A Comparative Study Of Physical Space In World Cultural Heritage Villages Of China And Italy

The World Cultural Heritage selection committee followed the same standards in judging whether a village should be selected or not.It is well acknowledged that a World Cultural Heritage village should represent a unique artistic achievement or a genius masterpiece of creativity;or it should have made great contributions to the development of architecture,town planning or landscape design;or it should be able to provide a unique or at least special testimony of some kind of elapsed civilization or cultural tradition.In spite of such hard standards,a number of ancient villages in China and Italy have successfully been selected as World Cultural Heritage villages.But considering their different cultures and geographical backgrounds,they have presented different ways and features to modify and adapt to their living environment.The villages selected to compare in this thesis are rather typical for the villages in their own country both in culture and in the way of organizing spaces.Besides,they also have the same geographical environment characteristics which refers to a water and mountains around them,which make them comparable in managing physical space.The thesis begins with the historical development of Hongcun village and Vernazza village which tell about how the village interior space evolved. Then,the study focuses on the analysis of the physical space of Hongcun village and Vernazza village to see their similarities and difference in three layers:the whole space of the village,the specific forms of the traditional buildings,and the public space in the village as the negative space of the architecture spaces above. In succession,the paper elaborates the current situation of the two villages and has a variety of outlooks towards them in in the future.