Research On Architectural Design Culture Of Chinese Small Towns

Small town is a kind of human settlement form between the city and the village.It's not a newborn thing, like what the city and village do, it follows the humansociety to pass through the long course of development. Since we entered the 21stcentury, with the economical development, more and more small towns haveappeared; as a result, the society has begun to more attention to them. The attention isomni-directional, among which the care for the architectural culture of small townshas been more than ever before.5000 years Chinese history has bred the glorious culture, and architecture is theconcrete reflection of culture. Most Chinese small towns are development from thevillages, and influenced by traditional culture, they retained a lot of historical sitesand humanity landscape. Economic integration of the world promotes the culturalexchange between countries, but it's so powerful that it brings very tremendousinfluence to Chinese culture. The influence displays in the architectural design for toomuch modernism, for a while, various tall buildings are built all over China. Thesmall towns are not exceptional, but because the basic principal of design is neglected,designers copy the form of architecture mechanically without consideration of culturehybrid. It turns out that there is not a little esthetic sense at all. Not only has notincreased modem feel for small towns, instead greatly destroyed the originalcharacteristic.Pei Ieoh Ming once said, "China's building must draw close to Chinese's life tohave Chinese style, therefore purely copy is not acceptable." So Chinese architecturalculture should base on the traditional culture as well as absorb the essence of externalculture, and create the characteristic architectural culture under the demand ofChinese social life."The characteristic of garden city", simplicity, sincerity, leisureliness andfreedom, is the life style and survival condition that advocated by most Chinesepeople since the ancient times. Thus it can be seen that in small towns, although the convenience of city life is essential, it is more attractive to be close to the countrysideand the nature, and have the nice environment for people to live. Today, we cannotneglect the outstanding traditional culture of small towns for its modernization. Whatwe must do is to learn good architectural theory, design thought and design methodfrom the western countries, and use them to deal with the problem of themodernization for local culture, that is, to show in the intrinsic spirit of Chinesetradition architectural culture, and then we will have buildings full of Chinesecharacteristic.This paper uses the method that combines theory and practice, introduction andinnovation together to research. It bases on the meaning, correlation theory andcontent of the architectural design culture of Chinese small towns, proposes thecountermeasure and suggestion to the lately construction and sustainabledevelopment of the small towns, with the analysis of a case. The paper divides intofive parts.The first part elaborates the basic theory of urbanization and small town.Emphasize the important role of small town in the process of urbanization byanalyzing its meaning of development.In the second part, it first introduce the relevant concept and theory of thearchitectural design of small town, then give some detailed suggestion to itsdevelopment by analyzing the problems that lies in the architecture design.In the third part, on the basis of the relationship of "culture, human andarchitecture", it analyzes the influence that traditional and modern culture bring to thearchitectural design of the small town, and make a conclusion for the architecturaldesign culture of Chinese small towns. At last, it elaborates its performance andfeatures.In the fourth part, it leads to a conclusion that the only way to inherit anddevelop the architectural design culture of the small towns is to guarantee thesustainable development of its construction. Then it gives the analysis and detaileddirective idea and principals.In the fifth part, it use a case to reinforce the paper.