Furniture Design Ideas

An overall look at the compositional structure of the Beijing siheyuan and Huizhou dwellings, along with doc­umentation from surveys into various Huizhou customs indicates that while the siheyuan may be their prototype, Huizhou dwellings formed independently in response to central China’s Jiangnan climate. The tianjing is a particularly good example of an adap­tive feature that […]

The majority of recently constructed houses have no tian- jitig courtyard—the tang is entered directly from the street. They generally have two stories and are composed of a central tang flanked by four woshi stacked lengthwise two on each side, with the chufang at the rear (Figures 65.1-65.2). Large window openings are cut into the […]

A lean-to, sloping roof projects from the exterior of the high outer retaining wall that surrounds the living area of Huizhou dwellings. Beneath this roof are housed the chu­fang (kitchen), shaichang (containing the laundry area, clotheslines, well, etc.), vegetable gardens, livestock pens, and toilet; this entire area is bounded on the other side by another […]

Facing out on the tianjing, woshi form insular private spaces. Woshi floors are wooden, but shoes are not removed before entering. Whether the overall residential complex is large or small, all woshi are a standard three-by-five to three-by-six meters (9.8-by-16.4 to 9.8-by-19.6 feet) in area, regardless of the resident’s generational standing, wealth, or other individ­ual […]

According to a Chinese proverb, the cohabitation of “five generations under one roof’ brings good fortune. Traditional Chinese collective residential complexes are a hierarchical­ly-arranged series of discrete spaces for each generation, which serve at the same time to link the various genera­tions. The architectural composition clearly and simply positions each nuclear family in a specific […]

Beijing is located at a latitude of forty degrees north, and Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, at thirty degrees, which corresponds to the significant difference in Japan between Morioka in temperate northern Honshu, with its severe winters, and Yakushima, a subtropical island south of Kyushu. Hefei has a fairly acute seasonal temperature fluctuation, averaging […]

The Beijing residential quadrangle (siheyuan) is composed of a yuanzi central courtyard surrounded by four halls: a main hall {zheng fang) facing south with wings (erfang) appended to either side, an opposing hall (dao zuo fang) facing north, and lateral halls (xiang fang) facing east and west (Figure 49). Each hall is a single-story unit […]

Traditional Chinese Dwellings T he Han race, China’s racial majority, and the numer­ous other racial minorities that are scattered across the vast mainland formed distinctive residences in accor­dance with their respective climatic conditions, economic circumstances, and ethnic customs. For the most part, these diverse vernacular dwellings are closed and intro­verted in composition. “Qing-ming shang-he tu” […]

The stroll garden, or kaiyiishiki-teien, emerged amid the stable milieu of the Tokugawa regime and its strict social hierarchy with nobles and feudal lords near the top, and urban merchants near the bottom. The spacious gardens built on the private properties of feudal lords are what is usually referred to as “stroll gardens,” but in […]

After the death of Rikyu in the late sixteenth century, the emergence of the sukiya-zukuri architectural style led to a new shoin + sukiya + soan arrangement, which combined buildings and gardens of these three styles into a single linked structure. Positioned between the large, magnificent shoin, with its formalized decorative accoutrements denoting high status, […]