A Beijing Courtyard House (A)
A courtyard house often called as 四合院 (SiHeYuan) or quadrangle house, it is a typical traditional Chinese style of living, the size and the detail may vary in some ways accordings to the different province, for example in the south of Yangtze River, the courtyard may be small, but all most all of the rooms have a second floor, that is to keep off the heat from outside, while the couryard houses in Shanxi or Shaanxi have a bigger yard for collecting the sunshine in the cold winter.
As we say the Hutong area of Beijing, that is refer to this kind of building, like it or not, this courtyard style of living is dying out day to day from Beijing, as you can see, it takes a lots of space, and just in one floor, take this one for instance, the total space is 28 X 52 = 1456 square meters, but just good for one family, an 3-4 generation extended family, 30 persons roughly. From 1900s, as the Berijing population boomed, this type of courtyard house is beginning to be rushed into different families, 5-10 or even more is very common, people have to go out for toilet or shower. It is not a suprise that local some of the local habitants are not very happy about this, and the real estate developers are just very happy to knock it down and replace it with several floor buildings.
But as more and more people, organizaions aware the importance of keeping hutongs, there are more voices about this, somewhere of the city, goverment is providing more infras-structure, such as running water, heating, gas pipe lines, and a lot of works have to done to repopulate the habitants. Keep if not, it is a problem.
The picture I show you, was for a rich family for sure, and today it is very very hard to find such a big courtyard, and if it is occupied by just one family, that must be a very very rich family, so I put a garage in the model.
The life inside a courtyard is very natural and could be quiet romatic in some way, especially in the late spring and summer time, family members have lots of chance to be together, and lots of activities in the open space.
The front yard was for servants or younger generation due to its location near to the public.
The Middle yard definately for the most important figures in the family, note the main room is bigger compared with the west and east side room, that is the Hall of Supreme Harmony of the Forbidden City in the family. So you can figure out, this type of house is in the same idea with the Emperor’s Forbidden City, and it is the same idea based on Confucius thoughts.
The back yard was for girls and lady serverts, because it is the most private part of the house.
The way of expanding a Chinese courtyard house style from a simple one to a very complicated one in a same idea, that is along with the axe line, I will show you some other types of courtyard some other day.
