Study on the urban fabric and dwelling typology of Chaozhou

Abstract

The research of traditional Chinese urban dwellings mainly focuses on the dwelling forms in large cities, like Beijing and Guangzhou. The urban form and architectural typology in prefectural level cities (Zhou 州 and Fu 府cities in history) are generally overlooked. The city of Chaozhou (潮州), a typical southern Chinese prefectural city, has large areas of well-preserved urban fabric constituted of courtyard houses with unique local characteristics. However, a thorough study of its urban forms and architecture is yet to be explored.

This thesis aims to explore the relation between dwelling form and urban fabric in Chaozhou’s historical district, and to look into the elements of urban fabric in Chaozhou, including the shaping of urban structure, sub-dimension of urban blocks, the location of houses within urban blocks, and the way that houses are arranged.

The urban fabric of Chaozhou is examined at four levels. First, the transformation of urban structure and public space is represented based on the analysis of primary sources. Second, a typological approach is adopted in this thesis to analyze the urban fabric and traditional dwelling forms based on the field study in “Yi xing jia (义兴甲)” Historical Conservation Area of Chaozhou. The dwelling units are categorized into 14 types, according to the layout and scale of the courtyard houses. The survey and illustration of courtyard dwellings has been done with the help of open-ended interviews. Third, the relation between dwelling form and plot pattern is carefully examined, and a set of modules that control and influence the urban fabric and dwelling forms are analyzed through maping. Finally, the transformation of dwelling forms in Chaozhou from imperial China to the Republic era is reviewed, through the comparison between courtyard houses of Chaozhou and Beijing, as well as urban dwelling and rural dwelling.

The findings of this study prove firstly that the shaping of Chaozhou city’s form is a process of natural growth and a result of planning, which leads to the irregular urban blocks with an organic pattern, and also the regular urban blocks with a grid pattern. Secondly, a clear module of urban fabric in Chaozhou controls the depth of urban blocks and the dimension of plots, and ultimately affects the choice of dwelling forms within the urban blocks. This research argues that three elements of urban forms (urban block, plot pattern and dwelling form) have interrelationship with each other. Fundamentally, all the plot patterns and dwelling forms are constrained by the block sizes. Streets changed very little, and as a result, the traditional residential fabric has remained through the long-history of socio-economic upheavals in Chaozhou. Finally, Chaozhou has developed a variety of residential building types, and this variety has been shaped over a long historical process. Several original dwelling types were largely determined by the socio-economic condition of the householder and the original land divisions. During the early modern time, with the introduction of modern building materials and technology, as well as the influence of overseas cultures, Chaozhou’s dwelling types transformed in several ways, adopting more free layout and forms