FORMS OF DWELLING: Re-imagining Chinese Vernacular Houses

The spatial organisation of our homes plays a central role in our lives by supporting and shaping our human relationships, behaviour, and daily routines. The positioning and sizing of every wall, floor, ceiling and opening define spatial qualities that influence and contribute to how we inhabit or homes and subsequently live our lives. The completed design of a house places constraints, whether intentionally or not, on the daily lives and indeed everyday practices of those who inhabit the dwelling. The British academic Robin Evans notes the significance of the architectural plan and the consequence that it has on human interactions, and not just on the forms of dwelling supported within. “If anything is described by an architectural plan, it is the nature of human relationships, since the elements whose trace it records – walls, doors, windows and stairs – are employed first to divide and then selectively to re-unite inhabited space.” (Evans, 1997, p. 56) Evans underlines the influence that the designer of a house has on the social behaviour of those that inhabit the places that they design, based upon their interior spatial organisation.

Despite the importance of this built-environment, current architectural praxis continues to be informed by functionalist principles that are propagated by building standards, planning codes and the entrenched design methods that are involved in the production of housing across the world. As a counterpoint to this prevailing approach to housing, this course will take a point of departure in the morphology of historic vernacular case study houses from across China. By investigating and analysing the spatial organisation of these case study projects, ideating themes / concepts through a collection of physical sketch models and finally interpreting selected ideas into a developed design proposal for a prospective contemporary house we will explore alternative forms of dwelling. Furthermore, the ‘Investigate / Ideate / Interpret’ method becomes a tool for working with, and for taking inspiration from, historic references while developing prospective design proposals.