Study On Scale Of Residential Houses In The City Wall Of Xi'an

Since the protection of the area in the Xi'an City Wall, there have been certain achievements in the protection of urban space structure, some important cultural relics and historical buildings. But as the principal part of historical relics in the area, the old city form is suffering gradual but serious deteriorating. Quantities of rensidential houses distributing over the city, are basic composing of the urban form ,which is affectted directly by its' change. This paper researches the rensidential houses in the Xi'an City Wall from the angle of scale, and hopes finding the relationship between the new construction and its history, so as to continue the memories about the archaic city with the developing of the area in the Xi'an City Wall.The paper is based upon the achievements those have been attained from scale theory research in prophase: Historical scale is a relative spatial relationship between people and the physical surroundings, and it was formed throughout a lasting process of human production and living activities in a given historical period; The forming and changing of scale have their own undeniable reasons; Furthermore, the evaluation of scale is related closely to its purpose ,and in the development of historical city with the purpose of protection, the standard of evaluation of Scale is whether it is consistent with historical scale.First, through an analysis on the two levels of the scale of residential house -the courtyard level and the building level(including the single building level, the intermediate level and the detail level), the paper attempts to set up a relative integrity cognition frame of historical scale of the rensidential houses in the area of the Xi'an City Wall, and reflect the scale characteristics of historical form of the rensidential houses. The historical scale is a whole system, and contains humanistic features, which should be continued as valuable contents in the protecting of scale.Next, the status of the scale of rensidential houses reflects modern city houses ,whichare big-scale and low-density, have keep one step at quantity and space ahead of small-scale and high-density courtyard houses. This result is due to its gradual changes during 50 years after 1949. Changes of scale is inevitable owing to social development, but in the area in the Xi'an City Wall ,these changes have inevitably brought serious destructions to its historical city form. The control of the scale must be done.Through the items of the courtyard level scale and building level scale, comparing the changes of the scale in different phases, and contrasting them with historical scale, it is reflected that the scale of rensidential houses in the Xi'an City Wall have changed wholly. With the block scale becoming bigger and bigger, other aspects of scale take place a series of changes.With the above analysis, the paper concludes with a suggestion to establish a scale controlling system to the rensidential houses in the Xi'an City Wall, the structure and items of which are set up according to the analysis on the historical scale system and scale change situation, and points out that it is essential to bring the scale controlling system of rensidential houses into the protection planning of the area in the Xi'an City Wall.