On Architecture

How could I not comment architecture! After all, it's a big part of the built environment I move in. As I mentioned in previous entries that the architecture around Shangri-La is clearly Tibetan. Though apparently compared to Tibet, the houses being built in Shangri-La are palatial in size - mansions not humble huts. Someone is certainly doing well by the tourism - hopefully it's the local Tibetans!

I find these buildings extremely pleasing; the proportions are beautiful and they are hand built using all natural materials, wood, mud brick or stone, and wonderfully finished with intricate wood carvings and bold designs painted on.

The houses are essentially three thick mud brick walls (or on rare occasions hand hewn irregular stone walls) with the front side made totally of richly carved wood. The front has a balcony running the length of the building on the upper floor. The main posts on which this balcony rests have traditionally been made of massive, ancient tree trunks, the thicker and older the better. However due to excessive demand, the deforestration in Northern Yunnan was such, that by the late 1980's, most forests had been felled from the slopes. Since there were no more trees to hold the soil in place, thousands died in the resulting series of land slides in the area. Wisely, if slightly belatedly, the government of China banned commercial logging here. Now there are new forests growing, but slowly oooh so slowly, since the high altitude makes for a poor climate for rapid tree growth.

However recycling is a wonderful thing and all and any old wood is reused in house construction. The first part of a Tibetan house to start cracking and crumbling are the mud brick walls - the tough hardwood lasts for centuries. When the walls get too old, cracked and unstable, all the wooden parts of the house are removed, a new house is built next to the old one and the mud walls of the old house are left to gradually dissolve in the rain like some ancient ruins.

I love the window designs, where a kind of mountain is painted around the window - an area of dark paint in the white walls, which grows gradually narrower going upwards. Oh well, look at the picture and all will be made clear. Traditional Chinese architecture is certainly very pretty as well, but the Tibetan one has a simplicity and clearness of colour, line and design, which I find even more appealing.

The lowest points for architecture so far go to Vietnam. A very bizarre phenomenon, which could be seen throughout the country were disproportionately tall and narrow buildings. I heard many conflicting theories for these up to five-story buildings, which at best (or worst) were only about 3,5 meters wide to the street.

One theory for these was that land was simply too expensive in a country slightly smaller than Finland but with nearly 90 million inhabitants causing these tall buildings to be built on tiny plots. Another was that the communist government only allowed one family one regulation sized plot of land and if the family got wealthy (or large), the only direction they could extend their house was upwards.

Whatever the reason, the result was architectonically one of the oddest I have seen. The example below is the only one I had - not the most bizarre, since at least this building is in a city scape and there are other multiple story buildings arround it. However such individual high-rise houses can be seen by roadsides surrouded by cabbage fields and maybe just a few shacks - boldly waiting for the neighbours to cotton on and build up.