Layered Morphologies and Topographical Structures in Historic Rurban Landscape: Integrating Typo-Morphological, Topographical and Landscape tools with Feng Shui

Intertwining theoretic approach with research on a case study, the paper addresses the issue of reading, de-coding and re-coding Chinese historic villages and towns, proposing and integrated approach aimed at their reading, protection and enhancement. Reading and de-coding, as urban studies have demonstrated, are the essential basis to define comprehensive strategies for preservation, appropriate modifications and innovations in heritage and historic contexts. The intertwining of typo-morphological and historic-structural tools with topographical reading and landscape systemic approach has proved to be effective in the Chinese context where latency, disappearance, intangibility too often open the path to demolitions, substitution, and simulacra reconstruction. In Fenghuang (Shaanxi) case study, the discovery of a resistant structure that takes its shape from the original and triple relationship between settlement type, rurban morphology and rural structure opens unexplored reading, which may be essential for the urgent Chinese challenges. The fact that rural villages are the locus of the permanence of Chinese settlement forms and not just that of vernacular traditions and xiangchou is perceivable. Nonetheless, studies have been insufficient in relating typo-morphological analysis to a deep knowledge of built facts in order to define an analytical methodology capable to capture both the locus solus and to make explicit general criteria. At the same time, to relate to the geography as a dominating character, expressing the close relationships between latent form, typology and geographic factors, thus providing an instrumentation to give a describable physical “mise en forme” to Feng Shui within the rapport urban-rural form and ground-form.