Research On Environmental Evolution In Traditional Dwelling Houses

Chinese traditional dwelling house is the valuable heritage in the treasury of world architectural art. Under the influence of Chinese traditional architectural philosophy, it advocates designing with natural environment, with different climates and national habits and customs, suiting to local conditions and using local materials. Chinese laboring people use the plain technique of construction, which passed on from generation to generation, to design and build their own residential buildings. Chinese vernacular dwellings have many diverse styles, but they all reflect the ideology of the harmony of man and nature, and the central position of man. In many aspects, Chinese vernacular dwelling's spirit intension and forms expresses its super-sense and modern ecological ideas. It is close to people's living and has gone through long-term historical trial. Chinese vernacular dwelling is the accumulation of laboring people's abundant experience.In the past, most studies of traditional dwelling were focused on plane pattern, forms, styles, materials, internal and external space, traditional techniques and methods of construction. Sometimes, the study also probed into natural conditions such as historical background, culture, geographic features and climates, and inquired into the influence of the residents' living, customs and believes. But most of them were in view of forms, and almost no research was about comprehensive study of vernacular dwelling's environmental development and evolvement theory.This dissertation is one of the subsidiary of scientific study on ecological experiences in traditional dwellings, which is the main subsidize item of State NaturalScientific Foundation for prominent young people. Built environment is artificial, which is initially built for subsistence. But with the development of architecture, people raise more and more requests and buildings on longer act just as shelters. Architectural form is continual changing with the improvement of man's requirement level. In this process, building environment is not immutable and frozen, and the residential quality also has more or less change. There are different types of building and architectural environmental demands to meet occupants' various requirement level. Among diverse types of building, vernacular dwelling is the most practical construction, and it is proximal to people's living. So vernacular dwelling can completely reflect the relationship among people's requirement level. The author uses A.H.Maslow's Need Hierarchy Theory to study the effective factors during the course of stepwise development of vernacular dwelling to meet the different level demands of people, to analyze the function of these factors in environmental development of vernacular dwelling, to find out the regular pattern existing in the process of environmental development of vernacular dwelling and to provide guides and reference for the development of modern vernacular dwelling.