Spatial Interpretation Of Southwest Minorties’ Traditional Settlements In Mountainous Area

Southern edge of Huaxia Race stretches to Southwest China. Lofty mountains, turbulent rivers, harsh natural and transportation conditions isolate numerous relatively small and safe living spaces in that region. In these spaces, different ethnic groups formulate their own social structure, social organization, production and life style. Individuals of the same ethnic group also boast their uniqueness in the aspects mentioned above, reflected in their planning and design of cottages and architectural complex.Settlement and house support human being’s lives, and hence are objects of architectural and landscape architectural research. Space structure is the interior order and organization of spatial and formation elements. Spatial elements as well as their formation mechanism could be identified via the interpretation of spatial structure. This research analyses spatial morphology, syntheses five groups of related concepts, and further explores human cognition of spatial morphology.Among the vast ethnic groups living in the complexity of southwestern region, social ideologies and life styles distinguish from each other even if they are of one same minority group. The diversity of social ideologies succeeded until the democratic reform in the1950s. Political, economical, clan and marital systems which are most influential to the morphology of settlements and architectures are depicted in the research.Traditional settlements are artificial systems within natural environments, and provide living necessities for their residents. Spatial morphology of settlement and architecture closely relates to landform, weather, hydrology, and humanistic settings, including social structure, religious belief, clan system and the mode of production. Settlement space differ from the general conceptual space in following aspects:1. Elements of space,2. Organization pattern of elements,3. Scale of settlement space, and4. Factors of space formation. Settlement space is divided in three levels, macro, medium and micro. Spatial behavior model in the geography discipline is applied to extract conceptual elements from physical settlement space in all three levels, and further establish structures of them, respectively. Features of elements are depicted by parameters. Factors of space formation are inferred by analyzing parameters in each settlement. Case study including Aba County and Danba County in Sichuan Province, and Mangang of Menghun Town in Yunnan Province.Isolation and stability of country society enable the generation of residential space pattern in each geographical region, meaning they share similar architectural form, space organization, function, and structure. Prototype, fundamental form and variant of residential space in certain regions are identified, as well as the relevance of inner space and external style. Residential space in Aba County and Danba County, Sichuan Province, and Mangang of Menghun Town, Yunnan Province are studied to explore influential factors of spatial structure formation.