THE EVOLUTION AND TYPES OF TRADITIONAL HOUSE MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PINGYAO ANCIENT CITY:A MICRO VIEW OF FENGSHUI STUDY

As a unique urban morphology theory of China, Fengshui affects some aspects of city, such as the location and lay-out of the city, the scale and decoration of the building. Traditional house is the longest-last and stable morphological element in settlement. As the matrix of historic cities, traditional houses provide a readable text for the research on urban morphology. This paper focuses on Pingyao Ancient City, takes Fengshui culture as a perspective, investigates and demonstrates the morphological changes of traditional houses by means of field investigation, in-depth interview and morphological analysis. By in-depth and comprehensive research, this paper finds that Fengshui culture has integrated into the context of the ancient city because of its powerful mold to the traditional house morphology, such as the north-south narrow long flat of the buildings, inward enclosed spaces, eight-dwellings layouts, decorations full of Fengshui imagery. Traditional house morphology is evolving constantly and among those factors which caused the evolvement, the conception of Fengshui shows its immediacy, intensity and endurance, it ran through different times and deeply affected the changes of the house morphology. By using a specific morphological theory of China to discuss the evolving features of traditional house morphology, this paper can enrich the west urban morphological research theory, form the morphological theory that suitable for the local cultural situation. It also has practical significance to the historical continuation and context protection of Pingyao Ancient City.