Chinese traditional housing
Can it still be used as dwellings ?
Shanghai - The emergence of mixed style of chinese and western architecture
General pattern of Lilong housing - The whole block has a couple of main lanes which are used as the major circulation and are accessible from the commercial streets - The side lanes, leading to each housing units, are connected to the main lanes - Lilongs vary in size from 0.35 to 5.0 hectares - They are two or three storied high
The old Shi-ku-men Lilong house On the ground floor : - one spacious main room, known as JIAN on the central axis facing towards a front courtyard It was used as a drawing-room or ancestral room with detachable floor-to-ceiling French windows - two secondary rooms, known as SHANG placed symmetrically beside the main room There were used as bedrooms or library
- A lower building body consisting of service rooms like a kitchen and storage-rooms, was located at the back of the two-storied main body and linked to the front by a narrow service courtyard - The service courtyard 1.2m ~ 1.5m in width also functioned as a light-well In some cases, there were three Jian-rooms instead of one Jian in the central space. The greater the number of jian, the more prestigious and wealthy the family was
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- A staircase generally with one landing, was located at the back of the central room, and lead to the second-floor where more bedrooms were located
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1. Skywell 2. Verandah 3. Main Hall 4. Bedroom 5. Kitchen
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private the lanes and courtyards provide a hierarchy of transitional space from the most public to the most private
On the second floor, the house comprised: - The upper rooms Mostly used as bedrooms for the whole family parents, childrens as well as grandparents
While the lanes promote communal and neighborly outdoors interaction, the courtyards assure privacy and personalization in familiar daily living
not private lane
Building physiks - The house was conceived to receive most of its light from the internal front and back courtyards controlled by the family rather than from exterior public space - The courtyard was conceived as a traditional way to individualize the house, and more importantly, to solve the problem of ventilation and sunlighting in the ground-floor space in long narrow lots - With the existence of courtyards, sunlight falling onto the internal surrounding walls can be moderated - The hotter temperature outside and the lower temperature inside generates an air pressure gap. Which promoted a wind draught that can be trapped into the courtyards to ventilate every room
- The french windows in the central room makes the house more transparent. In addition they all could be removed when there was a need for large space, f.e. for ceremonies or family gatherings.
Exterior
- Enclosed from the outside, the houses have few openings - Brick pattern
Structure - The house plan was facilitated by the flexibility of structure, which was based on two bearing walls on the east and west ends of the unit lot, and wooden posts defining interior bays and partitions. The bays were generally 3.6m - 4.2m wide - The lot size was a multiple width of the structural bay (usually three or five times of the bay) and usually 16m deep - The traditional wooden-truss system was adopted for the building's roof structure - The wall structure was a mix of brick-and-wood, with the wooden posts as bearing structure and the brick wall as an infill and partition
Interior - Poor - Bathrooms were not conceived as an integral feature in the house Every family used a night-stool, usually placed in the light-well, functioning as a toilet These night-stools were emptied every morning by farmers who came to door to collect them - Electricity, heating and gas were not applied to the house yet
The new Shi-ku-men Lilong house After the collapse of Chinese Empire in 1911 the population grew rapid. Under this circumstances, the Old Shi-ku-men Lilongs were modified into high-density scheme with reduced or minimum courtyards
Modifications - The houses had mostly one single Jian, facing on a reduced size front courtyard - Only the end units of a housing row had still one Jian and one Shang, enclosing a courtyard at the front - The conception of two building bodies for a house - living zone at the front and service zone at the back, is still there - reduced size and height of rooms - Some lilongs put up three-stories in the front building body, and the service space added up to two stories The living and service zones were linked by 1.2m ~ 1.5m wide internal corridor Function of each room more or less remained as the same as before. However, with the change from a horizontal pattern of layout to a more vertical one, separation of different functional zones took place The ground floor was used for public family activities, and the second and third floors were used for family private activities 5
- The staircase kept its location at the back of the central hall, but it had two landing due the reduced width of the Jian-room
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1. Courtyard 2. Central Hall 3. Bedroom 4. Light-well 5. Kitchen 6. Storage 7. Bathroom 8. Auxiliary Room
Building physiks - With the gradual shrinking of inward-looking atmosphere and diminished size of internal courtyard, windows on exterior walls increased to facilitate lighting and cross-ventilation throughout the house Structure - The structure retained the mixed brick-and-concrete structure for walls and wooden truss for roofs - As the lot size shrank, the width of a bay reduced slightly from 3.6m - 4.2m to 3.2m -3.9m - The width of a lot was one bay's width for a central house unit, and two bay's width for a corner house unit - The length of a lot was also reduced to about 14 m
Historical preservation - exemple North Sichuan Road Structure
- The structure retained the mixed brick-and-concrete structure for walls and wooden truss for roofs - As the lot size shrank, the width of a bay reduced slightly from 3.6m - 4.2m to 3.2m -3.9m - The width of a lot was one bay's width for a central house unit, and two bay's width for a corner house unit - The length of a lot was also reduced to about 14 m
Historical preservation - exemple North Sichuan Road
Historical preservation - exemple North Sichuan Road
Shanghai - climate
China - central heating
BEIJING
SHANGHAI
Shanghai - climate
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The climate covers a wide range of temperatures > Freezing winter (only a few hours below 0째C) > Hot and high humidity level in the summer
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Shanghai - climate
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
ENERGY SAVING
ECO BUILDING HIGH QUALITY
RESSOURCES SAVING
> Space > Facilities > Accessibility > Natural ventilation > Natural lighting > Low energy consumption > Ressources recovery > Energy efficient building enveloppe > ...
To what extend can it be applied to historical and preserved form of housing ?
Chinese traditional housing