Research On Chishui Datong Ancient Town Guildhall Architecture Restoration Design

Chishui Datong ancient town is located in the north of Guizhou and its north & west sides border on Sichuan. It is China’s historic famous town. This ancient town possesses unique cultural traits. It was commonly affected by The Yangtze River basin immigrant culture of the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, salt business culture as well as local indigenous culture. Datong is known as “ nine palaces and eighteen temples”, among which there are three large guildhall architectures: Jiangxi guildhall Wanshou palace; Hubei guildhall Yuwang palace and local commercial guildhall Kaili palace. They are next-door neighbors. They were built in the middle and later periods of Qing dynasty and ruined successively after the new China was founded, now they only remain base address and little relics. This essay selects those three guildhalls to do restoration design. In order to correctly master the restoration basis, the essay makes research and conclusion on such architectures’ form and structural methods. Firstly, it makes a deep analysis on Datong historical background and it concludes two main factors that affect the ancient town’s architectural form, namely: Ming dynasty & Qing dynasty immigrants and business communication. Therefore it confirms the research scope of architectural form. By researching on prototype area, Xiajiang area and reference area, it analyzes o plane form, space construction, style design and decorative feature of guildhall & temple architectures, and finally it concludes guildhall types’ different features. It offers evidences for accurately mastering each guildhall’s stylistic features and local features. Secondly, through an in-depth analysis on Chishui civilian houses and guildhalls’ construction methods, and through understanding of local architectures’ construction methods, this essay creates basis for restoring design. Thirdly, based on Datong guildhall sites’ surveying & mapping analysis, taking local residents’ descriptions as a reference, all those offers many powerful evidences for restoration design. we make a restoring design on Datong guildhall architectures based on those three researches. Restoring the three palaces is not only restoring architectures, but also discussing guildhall’s architectural forms and traits, as well as making a conclusion on concrete architectural way. It helps us to better understand the guildhall architectures in this region.