“Fortress Besieged,” a metaphor when We talked about traditional Chinese residential architecture. Before modernist architecture has spread all over the world. Chinese traditional residential architecture is almost like fortress besieged, although they might be different in material selection, form and so on because of regionalism. Fortress Besieged, is the so-called courtyard. In China, We have a long tradition of courtyard gardening. To encircle a world of our own and entrust our sentiment to the flower and plants in the garden, is an idea dwelling state deep into our bone. However this dwelling state in today’s China, has almost disappeared in urban living and only reveals itself in historical building. Like all postwar countries, we have experienced a period of rapid population growth and inadequate housing construction. Modernism architecture of Le Corbusier and his theory of La Ville Radieuse were relatively mature subjects at that time, yet Post Modernism and the incisive issues proposed in the book of were still under intense debate. And we learned from Le Corbusier to solve the housing problem and gradually evolved it into a paradigm. As a result, there is almost the same residential pattern in China today, which spans numerous climatic regions. Even some region where planning typology could diversify begins to learn from the residential pattern dominated by real estate. This residential pattern has several obvious characters such as high-rise, low-density, determinant, all facing south and so on. This is a thought provoking and painful reality for us.
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