbished with new and cheaper materials and more convenient modern construction methods on the original housing plots, and developers have even merged several plots to build public buildings or apartments for real estate development due to the invasion of capital. Thus, the analysis of the existing traditional fabric is not a complete help for the renewal and restoration of traditional landscape areas.

As shown in Fig. 10.8, besides the traditional and renovated private houses areas where the rules were first set in this paper to be included in traditional landscape areas, the GAP areas between them also need to be carefully explored to see if they are valuable and should be included in the traditional landscape region, which includes some public buildings destroying the integrity of traditional building fabric. Our purpose is to protect and renew all the historical elements that have played a role in urban development. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss in more detail the relevant historical traces, including historical axes, the four historical streets, historical environmental elements, and the retention of modern public buildings.

Historical axes. From historical maps, it was possible to extract information on the historically important public buildings (Huang 1967), some of which constitute the two historical axes in the area (Fig. 10.9a). Within the city, the Beiji Pavilion, the Dizang Temple, the Tingzhou Examination Institute, the Sanyuan Pavilion, and the Baozhu Building form a central historical axis parallel to the Ting River from north to south. The other axis, perpendicular to the Ting River, starts from Rushi Temple on the hill, passes through Cangjie Temple and ends at the Chaotian city gate. The historic buildings on these two axes are of great traditional style importance, and the surrounding area should be included in the traditional landscape area, although there is also a lot of non-traditional building fabric around the axes.

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Environmental elements. Besides the city walls as a reference factor in the designation of the traditional landscape region, the naturally formed river is a vital element of environmental resources. Although the original development of the old city was expanded along the central historical axis within the city wall, the river was also a factor in the development of thriving commercial trade, so local daily life gradually expanded eastwards, even spreading to the island of Ting River Island outside the city wall. Therefore, from the point of historical development, the renewal of the town is not limited to the city wall. Whether inside or outside the city wall, areas developing along the river, including Tingzhou Island, should also be included in the traditional style area. In addition, the part of the Ting River between areas A and C and the Taiping Bridge, the Jizhou Bridge (now the Shuidong Bridge) and the Tai’an Bridge (now the Tiaoshi Bridge) above it can also become protected elements, making the traditional landscape region more complete (Fig. 10.9b).

The integrity of traditional urban tissue. It is found that in the south area, the zoning method according to different morphological periods is to classify the hospital building fabric as the unit of the non-traditional period (Fig. 10.10a). This area is the core of the old town, which was once historically a complete traditional urban tissue. However, at a certain period in history, it was interrupted early and turned into a county government office, which developed into a contemporary hospital built on the site as a public facility for social service (Fig. 10.10b). Although the hospital belongs to the contemporary building fabric, if the hospital is zoned as a non-traditional style area, the large volume of the hospital will separate the small volume of the traditional homogeneous fabric into two parts, destroying its integrity throughout the renewal process and interrupting the traditional streets. Therefore, from the perspective of urban design, for the integrity of the town renewal, it is recommended that this area be included in the traditional landscape area, the hospital be relocated, and then the area be woven with traditional tissue forms. In the words of Whitehand and Gu Kai et al., this area should be called the “Principle Traditional Unit” (Whitehand et al. 2011). Besides, the internal streets in the area are further inferring to connect the traditional street structure. There is still a need for the development of modern civilization in the town, so it is reasonable that building like schools in the area can remain.

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So far, the edge of the traditional landscape region can be determined based on the GIS data analysis, the classical building fabric analysis, and the backtracking of historical information in detail (Fig. 10.11).

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