Upland Dwellings in Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality
"Traveling around Sichuan and Chongqing is harder than scaling the blue sky."
Sichuan Province and the city of Chongqing have been famous for their precipitous terrain since ancient times. When it comes to the layout of homes, there is still the axis in the main house, but the sizes of the secondary houses and courtyards tend not to be the same. The houses in this region are built to adapt to the physical features of the land and are generally classified into the following types:
Terrace: This is applied on the steep mountainside, where a level shelf of land interrupting a declivity is constructed, like a flight of steps, forming broad platforms. The houses can thus be built on the terraces.
Balcony: Applied to a narrow terrain for the purpose of expanding indoor space by adding a balcony tower or balcony corridor to the house.
Steps: Applied on the flat portion of a hillside where the house is built perpendicular to the natural incline of the slope. This is usually used in building a residence's side rooms. The roof in the form of steps seems lively.
Slope: Houses are also built perpendicular to the incline of the slope. Used on a hillside that is not as steep as the one for "steps." This is solely to separate the floors of the interior of the house into different heights to maintain the overall continuity of the roof.
Annex: This involves extending the back of the roof and creating annexes to the existing house. This is usually used to extend the space of the side rooms.
The annexes built may become much lower than the existing side rooms.
About the book
Chinese Architecture Written by Cai Yanxin Published by China Intercontinental Press, Beijing, 2018
"Traveling around Sichuan and Chongqing is harder than scaling the blue sky."
Sichuan Province and the city of Chongqing have been famous for their precipitous terrain since ancient times. When it comes to the layout of homes, there is still the axis in the main house, but the sizes of the secondary houses and courtyards tend not to be the same. The houses in this region are built to adapt to the physical features of the land and are generally classified into the following types:
Terrace: This is applied on the steep mountainside, where a level shelf of land interrupting a declivity is constructed, like a flight of steps, forming broad platforms. The houses can thus be built on the terraces.
Balcony: Applied to a narrow terrain for the purpose of expanding indoor space by adding a balcony tower or balcony corridor to the house.
Steps: Applied on the flat portion of a hillside where the house is built perpendicular to the natural incline of the slope. This is usually used in building a residence's side rooms. The roof in the form of steps seems lively.
Slope: Houses are also built perpendicular to the incline of the slope. Used on a hillside that is not as steep as the one for "steps." This is solely to separate the floors of the interior of the house into different heights to maintain the overall continuity of the roof.
Annex: This involves extending the back of the roof and creating annexes to the existing house. This is usually used to extend the space of the side rooms.
The annexes built may become much lower than the existing side rooms.
About the book
Chinese Architecture Written by Cai Yanxin Published by China Intercontinental Press, Beijing, 2018
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