The Traditional Courtyard House inChina:

Its Formation and Transition

Ying Liu and Adenrele Awotona

The courtyard house, a residential compound with buildings surrounding a courtyard on four (or sometimes three)sides, has been representative of housing patterns for over one thousand years in China. It has been a historicalheritage deeply rooted to the specific Chinese traditions and culture. From the collapse of the last imperial dy-nasty (1911) to the establishment of the People's Republic of China (1949), China underwent a series of warswhich entailed destructive impacts on the development of the courtyard houses. Due to some inappropriate poli-cies after 1949, most traditional houses faced changes and deterioration. In addition, there has been a tendencysince the 1980s to excessively replace the traditional courtyard houses by multi-storey buildings. All of this hasseriously affected the cultural continuity of the traditional Chinese housing form.

From the 1990s, some housing projects have been initiated in Beijing and are called redevelopment and re-newal of dilapidated traditional residential areas. Some new types of courtyard houses have been explored in anattempt to balance the house shortage and the social inheritance due to the rapid growth of population. The con-struction principles of traditional courtyard houses are being utilised to set the new courtyard house system. Hav-ing outlined the above, the purpose of this paper is to examine the following issues: (a) the various aspects of thetraditional courtyard house and its transitions; (b) the impact of social changes and the influence of national poli-cies on the transition of the traditional courtyard houses; and (c) the identification of the main characteristics ofthe new courtyard house system.

Keywords: courtyard houses, Beijing, formation, transformation, ancient Chinese philosophies.

TRADITIONAL COURTYARD HOUSESIN CHINA

The traditional house form in China was a court-yard dwelling. Although the courtyard house wasnot the only house type in China, it was the typi-cal form used by the majority of the populationfrom north to south. During the evolutionaryprocess of vernacular dwellings, the form of thecourtyard house was not selected by coincidenceas an “ideal form” to be improved through the ef-forts of generations. From the point of view of theshape of traditional vernacular dwellings, theform of the courtyard house is more suitable thanother vernacular dwelling types to adapt to the

natural environment and to meet the needs of liv-ing in most areas of China. It may be assumedthat physical forces such as climate and naturalenvironmental conditions and socio-culturalforces are the main determinants that dictated thegrowth of the courtyard house form and the de-velopment of its style.

The formation of the traditional courtyard houseA courtyard house is a residential compound witha set of courtyards enclosed by the surroundingbuildings and high walls on four sides. The char-acteristics of the physical form of the courtyardhouse compound have been mainly determined byclimatic and socio-cultural factors.

2 IAPS 14 Book of Proceedings

Figure 1. Courtyard houses with high enclosure walls shaped in adaption to the natural envi-ronment in China.

Situated in the Northern Hemisphere, the Chinesemainland is to the east of Europe, on the westcoast of the Pacific Ocean. Such a geographic po-sition enables monsoon circulation to form easily.As a result, China is one of the regions in theworld where a strong monsoon climate can be ob-served. The direction the wind blows changes pe-riodically at different seasons of the year.

During the winter and early spring, most areasin China are subject to a cold wind from the north(the strong wind from the north and north-east ornorth-west). This always happens in the loess re-gions and desert zones. These areas are locatedalong the middle and lower reaches of the YellowRiver, where the largest group of Chinese nation-als, the Han people, were first scattered. Thehowling wind coming from the north carries yel-low dust that darkens the sky and obscures eve-rything. As a practical solution, the form of court-yard dwelling with high walls forming an enclo-sure on four sides was developed (Cheng, 1994).

In the summer, the regions along the Chinesesouth-east coastal areas are frequently struck bytyphoons produced by tropical cyclones in thewestern part of the North Pacific Ocean and bytropical monsoons from the south-east and south-west Indian Ocean. The southern tropical wind-storms and floods destroy plants and houses andkill people every year in the areas on the southernside of the Yangtze river. Under such conditions,multi-storey courtyard housing complexes wereconstructed on the hillsides in many of the south-ern areas of China to provide an ideal refuge and

protection from typhoons and floods, while live-stock was kept inside the courtyards to lessen thedamage (see Figure 1).

The courtyard, enclosed as it is by the walls orbuildings around it, takes on a special introvertedquality. The seclusion of the courtyard, separatedfrom the outside world, is an important feature ofChinese architecture. From the imperial palacesleft by past dynasties down to the dwellings of thecommon people, the walled-off compounds withtheir own courtyards inside have remained to thepresent time. This architectural tradition of en-hancing a small introverted world by building en-sembles can be explained by the social conditionsof Chinese political history. The course of histori-cal development in China has not remained static,but has been full of changes politically, sociallyand culturally. More than 20 dynasties have comeand gone over the past 2,000 years. Invasions of“barbarous or semi-civilised tribes” sweptthrough now and then to disturb the establishedorder. To add to the confusion, internal dissensionand factional strife broke out periodically. It isnatural that the thoughtful came to withdraw, be-coming entrenched within the safe barriers of aninner life protected against outward misfortunes,making true happiness depend entirely upon theirown inward state. Thus the communal characterof the family system and the inward feeling ofwithdrawal from the outside world did not onlystimulate the people to construct physical bounda-ries as defences against outside forces, but also toremain in the enclosed form of courtyard com-

Liu & Awotona, The Traditional Courtyard House in China 3

pound without any essential changes for severalcenturies.

The philosophical implications of the traditionalcourtyard house

The physical design and spatial organisation ofthe traditional courtyard house compound are alsorooted in the ancient Chinese philosophy. Duringthe Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), the devel-opment of the Chinese philosophic systemreached its peak. At the same time, practical expe-rience of house construction accumulated and abasic courtyard house form was gradually ac-cepted as a dwelling style for ordinary people.These two separate streams had followed theirown routes and now began to converge. On theone hand, the philosophical ideology provided atheoretical guidance for house building practice.On the other, the builders tried to express the ide-ology through the design of the house. Therefore,the traditional philosophy and the house patternsbegan to be integrated with each other. As a re-sult, the form and spatial organisation of thecourtyard house specifically reflected featureswhich the ideology embraced.

It is commonplace in China, of two thousandyears’ standing now, that ancient Chinese phi-losophy is divided into two parts: Daoism andConfucianism. Daoism represents the philosophyin its original purity. The basic fundamental valueof Daoism favoured common people. For in-stance, the poise and inner calm that may be de-rived from the attitude of contemplative Daoismelevates he who holds it above the strugglingmass of harried men, and may even give him apsychological advantage in dealing with them.

Differing from Daoism, Confucianism contributesto norms of social behaviour. To most Chinese,they appear capable of holding one attitude oneday and the other attitude the next or even ofholding divergent attitudes at the same time.Many Chinese feel that every “Chinese soul” isreally half Confucian and half Daoist(McNaughton, 1974).

Such a “Chinese soul” is also embodied inChinese architecture. Comparing Daoist withConfucian influences on Chinese architecture, itcan be observed that Daoism stressed a harmonybetween buildings and their environments, findingarchitectural expression in beautifully sitedbuildings and romantic ensembles, and develop-ing artificial landscapes and ideal man-made envi-ronments. The qualities of Confucian architec-tonics emphasised the importance of hierarchicalorder, axis and symmetry to control spatial or-ganisations (Needham, 1971). In other words,Confucianism dealt with the connection betweenman and his society, while the emphasis in Dao-ism was on the holistic and harmonious relation-ship between man and nature.

Feng-shui theory, a Chinese concept of livingenvironment, was an application of Daoist phi-losophical ideology to housing in practice. It wasconcerned with the relationship between man,house and universe, providing builders with theo-retical guidance, helping inhabitants to find agood living environment to build their idealhome. In Feng-shui theory, it was believed that anideal site should be surrounded on three sides byhigher land or mountains, like the crook of the el-bow in a curved arm, to provide protection frominclement weather or an enemy.

4 IAPS 14 Book of Proceedings

Figure 2. An ideal model of Chinese traditional dwellings.

The lie of the land should be gently sloping and,if possible, there should be a river or valleynearby to allow surface water to drain off easily.The layout of the site should be enclosed to forma container, allowing the site itself to be filledwith lively Qi (Breath). On plains, main streamsand their tributaries can also enclose a site andconvey Qi to it in the same manner as the moun-tain ranges. The concept of Qi derived from Dao-ist philosophy. Qi was defined as an essentialelement forming all existence in the world. It wasalso believed to be responsible for the quality of aresidence. This idealisation of the natural envi-ronment can be seen from the biological point ofview. The mountain range or main stream can becompared to the powerful trunk of a tree, throughwhich nourishment (Qi) is sent to the end of thebranches for flowers to blossom. If the pistil ofthe flower is the ideal residential site, then thefoothills or small streams enclosing it can be re-garded as the petals of the flower, protecting thepistil from the harsh winds (Cheng, 1994). In thesame manner as the flower needs the sun to blos-som, the site needs the addition of Qi to be able toflourish (see Figure 2).

In reality, it is usually difficult to obtain suchan ideal site in the towns and cities. Conse-quently, in order to achieve a desirable living en-vironment, the form of courtyard house com-pounds has been selected as a symbolic idealmodel. As a recreating model, the layout of thecourtyard house and its spatial organisation weredeveloped, fixed and given many cultural mean-ings through symbolic interpretation. From thepoint of view of Feng-shui, a basic courtyard unitis not only a house for dwelling, but also a struc-tured vision of the universe and an ideal containerof Qi, being a reflection of the cosmos of Heavenand Earth. For instance, the courtyard, the impor-tant feature of traditional Chinese architecture, asthe soul of an enclosed group of buildings, natu-rally took on a square shape. It may be explainedby the influence of simple, geometric plans in an-cient architecture. In the minds of the Chinese, thesquare figure corresponds to a cosmic symbolicrepresentation because they believed that the “skyis round and land is square”. This ideal form con-forms to the Chinese people’s “close to the earth”idea, or the belief that when man is close to theearth, health will prevail. Among vernaculardwellings, the growth of the form of traditionalcourtyard house comes mainly from adapting it tothe natural environment and climatic conditionsand is also based on social conditions. On this ba-sis, the form is able, as an ideal model, to repre-sent the harmony between the universe, buildingand man, of the utmost importance in the building

of the Chinese.For over one thousand years, Confucian phi-

losophy has dominated every aspect of Chinesefeudal society. The central concept of Confucianphilosophy was a system of moral principles,which was given interpretations on the orderly ar-rangement of affairs and emphasised by the feu-dal rulers, who laid down precise rules for humanbeings to follow in their conduct and their think-ing. In the Chinese family, for instance, there wasa series of regulations for its members to follow.These family rules, based on the teachings ofConfucius, not only helped to keep order withinthe family, but also erected a rather rigidly feudalfamily tradition. To reflect the family hierarchicalnature, the form of axial, symmetrical courtyardhouses was developed to symbolise the authority,expressing the power elders had over the youngergenerations. The spatial organisation of a housecompound and the arrangement of the importantbuildings were designed in the following way.The most honoured buildings were located in thecore quarter with the highest roof and biggest sizein the whole compound and were placed to thenorth of a central axis. The core quarter was pro-vided for the older generation. Following the or-der, the building for the “executive” householderwas in the inner quarter before the core quarter.The outer quarter was built for servants andguests and was open to all family members. Un-der the influence of Confucian rules, the arrange-ment of the traditional Chinese courtyard housesstrongly reflected the hierarchical order prevalentin Chinese society and strictly governed humanrelationships in feudal society. Conversely, theform of the courtyard house influenced and rein-forced the rigidly patriarchal life-style and thethoughts of all the family members, and also en-couraged emphasis and enforcement of the Con-fucian idea regarding the importance of the or-derly family as the basis for a harmonious andpeaceful world. (see Figure 2).

Through one thousand years of housing devel-opment, the courtyard house had been set up as an“ideal model”. In practice, this model protectedpeople from outside forces and disturbances. Inessence, it expressed the Chinese philosophicalideology through the construction of an idealform of a house representing the social and familyhierarchy and enhancing harmony between man,house and nature. For a long time, the form of thecourtyard house remained without any consider-able changes due to the stability of Chinese feudalsociety, conservative ideas and fixed design con-cepts. There may be differences in size, scale andspatial organisation in different regions in China,but the main characteristics have not been

Liu & Awotona, The Traditional Courtyard House in China 5

changed. Thus the courtyards, the enclosure ofspace by buildings and walls, representing theheart and soul of dwelling units, and the use ofaxial and symmetrical planning principles havebeen the most distinctive characteristics in the de-sign of traditional Chinese dwellings.

THE TRADITIONAL COURTYARDHOUSE IN TRANSITION

Courtyard houses as an important component inshaping the main features of Beijing

Courtyard house patterns could be found in manyparts of China, but the most typical forms arethose located in the Old City in Beijing, the capi-tal of China for over eight hundred years. In thetwelfth century, Mongols (Yuan Dynasty,1279–1368 A.D.) established their capital in Bei-jing and made great efforts to build it. They re-ferred to all the previous experiences and rules forsetting up capital cities in Chinese history, andthis gave the embryonic form of Beijing today.With the grand-scaled construction projectsstarted at that time, the courtyard houses, beingthe “ideal model” of Chinese dwellings, began toappear simultaneously with the palaces and of-fices in the city. The next dynasty, Ming(1368–1644 A.D.), built their new capital on topof the old one, through restoration and adaptationto the exigencies of the times. The construction ofChinese classical cities reached its peak at thistime.

Even today the structure and quality of MingBeijing can still be felt. During the last imperialdynasty (Qing, 1644–1911 A.D.), the capital wasexpanded and improved upon further, with thecombined cultures of the multi-nationalities.Through the construction and reconstruction ofthe Ming and Qing Dynasties, courtyard houseshave been the dominant form of Beijing dwellingsand also an important component in shaping themain characteristics of traditional Beijing, the OldCity of Beijing. Other than the magnificent layoutof the imperial city and its palaces (the ForbiddenCity, for example) with all the impressive walls,the city’s main features probably lie in the resi-dential areas with the courtyard houses and thehutong (residential lane) neighbourhood. To sumup, the courtyard houses in this city have repre-sented one of the most typical and most integratedhousing forms in the whole country. From theForbidden City down to the ordinary dwellings,the context of the courtyard house can be ob-served.

Traditional courtyard houses in transitionduring the impact of changes in society since

1911With the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty at theend of 1911, the last of the twenty-five historic

dynasties of China came to an end. That was alsothe end of the 3500 years of slave and feudal so-cieties. Since both the society and the economy ofChina were agricultural, the collapse of the oldstructure of traditional China was accompanied bythe bankruptcy of Chinese agriculture and the de-cline of the traditional Chinese ideology (Pye,1991). The early years of modern China were,therefore, characterised by revolutions and rapidsocial changes, all of which had a radical influ-ence on the emerging form of the traditionalcourtyard houses.

Since the formation of the city until 1911 intraditional Beijing, known as the Old City in Bei-jing today, formal residential settlements weremainly built for nobility, wealthy merchants andbureaucrats. Shortly after the overthrow of theQing Dynasty, although the people who had beennobility, wealthy merchants and officials in theQing government were allowed to live on theirown properties — which usually dominated theformal traditional dwelling areas, being of goodhousing quality and of large or medium size —their social position and living standards declineddue to the collapse of the old social and economicorder and their loss of income. The traditional up-per-class houses were designed to accommodateextended families. A large compound house con-sisted of two or more basic housing units withtheir own courtyards and each housing unit couldhold one or more family units. Due to the eco-nomic pressures, the extended family — itsstructure which normally consisted of three, fouror even five generations living together, i.e. theachievement of the ideal Chinese cultural modelof a family — began to break down and was re-placed by the nuclear family consisting of parentsand children or just a husband and wife. In mostextended families, the middle generation went outwith their own families and members of thegrownup younger generation drifted away to seektheir own fortunes. To generate income for theirsurvival, the owners of courtyard houses had torent out portions of their house compounds withthe household furnishings.

On the other hand, urban housing was un-evenly distributed and located. Most of the ordi-nary and low-income people who engaged inservice functions were crowded in simple andcrude hutong neighbourhoods far away from thecentre of the city along the site of the Old Citywall. The continual internal war with constantchanges of government, famine, disease and pov-erty forced large numbers of landless peasants toseek refuge in the cities and towns, and broughtabout a rapid increase of the urban populationwith the expansion of low-income housing set-tlements and their impact on the city. These envi-ronmental problems and the deteriorating eco-

6 IAPS 14 Book of Proceedings

nomic situation resulted in a lack of investment inthe city construction and to a general housingshortage. The serious problem of the urban hous-ing shortage was completely ignored. The court-yard house compounds, once the pride of the peo-ple of Beijing, have been forced to transformfrom single-household into overloaded multi-household compounds.

Courtyard houses in transition under the strong influence of national policies after 1949

After the establishment of the People's Republicof China in 1949, dramatic changes took placeunder a series of national policies with the guid-ance of Mao Zedong’s Communist ideology andpolitical influence. The early national policy fol-lowed the Soviet pattern of stressing heavy in-dustrial development and urbanisation.

The operation of socialised industrialisationand the state-supervised planned economy wascarried out with a decisive priority in the alloca-tion of state investment funds given to urban in-dustry rather than agriculture, and to “productive”investment like heavy industry rather than to“non-productive” investment such as housingconstruction. On the one hand, the emphasis ofnational policy on industrialisation and urban de-velopment stimulated the rapid increase of the ur-ban population, which brought the expansion oflarge cities. A report shows that the agriculturallynon-productive urban population had grown from58 million in 1949 to 92 million in 1957 (Pye,1991). On the other hand, the urban policy wasinitiated to encourage a common living style witha low level of consumption and consequently thelow level of investment in urban housing con-struction remained.

Faced with the pressure of an acute housingshortage, the government used the old housingsettlements as a flexible housing stock to absorbthe severe pressure of the housing shortage. Un-der the movement of the socialist transition ofhousing ownership, those old private houses wereconverted as a form of public property and re-strictions on living spaces for each householdwere put on the old dwellings by the government.

In the case of Beijing, the most traditional sin-gle-household courtyard houses were completelyconverted into multi-household compounds andthose multi-household compounds were furthersubdivided. This conversion was regarded as agood approach, which could not only relieve thenew government quickly from the urgent head-ache of the housing shortage, but could also exe-cute the government’s housing policy of abolish-ing private housing ownership, which was in linewith the movement of the nationalisation of own-ership.

Meanwhile, this approach helped the govern-ment to alter the structure of the traditional Chi-nese family, which had been inherited from theold ideology of Confucian family ethics. It wascriticised by the government as a feudal and cor-rupt way of life, since the old family ethics of thehierarchical society were considered contradictoryto, and in conflict with, the new proletarian andclassless society.

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolu-tion (1964-1976), the form of the traditionalhouses had undergone a special transition: de-struction. The most dramatic and radical conver-sion of traditional courtyard houses came at thebeginning of the Cultural Revolution, when theRed Guards destroyed the “Four Olds” (old ideas,old culture, old customs and old habits). Later, themovement of destroying the “Four Olds” turnedinto violent destruction of traditional objects in allaspects of daily life. Anything involving traditionwas labelled as anti-revolutionary and hence itwas treated as a crime.

Beijing, a traditional city with many historicalbuildings, was destined for large-scale deliberatedestruction. The form of the traditional courtyardhouse, which was identified with traditional cul-tural artefacts and decoration and the residents’traditional life style and living patterns, becamethe prime target of the movement. Old houseswere defaced.

Liu & Awotona, The Traditional Courtyard House in China 7

Figure 3. The court-yard housecompoundin a transi-tional periodof deteriora-tion.

Decorations, carvings, wall paintings and evenold furniture, old photographs and old books weredestroyed under the force of the movement. Thestone dogs in front of the front doors of everycourtyard compound, a very common feature for aBeijing family, had their heads chopped off forthey stood as leftovers from the feudal society. Toprotect their homes, families possessing anythingof historic value would paint on their doors andwalls slogans by Mao Zedong in the hope that thismight save them from destructive visitations bythe Red Guards.

In order to cope with the further increasinghousing shortage without the necessary invest-ment in housing construction, private homes wereinvaded and thousands of families were given li-cense to share the premises of other families. Thetraditional courtyard houses were divided up sothat one family rarely occupied more than oneroom. The invasion was not only confined to thefew single household courtyard compounds thatwere left, but it also spread to the multi-householdcourtyard compounds as well as multi-storyapartments elsewhere. Even the inhabitants of thecrowded houses had to make way for other fami-lies, turning over bedrooms to them and sharingthe use of cooking space and toilet facilities. Thissituation made the already crowded nature of lifein cities worsen. Otherwise, with the rapid growthof the population, the housing policy in the oldhousing settlements encouraged residents to solvethe housing problem on their own. The dwellers,therefore, have more freedom in transforming thephysical environment in their residential areas.The state of intensified use and lack of repaircoupled with the deteriorating housing conditionshave been a commonly observed and reported

feature of these traditional settlements (see Figure3).

THE NEW COURTYARD HOUSESYSTEM

As the capital of new China (1949) is located onthe site of traditional Beijing, the conflict betweenthe modernisation of the national capital city andthe preservation of the Old City of Beijing hasbeen coexisting in the urban redevelopment pro-jects. The rapid urbanisation and modernisation oftraditional Beijing, which have not taken duecognisance of the cultural identity in and aroundthe Old City, are now a source of great anxiety.These discussions and debates focus mainly onthe question of how to strike a balance betweenthe preservation and the modernisation of the OldCity. At the same time, there is an urgent need todeal with the large-scale redevelopment of the in-creasingly dilapidated old residential quarters.

Since 1990, some new housing designs andexperimental projects have been initiated for re-developing the old housing quarters. The key aimof the new housing designs in the old housingquarters is to achieve a high building density anda better living environment, subject to the strictrequirement in building height and floor area ra-tio.

A straightforward task is to rehouse the exist-ing population in overcrowded old housing quar-ters and to protect the horizontal planning featureof traditional Beijing. The new courtyard housesystem has three main characteristics:1. It makes a transition from the traditional sin-

gle-household courtyard housing form to acontemporary multi-household courtyardhousing form. In order to conform to the tra-

8 IAPS 14 Book of Proceedings

ditional urban fabric of Beijing featuringcourtyard housing, the patterns of new court-yard houses are made to follow the basic de-sign principles of traditional courtyardhouses.

2. It utilises contemporary housing design, con-struction and technological systems, and hasthe advantage of achieving cost-efficient“low-rise and high-density” or “medium-riseand high-density” apartment dwellings.

3. It keeps the privacy of walk-up apartments andthe features of neighbourliness in sharedcommon living spaces, and meets the re-quirement of raising living standards. Thusthe social and physical transition is made pos-sible within the unique architectural tradition.

Two types of new multi-household courtyardhouses

The new courtyard houses could be classified intotwo types based on two different approaches. Oneapproach is based on the concept of urban re-newal. This involves the demolition of old hous-ing quarters and their replacement with new.

The second approach is based on the preserva-tion, renovation and rebuilding of the old court-yard system within a single project. These newcourtyard houses may differ from traditionalcourtyard houses in size, scale and spatial organi-sation, but the development of the new courtyardstructure maintains the basic form of the tradi-tional courtyard house, the use of axial and sym-metrical planning principles to organise housinggroups and the symbolisation of the traditionalcourtyard house style.

The courtyard structure in a new courtyardresidential community

The planning of new neighbourhood clusters isgenerally based on the traditional courtyardstructure. The modern high-density apartmentsare used to form the courtyard spaces at theneighbourhood level. Normally, an enclosedcourtyard, surrounded by apartment buildings andwalls, makes a neighbourhood group a basic unit.A desirable integrated community is providedthrough composing a number of the basic neigh-bourhood units in different patterns. In the centralarea of the sections within a community, a largeopen space is enclosed by surrounding neigh-bourhood group clusters for social interactionamong the community (see Figure 4).

From the present projects of new courtyardhousing communities, a hierarchical order of thenew courtyard structure could be found. Thephysical organisation of courtyard spaces is di-vided into three levels: the community level, theneighbourhood level and the family level. Eachcourtyard space level contributes to the develop-ment of different degrees of social interactionbetween the community, the neighbourhood andthe family. A network of roads is laid out to re-spond to the hierarchical order of the new court-yard structure and to promote the identity ofphysical characteristics in each level for servingdifferent sizes of population with their specificsocial activities (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Ex-amples ofnew court-yard housecommunities

Liu & Awotona, The Traditional Courtyard House in China 9

The courtyard structure in new courtyardneighbourhood compound

The experimental project of the new courtyardcompound is the development of designs for oldlarge compact courtyard house complexes insouthern China. The large old house was built forjoint extended families in places where buildingdensity was high and surrounding buildings couldreach two or three storeys. In fact, it is a multi-household and multi-storey compact courtyardcomplex which can match the requirements of thenew housing designs in the old housing quartersof Beijing.

Therefore its compositional principles areutilised to set a new courtyard pattern compoundsystem. The normal old house complex consistedof three groups. The main group was located atthe centre of the complex with axial and symmet-rical layout and two south–north main passage-ways on both sides of the main halls to avoidpassing through the main halls when entering orleaving the house. Two other groups were placedparallel to the main group with their own mainpassageways leading to the outside. In the com-plex, longitudinal and latitudinal passages formed

a circulating interaction network in the complex.Each passage was widened partly by courtyardsalong the line, functioning as a space for socialinteraction or children’s playgrounds at theneighbourhood level. The characteristics of themain passageway system in large compact housecomplexes can also be observed from a fishbonestyled street and lane system in the urban tissue oftraditional Beijing. In the urban spatial planning,most of the lanes or hutongs run from east towest, while commercial streets run vertical to thelanes in the south–north direction. This system ofstreets and lanes can provide easy access to trans-port and shopping centres and it can keep resi-dential areas away from noisy traffic. This tradi-tion is utilised and manifested in the designs ofnew courtyard pattern house compounds as link-ages between new residential environments andthe traditional urban tissue (see Figure 5).

At the beginning of the research on the newcourtyard compound system, a proposal design inShishahai area showed that the new housing pat-tern and its basic principles of composition camemainly from that of the old southern courtyardcomplex (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. The formation of new courtyard compounds

As the research continued, a basic courtyardhouse unit with its flat unit models was set up.The basic courtyard house unit was formed by acourtyard and a number of surrounding flat unitmodels — a pattern it takes from the traditionalcourtyard house unit in Beijing. The basic unit

can be expanded and repeated along a longitudi-nal or horizontal axis to form a series of clustersof courtyard houses in one group, basing on theaxial and symmetrical planning principles of tra-ditional Chinese architecture. A number of groupsare connected by a fish-bone styled passage-way

10 IAPS 14 Book of Proceedings

system known as new neighbourhood lanes, aconcept adopted from the large compact courtyardhouse complex in southern China and from theurban fabric structure in traditional Beijing (seeFigure 6).

The advantage of the courtyard compoundsystem is that the basic compound can be ex-panded, repeated or detached in order to form ei-ther an independent neighbourhood compound orgroups of neighbourhood compounds. Theirflexible sizes could fit any available plot as aplug-in courtyard compound (Wu, 1991a). Theflexibility of the plug-in courtyard compound hasbeen demonstrated in the Ju’er hutong neighbour-hood project (see Figure 6). The reconstructionproject of the Ju’er hutong neighbourhood has

been regarded as a successful example among theexperimental redevelopment projects of the di-lapidated housing quarters in Beijing.

CONCLUSIONSThe traditional form of Chinese houses is repre-sented by the courtyard house. This paper hasanalysed factors responsible for the formation anddevelopment of courtyard houses. They includethe specific climatic system, the natural environ-ment, social and political conditions, cultural andphilosophical beliefs. As an accepted “idealmodel” of Chinese dwellings over several ancientdynasties, courtyard houses embodied the attemptof Chinese people to identify the relationshipbetween the environment and themselves.

Liu & Awotona, The Traditional Courtyard House in China 11

Figure 6. The new courtyard compounds in the Ju'er hutong neighbourhood

Beyond the basic need to shelter people and theirpossessions from outside disturbances, courtyardhouses performed other two important functions:to stress the social identity and status of the in-habitants within the social and family hierarchy,and to enhance harmony between man, the houseand nature. In this century, continuing wars andpolitical turbulence have imposed a devastatingimpact on the healthy development of the court-

yard house. Yet, deeply rooted in the long histori-cal stream of social, cultural and ideological con-texts, courtyard houses with major traditionalfeatures are here to stay. The only exception isthat some changes are being (or are about to be)made to the old style of the courtyard houses,which is a reflection of the social and culturalchanges.

12 IAPS 14 Book of Proceedings

REFERENCES

Cheng Jianjuien, 1994. Feng-shui and Architecture . Jiangxi: Science and Technique Press, (Chinese).

Huang Huei et al., 1991. “The Reports of Old and Dilapidated Housing Renewals in Residential Development andPlanning in Beijing” in Architectural Journal, No. 9107, pp. 2–12, (Chinese).

Pye, Lucian W., 1991. China: An Introduction. Harper Collins Publishers.

McNaughton, W. 1974. “Confucianism and Taoism” in the introduction, The Confucian Vision. Michigan: TheUniversity of Michigan Press, pp. 1–12.

Needham, Joseph, 1971. Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press.

Shan Deqi, 1992. Human Beings with their Living Environment: A Study on Traditional Local Dwellings . Beijing:Tsinghua University Press, (Chinese).

Wu Laingyong, 1991a. “Innovative Approaches: The Redevelopment of Dilapidated Quarters in Beijing” in Ar-chitectural Journal, No. 9102, pp. 7–13, and No. 9112, pp. 2–12, (Chinese).

Wu Laingyong, 1991b. “Rehabilitation in Beijing” in Habitat International, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 51–66.

Wu Laingyong, 1994, Beijing Ju’er Hutong New Courtyard Housing Experiment. Beijing: Tsinghua University,Institute of Architectural and Urban Studies.