The Sunken Courtyard Dwellings
1 May
2007
This northen style
traditional Chinese residences are commonly
seen along the Yellow River in Shaanxi and
Shanxi provinces where the soil is highly
compact. Though built with yellow earth, they
are green buildings. Very green.
A sunken courtyard
dwelling in Shanyuan (陕塬), Henan
Province
A typical sunken siheyuan would have a yard
about 6 metres deep with an area size more
than 100 sqms. Around this private open
space, 10 or 12 or 14 rooms are dug off the
central courtyard, each three metres high
from floor to the top of the arched ceiling,
eight to twelve metres deep from the front
door to the back of the wall.
This traditional Yellow Earth
style residence has a history of over 2000
years. It utilises the materials readily
available nearby, occupies the least farmland
and leaves minimum negative impact on the
natural environment.
With ability to maintain a
stable temperature during all seasons, being
windprofe, noiseprofe and quake-resistant, it
is an inspirational example of environmental
sustainable residential housing design that
has its core concept rooted in a culture that
respects and reflects the world around it.
But things are rapidly
changing.
Reportedly some officials at a
village in Shaanxi province just want their
homeland to look more like anyone else's
homeland, so they tore down the sunken
residences and began to build on-ground
houses.
It has catches though.
Firstly, the cash-poor villagers have to pay
for the houses which comparing to the
semi-cave dwellings are painfully expensive;
not everyone can afford, and those who cannot
have to take refugee at sheds in a orchard.
Then, on-ground houses have
serious issues with the local climate
conditions which is extremely windy and dry.
A few months later, cracks have appeared in
the walls.
Do some village officials
really think their ancestors never knew there
was such a thing called on-ground building so
they had no choice but to stay in their
sunken dwellings?
