Dwelling with the Chinese courtyard building architecture. A research for China's sustainable housing

China, as an ancient countries, has a long history which continued for thousands years. The traditional Chinese building is an independent, indigenous growth, and rich system after accumulating the people’s wisdom for thousands years. When checking through the Chinese classical architecture history, one could notice that the courtyard building architecture is the main feature of the people’s settlements in every period of the dynasties. It works as the basic element of a systematic reticulate organization, forms the different types of fabric according to the societies and theirs economic circumstances. From the village to the city, the courtyard building architecture is not only means the definition of the single-family house, but a more large idea which could reach the scope of the territory. In this system, different functional buildings are realized by the courtyard buildings with various scales and shapes. They integrated together on the basis of a series social standards and principles, made the best artificial connection between human, society and the nature. The influence of the fabric with the Chinese courtyard building architecture is very extensively. It appeared in the hinterland of China, also spread to the surrounding territories. The livable courtyard building could satisfy the different conditions; but because of the limitation of the traditional constructing technology, the single-buildings are mainly one or two floors height, and the dimension of the settlements expand mainly on the horizontal directions which seems that they provide a little low density when comparing with the developmental requirements of the contemporary time. Nowadays, China is undergoing an unprecedented urbanization. After decades’ preparation of the Reform and Opening-up, the accelerated part of the urban development formally started from the beginning of this century. The year 2020 has been considered as an object stage to accomplish the so-called Xiaokang Society. It is supposed that in the coming stage the cities will be fully modernized and be constructing as typical international metropolis. However, the construction which is supposed to bring people the high quality of living spaces pushes the traditional courtyard buildings into a great crisis. The original ancient city with the courtyard building architecture has been greatly demolished to release the spaces for the new construction which are mainly implemented in the American mode. Instead of the courtyard building architecture, the image building becomes the protagonist of the city, which causes the cultural crisis of the city’s appearance. In additional, the Chinese urbanization also produces the similar problems like the other countries which have undergone this process. The problems of population, environment, and resources happen in the Chinese way: the excessive resources consumption by the high-speed construction, the air pollution by the unbridled emission, the environmental decay by large demolishment, and so on. All these problems are amplified by the great number of the population. Is it real that the Chinese traditional courtyard building architecture couldn’t meet the requirements of the contemporary life? What are the ideas of sustainability in the Chinese culture? With the summoning of the Sustainable development, the research supposes to reflect the Chinese courtyard building architecture which was flourishing in the ancient time and has been badly treated in the urbanization as a response, and try to convert it into a useful instrument to treat the issues of sustainable development. By reviewing the generation and development of its system, the research would like to explore the sustainable spatial strategies which have carried by this architecture and could be used for the contemporary development. For this purpose, the research is divided into four chapters: The Chapter 1 is a brief review about the system of Chinese courtyard building to get a general sense, and also to make a clear definition about the system of Chinese courtyard building architecture. The courtyard building architecture could coordinate the relationship between human, nature and society. Following the stream of its generation and development, we could define some characteristics of its systematic structural ideology, although the forms of the courtyard building are definitely evolved and transformed according to the different dynasties, areas, and climates and so on. These characteristics influence the people’s primary consciousness to define the feeling about the living quality, the comfortable. The Chapter 2 is the observation of the transformation of the courtyard building architecture in the modern time. In this section, according to the historical slices, the modern development of the courtyard building architecture has been divided into three stages. During these periods, some spatial characteristics of the traditional courtyard building architecture have been inherited; some new enclosure types were produced by the new social conditions and the new constructive technologies or were implanted from the other countries. Although the original form of the courtyard building had been impacted a lot in the modern time, we could also notice the potentiality of the typology and its possibility for the future development. The Chapter 3 is about the requirements and hypothesis of the Chinese contemporary dwelling. The analysis is mainly form three aspects: the general background of the age; towards the high living quality, the important issues that China needs to treat; and the ethos of the Chinese contemporary architects. Through these reflections, the research proposes the characteristics of the housing spaces which could meet the Chinese requirements of the sustainable development. Meanwhile, according to its special features, the research recommends the courtyard building architecture as the proper instrument to provide the spatial strategies for the sustainability. The Chapter 4 is the sustainable strategies to construct the living spaces by using the courtyard building as the effective instrument. The strategies have been raised in six aspects: use the fabric of the courtyard building to remodel the physical pattern of the city; use the courtyard building to fulfill the requirements of different community spaces; use the courtyard building to improve the quality of high density development; use the module idea of the courtyard building to create the diversity spaces; use the structural characteristics of the single courtyard building to create the flexible and transformable spaces; use the typical materials to express the identity of the courtyard building to keep the memory. In the conclusion, besides summarizing the modern essence of the Chinese courtyard building architecture, the research would like to leave an open topic for the future discussion.