Critical Regionalism- Integrating Traditional Chinese Architecture Into Contemporary High-Rise Residential Building

In the field of modern architecture, a clear path indicates architecture’s historical development, from the very beginning of ancient Egypt to the emergence of modernism in the first half of the twentieth century, and finally to the dominant architectural style of today. Compared with the Western world, the Chinese developed their unique architectural style thousands of years ago. The style can be summed up as the difference between wood and stone, which deeply influenced surrounding countries. Unfortunately, the evolution of the style was suddenly interrupted at the end of the 19th century, which was the emerging modernism in the West. Despite research on the historical background at that time, a significantly profound question remains: What would Chinese architecture look like now had it continued to evolve along that line? After the disorderly development of real estate over the past four decades in China, cities in China have a tedious urban façade. This is because developers apply the same mode due to the short payback period. Moreover, people’s quality of life is negatively affected by this situation. To bring traditional Chinese architecture back to modern residential buildings and solve the problems caused by real estate development, this study aimed to propose a new residential archetype to respond to the aforementioned facts, to offer solutions that would lead to an improved dwelling environment, and to examine those solutions. A large improvement was found compared with the benchmarks