Environments by Design

Abstract

Caught between China’s ever-expanding urban centers and marginalized rural villages exists an amalgamated territory that has surprisingly been overlooked and dismissed by the profession and academics. We have coined this diffused landscape “Middle Ground”, a peripheral urban condition distinctive to China. China’s Middle Ground is not planned, it is continuously transforming and characterized by a series of generic buildings typologies: three-story concrete frame houses, corrugated pitch roofed warehouses, brick-clad factories and glass office buildings. Beyond these anonymous buildings, exists a complex network of once-rural historical villages, once the backbone of vital trade routes, that are today disappearing at alarming rates.

The future existence and eventual integration of these traditional villages back into the daily life of China’s “Terrain Vague” is the topic of this research. By taking a network of Hakka villages centered around the village of He Xin Wu (何新屋), Guangdong Province, the paper seeks to study a dozen traditional Hakka villages along the ancient Yue Gan Trade Route (粤赣驿道) connecting Guangdong and Jiangxi, with the aim to understand and assess their status vis-à-vis configuration, construction and potential revitalization. 

Without innovation and solutions that challenge China’s Middle Ground, its rural DNA risks being lost and vanishing forever. Architecture through the integration of heritage and technology can facilitate a realignment and promote a positive change between rural traditions and the inevitable socio-economic restructuring. He Xin Wu represents a unique opportunity to stimulate a sense of place, instill civic pride and social engagement in a constantly mutating and often anonymous landscape.