hile Professor Chen Zhihua races against time to record and study folk architecture before it disappears, some of his colleagues at Tsinghua University's architecture school are trying to persuade farmers to adopt new aesthetic ideas when building new houses.

But it was only through prolonged and detailed discussions that Professor Xu Weiguo finally won the support of farmers in Penglai, East China's Shandong Province, on what types of new houses should be built.

When Xu and his team worked out the first draft of the house designs last March, the local farmers disagreed immediately and bluntly expressed their own ideas, recalled Xu. The farmers may not know much about architectural design theories but they cherished hopes for better living conditions and were able to judge what would be a good or bad design for them.

The professor's team tried to drastically change the barracks-like residential compounds. But the farmers opposed the architects' seemingly "good" house patterns, which, if put into effect, would lead to a total different lifestyle and thus were considered by the farmers as going too far and as not cost-effective for them as their average per capita income is less than 3,000 yuan (US$362) a year.

Xu shuttled between Beijing and Penglai about a dozen times between March and December last year before he and the farmers worked out a well-received plan for the new houses.

Xu went to Zhou Youlu's family several times and, before the final blueprint was settled, they discussed every detail of the future house, from the location of the toilet and the size of the kang (a heated bed with a wood fire in a stove built underneath), to how the cupboards should be constructed to make use of the corners of the rooms.

Xu and his assistants offered alternative plans to their clients and gave them full freedom to choose. The architects tried to dissipate each and every practical concern and doubt.

"Our experiment in creating new residential buildings for the farmers is of high academic value," Xu said.

"We must learn more about the building materials and techniques commonly used by local farmers. Above all, we must respect the local culture and history, and should take the specific needs of local farmers into full consideration."

Xu and his team said that their new ideas will eventually be realized in the design plans for the farmers' houses but that goal can only be attained step by step.

The "experiment" of bringing new ideas to local residential buildings was implemented more easily when the architects considered plans to protect the time-honoured wooden-storeyed buildings in the northern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in South China.

In 1990, many villages signed a letter to the local government, asking permission to rebuild their time-worn houses and improve their living conditions. But about 200 Chinese architects gathered to call for the protection of these wooden buildings.

The wooden buildings in Rongshui County had been the Miao ethnic people's housing for centuries.

They have breath-taking beauty like refined pen-and-ink drawings but have long been plagued by fire. Over the past four decades, some 20 per cent of the residents there suffered from a destructive fire.

Some villagers would even take all their valuables with them wherever they went in case of a sudden fire.

In addition, one wooden building consumes dozens of cubic metres of wood. The mountains in the regions are already barren.

The rebuilding project started in a relatively poor village called Zhengduozhai.

Shan Deqi, Xu Weiguo's colleague, explained that they intended to give a convincing example of the benefits of modified, safer and more comfortable buildings made with materials that are cheap and easy to obtain.

In the summer of 1992, the architects offered the villagers three designs, varying in floorspace from 80 to 120 square metres.

By the end of October that year, the whole village took on a new look. But it maintained the traditions of the old wooden buildings such as stilted roofs with clay tiles and having the staircases partly outside the building.

The architect even combined the function of a basketball court with lushengping, a traditional public gathering space for local art and cultural performances.

(China Daily XIAO ZHU 26-02-2003)