China’s History of Sustainable Housing
Sunday, November 22, 2009 11:13
the first time I was introduced to China’s Hakka houses, I was still a student in Beijing. I literally dragged by Chinese teacher to the TV, and then had her call the TV station to figure out where these amazing structures were.
Years later, while in Shanghai, I was reintroduced to these houses by a friend who had just taken a plan to get to a bus, to find the path… and stayed in one.
Truely a sight to be seen, and structures to explored, Inhabitat’s recent post Circular Hakka Houses Create Self-Sustaining Communities puts together a nice spec of the “typical structure”. Structures that I am sure hold more than a few lessons for architects as they look to create the structures of the future:
Built from either stone bricks or more commonly rammed earth, these spectacular structures have walls up to six feet thick and measure three to four stories in height. The largest houses covered over 430,000 sq feet and today it is not unusual to find surviving houses of over 110,000 sq feet, each able to house up to 80 families.
