Join the villagers in adding bricks and tiles

【The Power of Design】

Join the villagers in adding bricks and tiles

——Rural construction practice in Qianxian Prefecture, Guizhou Province

Author: Lv Pinjing (Vice President of Central Academy of Fine Arts)

The process of rural construction is a process of continuous deepening and evolution of protection and development, rural culture needs to be protected and inherited, and rural life also needs to be continuously improved and developed. The transformation of traditional villages is not only a change in style, but more importantly, a change in people's ideological concepts, which contains a village's interpersonal relations, values, lifestyles, economic operation and other all-round factors, which require the participation of the government, villagers and all aspects of society, and designers often play the role of "coordinators".

Located in Qingshuihe Town, Xingyi City, Qianxian Prefecture, Guizhou Province, Yutuolu Village is located in the upper reaches of the Maling River Gorge and the lower reaches of the Qingshui River Scenic Area, and the whole village is located in a natural sinkhole, which is known as the "paradise" of Qianxi Southwest. Banwan Village is located in Yata Town, Chengheng County, this small mountain village on the mountain, with the typical appearance of the traditional village of the Buyi ethnic group, the population of the village is mainly the Buyi ethnic group, containing rich ethnic cultural resources. In the past 8 years, the CAFA team has continued to intervene in the protection and development of these two traditional villages, combining the professional director of the designer and the humanistic and artistic advantages of the Academy with the specific needs of poor areas, and exploring new ways to inherit the local cultural context and activate the endogenous power of the countryside.

Yu supplement Lu village landscape type village gate design, the use of a few hundred meters away to expand the road abandoned stone to build the village gate Liu Tingting photo / Guangming picture

Restore the simple rural landscape

Although Yutuolu Village has a unique natural feature and cultural landscape, through field research, it is found that the village faces problems such as poor sanitary environment, serious illegal construction, and mixed new and old buildings. Due to the long history, some old buildings have fallen into disrepair, and some buildings use temporary materials such as asbestos tiles, colored steel plates, etc. as a means of repair, destroying the simple and natural character of the original village buildings. Many migrant workers prefer foreign architectural forms, rich people are keen to build a common "small western-style building" in China's urban-rural junction, blindly respect individual decorative elements such as tiles, porcelain bottle columns, etc., using glazed tiles or colored tiles that are seriously inconsistent with the local style as façade materials, and the so-called "European" style or metal materials of the railing is also a popular element of new construction.

In the transformation of building units, we adopt the strategy of reasonable transformation and protection first. It is mainly divided into two ways: one is to repair, while improving the environment, in strict accordance with traditional practices, according to local conditions, local materials, maintain the traditional style, in order to truthfully reflect historical sites, retain historical memory; the other, for those foreign architectural forms that are incompatible with the regional style, it is mainly transformed, abandoning materials that do not conform to the traditional style, and the flat roof building without regional character characteristics is transformed into a sloped roof by increasing the roof use space, and the new building façade that does not conform to the traditional characteristics is transformed. The pillars and pillars were renovated, and the harmonious relationship with the overall style of the village was restored.

Panwang Ancient Village, which consists of more than 100 Buyi stilt houses, has also been affected by modernization like Yutuolu Village, and the newly built masonry and concrete buildings that account for one-third of the village are incompatible with the traditional village style in terms of volume and style. By using traditional materials, structures and construction techniques, we restored the overall village landscape with minimal impact on the original occupants. Most of the traditional stilt houses, the first structural straightening and reinforcement, the external wall maintenance still retains the original rammed earth practice, the vertical panel wall follows the original style to be repaired and improved, for the indoor living space, through demonstration transformation, hoping to make some explorations and provide some reference for the improvement of the quality of life of the villagers.

The development of traditional villages should not stay at a certain historical moment, but should be based on the continuous evolution and renewal of excellent traditions, which is a dynamic and organic renewal process. The purpose of the transformation is to correct the deviation between separating history and ignoring regional culture, and to guide the development of traditional villages to the development path of following the characteristics of nature and regional culture, restoring the rural landscape, and better adapting to the needs of modern life.

The public space in front of the Chan Ancestral Hall provides the venue for the revived Kohatakai and other folk events Photo by Chen Yiyang/Guangming Photo

Create a vibrant rural public space

The fundamental purpose of rural revitalization is to maintain the civilization of the countryside, so that the villagers can live better and live with dignity, not just to use the land in the countryside, build beautiful houses, passively meet the curious eyes of tourists, consume the natural landscape environment and traditional cultural resources of the countryside, but do not bring new productive forces there. In this process, the creation of public life and collective consciousness of villagers is particularly important.

Yutuolu Village is a Han village with distinct cultural traditions in ethnic minority areas, formed by more than 85% of the Chen people living here. In the process of historical development, the rich and unique collective folk activities that were once owned are gradually on the verge of disappearing because there is no corresponding public space support. Therefore, through the demolition and reconstruction of individual single buildings, we combined to build a new public activity area to form a public space system centered on Banyan Tree Square and Chen Ancestral Hall, connecting folk activities and sacrifice places such as land temple, mountain temple, Guanyin temple, and Wangxiangtai. After the renovation, the unique historical walking ceremony was activated and restored in this new public space system, and the nostalgia complex of homesickness and ancestors was expressed here. Through the reconstruction of public space, the village has become a living and interactive organism, which has stimulated the enthusiasm of villagers to care for and participate in public affairs and collective activities, and promoted the strengthening of villagers' interaction and collective consciousness.

The transformation of Banwan Village is also the first to start from the combing of public space. Around the mountain temple, ancient opera stage, large canteen, respectively, the construction of folk sacrifices, folk culture, daily life as the theme of public space; the new construction of the wind and rain bridge, not only convenient for villagers to travel, but also for the villagers to provide a regional, ethnic communication space, now villagers weaving, thread management also use this space, in the collective manual work, exchange skills and exchange of emotions.

Panwancun Splendid Embroidery Workshop Photo by Yu Yuanyuan /Guangming Photo

Promote the local growth of rural culture

For the traditional skills and folk customs activities that are still active in the vast rural areas, the state has adopted corresponding protection measures, such as the introduction of a series of support policies for the protection of intangible cultural heritage, and many enterprises have also carried out off-site development and utilization. However, from the perspective of the long-term goal of rural construction, the revitalization of real rural revitalization and the revitalization of traditional skills should play a greater role. Traditional skills are both intangible cultural heritage values and an important means of livelihood for villagers to obtain economic resources through manual labor. If there are large workshops in the countryside and small workshops in every household, the villagers can produce, display, communicate, pass on and sell at the doorstep of their homes without leaving their homes, so as to maintain the vitality and integrity of the village, and also have a leading role in the economic and cultural ecological construction of the countryside, so that the handicraft skills are not separated from the original environment, and the protection and development of "local" are obtained, and the continuation and inheritance in the rural environment are maintained and inherited.

Banwan Village is a traditional village included in the third batch of national protection list, most of the villagers are Buyi ethnic group, preserving a large number of ethnic cultures and customs. Buyi opera is a national intangible cultural heritage protection project, in the village to retain a complete drama team, there are many ethnic characteristics of the intangible cultural heritage projects, such as weaving, embroidery, winemaking are the villagers are accustomed to life skills, woodwork, stone, rammed earth, pottery is also most of the middle-aged and elderly villagers have the construction skills of building homes.

In order to protect and inherit the traditional skills of the Buyi people, we have used the idle stilt houses in the village to transform a series of intangible cultural heritage workshops such as the splendid embroidery workshop and the brewery in the village, hoping that the traditional Buyi weaving and brewing skills will continue to be passed on in these intangible cultural heritage workshops. After the renovation, we also helped the embroidery girls of Panwan Village to go out of the mountains and participate in the non-genetic research and training program of the Suzhou Academy of Arts and Crafts, helping the embroidery girls understand the modern economic production methods, enhance their confidence in traditional handicrafts, and provide a sustainable innovation path for rural economic and cultural development.

Banwan Dreamer Primary School Yu Yuanyuan photo \ Guangming pictures

In the subsequent development, we also led the students to use the financial support of the National Arts Fund to build a new stage for the Banwan Buyi opera in the non-genetic practice center that also has performance preparations, making it a rural scenery where the Buyi opera stage and the villagers have leisure exchanges and viewing parties.

The continuous observation and design intervention in Yutuolu Village and Banwan Village make us realize that rural revitalization should be carried out in the two dimensions of "hardware" and "software", and through hardware construction combined with intangible material, soft, process and temporal folk activities, the system design of environment, space and materials is integrated with the inheritance and innovation of intangible cultural heritage such as the revitalization of traditional skills. We must give full play to the subjective initiative and enthusiasm of the main body of villagers, let the villagers fully discover and explore the village's own resources and the villagers' own capabilities in the process of participating in folk culture activities, inject endogenous power, and let the rural culture live in the present and live in the folk.

Different from the design practice in the city, the transformation of the countryside needs more to be the perception and understanding of rural life, the experience and cognition of local culture, which must be obtained from the on-site feeling. For rural construction, we first need to have a humble heart, a humility to tradition, a humility to nature, and a humility to life, we are not using the "universal hand" to build everything, but we should personally add bricks and tiles with the villagers and work together. Not presupposing a priori grand narratives, learning in the process of personal experience, is the attitude that design should have to intervene in rural construction. Let the design shape the rural style and cast the soul for the rural culture, and ultimately it is necessary to "see people, see things, and see life".

Guangming Daily (2022.04.10 11th edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily