Research On The Residential Environment Construction Of Ancient Villages In Southern Anhui Province

We are in an era of global urbanization and urban globalization; in today's China we are seeing the rapid urbanization and the unprecedented development of urban constructions. In a bid to sharpen their cities' competitive edge and add weight to the achievements on their posts, many urban administrators had taken dras tic actions of demolishment and constructions inside of the protected historic and cultural districts in their cities, ignoring not only the protection and conservation of the history and culture of the cities, but also the archeological, aesthetic, educational value of the historic and cultural legacy. Such drastic actions and ignorance will lead to the disappearance of the history and culture of the city and also the extinction of the urban characteristics, and the ultimate result will be the duplicate faces of different cities. In retrospect of the modern residential environment construction, the public is beginning to focus on the distinct traditional culture of a region, a city or a town, we expect to find the spirit which consists the traditional culture of the residential environment, the measures to instill humanitarian spirit and regional vitalities into modern cities and the inner spirit which the lives of modern cities rely on. This research includes both the material and spiritual aspects, which means, while delving in to the material conditions of the residential environment, we should also explore the spiritual connotations of the environment.Ancient villages are the historic and cultural legacy of the different phases of our social and historic development, and also the fundamental units of town planning. Due to the impact of strong cultures to disadvantaged ones, the global culture is moving towards a monotonous state. This phenomenon first occurred in the cities, due to the changed production mode and life style of the people, the deviation of aesthetic value of the public, blind eyed emulation of life style of other countries, irrational copying of foreign architectural styles, endless pursuit of profit of the developers, the eagerness for the so-called political achievement during their tenures of government officials, the protected historic and cultural districts of the cities are under unprecedented impact, the characteristics of China's urban architecture is vanishing. Ancient villages should be a pure land to pass on the characteristics of Chinese architecture, the value of which has gained recognition by more and more people. The publication of the first list of national historic and cultural towns (villages) shows the importance China has attached to the protection of traditional village settlement.The traditional ideas and measures of the planning and design of ancient villages are based on protection of material aspects such as architectures and village settlement. The thinking process is from material to people, that means it is oriented towards the material aspect instead of the people, while the core of residential environment research should be people, its principal objective is to satisfy the need for residences of human being. Nature is the basic of residential environment, the production activities and the specific residential environment construction all rely on the vast natural background. Residential environment is the medium for the interactionsbetween human and nature. The construction of residential environment itself is a way of links and interactions between human and nature. The ideal residential environment is the perfect harmony and combination between human and nature as dreamed by the ancient Chinese ancestors. The science of human settlements include five parts as the following: natural system, human system, social system, residential system and supporting system etc. We can see that research the ancient villages for the perspective of residential environment is of more comprehensiveness and guiding importance than the simple protection to development model.Through studies on current planning and construction of ancient villages in southern Anhui province, the paper generalized the defect of the present theories for construction and protection, and then methodologically proposes to absorb elements of the residential environment theories in a bid to enrich and complement the present theories. Regarding the protection and development of ancient villages as the ultimate principle, the paper also provides feasible theoretical guidance for the construction of ancient villages in southern Anhui province.