The design For Old areas of Shaoxing

Xie Liwei

Tongji University, Shanghai, China

The ancient town is with long history, but the environment, the building, the atmosphere preserving well.

From the recordation, we know that the most earliest town appears in the time from the barbarism society to the dulocracy society. But in nowadays , they conflict with our new life. How to resolve the problem is the most important thing in the ancient town preserving program.

One of the way to resolve the problem is remove the old buildings, but the space and the atmosphere of the town will disappear at last. So we will find a way not only preserving the culture and buildings in the town, but also improving themselves.

Shaoxing has a long history, and the size of the town will bigger and bigger. But and the same time, we found out that the buildings need preserving in Shaoxing separated from each other. That is there is not a system in the whole town. There are lots of reasons here, for example, the rising economy with high speed and some concept problems. Then the old buildings are surrounding buy the new environment. That a problem in complex condition.

In Shaoxing , we found that it is the old men who living in all the old buildings. Most young men are living in the uptowns around the old areas. This is one of the problem. And the other problem is how to develop the old areas. Just change the skin of the old building is not a good idea.

A proper method will make the whole city better and better. But the not proper change will terrible.

Then my paper will introduce how to build new building in the area with long history and lots of old buildings .

There are two steps in the whole process.

The first step : The way to estimate the value of the building which with long history in Shaoxing.

The value of the building consists not only the factor of history but also the degree of preserving, the value for commerce, the culture of the building ,and so on.

Here I will define “L” is the value of the old building or the whole area. Then the “X” means the value of culture aspect, “Y” means the value of a historic site special in Shaoxing, “Z” means the degree of preserving. And the “m” means the standard of the buildings, and “n” means the history of them. Then a expressions come forth : L=AX+BYZ=AX+BmnZ . The we can score a old building area or much smaller.

With the conclusion, we can decide which one will preserving, and which one will turn to a new building.

The second step : The way to establish new building in an area with long history .

I will analyse the old building from 4 aspects.

l The first one is the plan of the old building . For example , the relation of the void and the solid .

Now I will give a picture to introduce it. The right one is the original plan of the old building in Shaoxing, and the left one is the first step conclusion. It looks like the former one, but in fact it is different.

The second one is the size of the old building.

The most important factor is the shape of the buildings. In Shaoxing, most houses were one or two storeyed, several of them are three storeyed. Considering the situation mentioned above when we build a new building in these areas, we will make the new one more close to the old one in size. Then it will be more harmonious. At last, we got another picture.

l The third is the representative element ,for example ,the form of roof ,the colour of the wall and so on.

This step is very important. Each area has the identity of themselves. For example, the roof may be the identity of Chinese buildings with long history. We can distinguish between Chinese buildings and others. The roof is also one of the identities of buildings in Shaoxing, but it is a special one. We call it “ying shan”. From the picture, we can see the new building will almost complete.

l The fourth is the material of old building in shaoxing .

In the town of Shaoxing, most of the roof are covered with tiles. The outer wall were brick-built, while the inner walls were built by wood. It is interesting.

Then I put forward a archetype for new building which will build in old area of shao xing .

At Last, it is the pictures of a example.