Leggere l’unità di struttura, morfologia e paesaggio dei villaggi cinesi: Le mappe tipologiche e interpretative del Villaggio Tradizionale di Zhangdaicun (Shaanxi) = Reading Structures, Morphology and Landscape as a Unity in Chinese Villages. Typological and Interpretive Maps of Zhangdaicun (Shaanxi) Traditional Village

Drawing from the typo-morphological theories and methods of the Italian school and further developing them by integrating the topographical, landscape, and intangible cultural dimensions, a new methodological perspective on rural morphological studies in China is presented. The study assumes the dimension of landscape as “a structure of structure” (Pezzetti 2019) to integrate perceptive and structuring aspects in one overall physical and cultural entity. The case study of Zhangdaicun village in the Hancheng area near Xi’an represents the wide category of Chinese Traditional Villages now in danger of extinction. The research employs extensive field survey, historical and contemporary cartographic sources, local gazetteers and villagers’ genealogy to decode significant relationships and the latent structures ordering the settlement patterns. Specific typological and interpretative maps demonstrates the relations between typological invariants and tissue configurations; morphologic units and families’ bloodlines; topographic, geomorphologic features and Fengshui.