2009—Establish "Stilt-House-Style Modern Architecture" as the City's Main Architectural Style to Rapidly Elevate Its Image (Part 2)
2. The feasibility of establishing "stilt-house-style modern architecture" as the city's main architectural style. In plain terms, it is a product of advancing with the times and bringing forth the new; its style is that of the stilt house, while its materials and functions are entirely modern. So I also call it the "new-edition stilt house." The Tujia stilt house...
This article has been compiled from historical materials in the "Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network" (33519.com · City Overview section). Some administrative divisions, population, socioeconomic data, and policy information may be outdated and are for reference only; for the latest situation, please refer to official releases by the local government and scenic areas.
II. The Feasibility of Establishing 'Stilted-House-Style Modern Architecture' as the Main Architectural Style of the City.
In plain terms, 'stilted-house-style modern architecture' is a product of advancing with the times and bringing forth the new from the old. Its style is that of the stilted house, while its building materials and functional applications are entirely modern. Therefore I also call it the 'new-version stilted house.'
As one of the evolved forms of pile-dwelling architecture, the Tujia stilted house takes adapting to the environment and conforming to nature as its starting point, and has endured for thousands of years without decline. The fact that large stretches of stilted-house dwellings still exist today in the villages of Wangjiaping and Yuanguping in our city is an obvious example. In fact, applying the element symbols of stilted houses to modern architecture has seen successful practice both outside and within our city. For example, the Hongyadong Folk Culture Scenic Area in Chongqing, and the Shanghai Yuyuan Commercial City (Chenghuang Temple) covering over a hundred thousand square meters, are entirely modern buildings in the Tujia stilted-house style, finely crafted, mostly around five or six stories, with the tallest reaching twelve or thirteen stories, astonishing even people from outside the Tujia native region. Another example is the Longfu Market beside the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. The main building was originally the ubiquitous 'matchbox,' and was initially intended to be demolished and rebuilt. Unexpectedly, through one architect's magic touch, bold introduction of stilted-house symbols for 'dressing up' transformed it into a grand work that dares to compete with the imperial city's architecture. But on the whole, in terms of discovering, elevating, and applying the stilted-house style, the most outstanding achievements are still those of our Zhangjiajie. The Pipa Xi Hotel, built in the late 1980s, is still regarded as a landscape-type hotel and is one of the preferred accommodations for important Chinese and foreign guests; the Tianzi Grand Hotel and Jingxi Grand Hotel at the seat of Wulingyuan District government, which adopted the stilted-house style 'dressing up,' are both eight or nine stories tall, towering majestically with beautiful forms, making surrounding buildings pale by comparison. The newly built Dayong Fucheng and Shizijie Commercial City in the central urban area are both sizable modern architectural complexes in the stilted-house style; the nine-story Jinlan Grand Hotel, in the words of the famous architect Mr. Wan Min, designer of the Macau Taipa Cross-Sea Bridge and the Hangzhou Bay Cross-Sea Bridge: 'This stilted-house building has put all the buildings near Guanliping to shame.' Since the launch of the 'Four Roads Renovation Dressing-Up Project,' a batch of beautiful works successfully employing stilted-house element symbols have emerged one after another in the areas of the Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau, the Municipal Grain Bureau, and the Municipal Urban Management Bureau. Coupled with nighttime lighting beautification, they truly excite tourists and citizens alike. In summary, 'stilted-house-style modern architecture' is no longer merely a concept, but an operable architectural model and a branch of architectural aesthetics.
I have delved into and studied the subject of 'stilted-house-style modern architecture,' and once summarized it in fourteen characters, attempting to distill and define several basic element symbols of the stilted-house style for practical application in urban architecture. These are: stilted feet, silk eaves, sloped roofs, dark tiles, pink walls, and orange wood.
Stilted feet: the suspended walkway, which is the most prominent feature of the stilted house; silk eaves: the covering over the walkway, which is the greatest feature not found in the stilted houses of other ethnic groups. Mr. Zhang Lianggao believes that the walkway and silk eaves 'have made immeasurable contributions to the beauty of Chinese architectural form'; sloped roofs: roofs in a sloped form, which may or may not have upturned eaves. Dark tiles: tiles with gray as the base color—gray-black, gray-blue, and gray-red are all acceptable, but the overall style should be predominantly gray-black; pink walls: walls with pink as the base color—pink-white, pink-yellow, and pink-red are all acceptable, but the overall style should be predominantly pink-white; orange wood: the insistence on wooden decoration on walkways, doors and windows, railing panels, fang eaves, and brick walls is the most prominent characteristic distinguishing Tujia stilted houses from Huizhou-style architecture and Jiangnan water town residential styles. The wooden decoration should choose orange as the base color—orange-yellow, orange-red, and orange-gray are all acceptable, but the overall style should be predominantly orange.
I have visited Anhui Huangshan, Jiangxi Wuyuan, and other places to study Huizhou-style architecture, and visited Suzhou, Hangzhou, and other places to study Jiangnan water town residential-style architecture. I found that they all look very good when built up to about three stories; but once they reach five or six stories, or eight or nine stories, the high horse-head walls and upturned eaves appear weakened and become incongruous with the large-volume walls. The stilted-house style is different: its stilted feet, walkways, silk eaves, corners, and orange wood decoration can cover any part of the wall. Once these element symbols are well applied, they are far richer than Huizhou-style architecture and Jiangnan water town residences. Therefore, in terms of applicability to contemporary urban architecture, the stilted-house style is far superior to them. Practice both within and outside the city in applying stilted-house element symbols shows that at the technical level there are completely viable ways to solve the various challenges of low-, mid-, and high-rise buildings in our city—and moreover, there lies enormous space for technological development! Therefore, from a purely technical perspective, establishing 'stilted-house-style modern architecture' as the main style of urban architecture is entirely feasible.