Investigation and Analysis of the Indigenous Characters of Newly-built Houses in Small Towns and Villages

Following the process of rapid urbanisation in cities, the built environments in small towns and villages of Yunnan Province, South China, have also experienced fundamental changes. Traditional vernacular houses in these places have increasingly been replaced by newly built domestic buildings. This paper studies the existing problems of inheritance of indigenous culture in the contemporary built environment.

Using the houses built from the 1970s to the 1990s in Lijiang as case studies, this study investigates three distinctive methods of design, planning and construction of new houses in this region. The first group of houses were designed and constructed by the householders themselves from the 1970s to the 1980s. Very often those were built in the areas without the guidance of the local Planning Department. The second group were constructed by the developers based on the unified schemes designed by the local Planning Department within the planned areas. The third group were designed and constructed by the householders themselves, but within the boundaries set up by the planners. This study aims to analysis the internal and external environments of these three different types in order to understand the relationships between the design and construction methods and the indigenous characters of those newly built houses.