| This study established a place-making strategy to examine the regional identity and formulate interactions between the global and the regional in the discourse of architecture. This place-making strategy also limits and establishes a methodology to achieve regional identity in a world of globalization.;Topography in my study was regarded as an agent to redefine regional architecture and cities under the pressures of globalization. At one level, the study of topography provides a re-examination of the concept of place in contemporary cultures and a re-reading of the relationship between globalization and regional culture. On a more concrete level, the roles of topography in siting selection, formation, and future development of a Chinese village were explored in order to re-construct identity to Chinese villages that are experiencing transformation under the pressures of globalization.;Topography is not simply the contours of a given place, but a dynamic 3-dimensional structure with ever-shifting layers embedded within. It is a matrix with embedded human memory and experience and an accumulation of diverse forces, events, and actors. It is globalized as well as localized. This position encourages us to view topography as a potential to create place. Moreover, topography is not a framed picture. Through its four operations---reciprocity, mobility, thickening, and materiality---topography has constructed a mechanism for pursuing the collective social relations and generating the social conditions of its making.;Topography has played an important role in the construction of Chinese villages. Yuliang, a village in the Huizhou area of China, was selected as an exemplary instance for my study of the impact of topography on construction and rehabilitation. Based on the actions of landing, experiencing, and mapping the village, topography was found to relate to the village in the following ways: Topography as boundary, Reciprocity between topography and spatial fabric, Water constructs the village, Spatial fabric as a labyrinth, Empty center and flourishing edge, Multi-programmatic public spaces and Wetting events.;Recovering topography, therefore, becomes the priority in the process of transforming the village today. Design guidelines for rehabilitation of the village (Build regional link, Recover operations of farmland, scenes and waterfront, and Manage the spatial fabric) not only deal with aesthetic and architectural principles, but they also attempt to build a new context and direction for the built environment as a mediator between architecture and the environment and for the way that we develop the village in the age of globalization. |
