Memory On Scale

There have been quite some achievements in the protection of Ming dynasty urban space structure and of some important historical monuments in the old city area of Xi'an, but as a whole, the old city form is suffering gradual but serious deteriorating. Xi'an is growing more and more identical with other modern cities. However, developing and changing of a city is inevitable, so how to solve the contradiction between protection and development becomes very urgent. And Scale is one of the ways helpful to maintaining memories of city history. So it is possible to connect the new construction to its history through scale conforming, so as to integrate the historical city characteristics with the developing of this Ming Dynasty old city area.This paper first traces back to the concept of Scale, relative spatial relationship between people and the physical surroundings, and puts forth that the "historical scale" was formed throughout a lasting process of human production and living activities in a given historical period. After analyzing factors influencing the historical scale, this paper points out that the forming, evolution and changing of scale have their own undeniable reasons. Furthermore, the evaluation of scale is related closely to the purpose of developing, and the purpose of historical city developing is inseparable with its protecting, and the standard of evaluation of scale is whether it is consistent with historical scale.Next, this paper continues with an analysis on the three levels of the Scale-the city level (including the block level), the street level, and the building level (including the building complex level> the single building level, the intermediate level and the detail level), aiming at setting up an integrated cognition system of historical scale of the old city area of Ming Dynasty, which can well mark the scale characteristics in the historical city form. This system will also contain humanistic and modular features noteworthy in the protecting of scale.The scale of the old city area of Ming Dynasty has changed, less in the macroscopic levels but greatly in the microscopic level (such as in the street level and the single building level), especially the changes during the past ten years. Change of scale is inevitable owing to social developments, and inevitably brings serious destructions to this historical city form.With the above analysis, this paper concludes with a suggestion to establish a scale controlling system in the old city area of Ming Dynasty, the structure and items of which are set up according to the analysis of historical scale system and scale change situation, and points out that it is essential to bring the scale controlling system into the protection planning of the old city area of Ming Dynasty.