The Urban Design Research Of Traditional Block Based On Urban Memory

With the social and economic development, large scale transformation and renewal took place in the cities since the 80s of last century, a process that generated great changes both in the city's structure and material form, especially, the convergence of city image and the lost of features; city is no longer the familiar home that in people's memory. Therefore, along with promoting urban development, how to effectively protect the city's history, pass down the urban context, to maintain the public's collective identity, become urgent tasks that the city facing now. Through theoretical study and examples of evidence this paper discusses the basic theory of urban memory, focusing on the memory elements in traditional block and strategies for urban design that could applied on representing memory elements, hoping those could provide references for the city's historical/cultural preservation and urban design work. The main research contents and conclusions are as follows:Paper explains the urban memory is a complex system, should not just stay at material level, which not only refers to the city's material environment and form, materialized environment, people's subjective sensations and awareness, but also fully represents urban social groups'different perceptions of and value judgments on the urban environment. As urban memory carrier, traditional block, should be included in city memory system, maintained close ties with places and memory.This paper classified traditional block's memory elements into three categories, made detailed classification and thorough analysis. Among them, the form factors (shape, texture, scale, color, lighting, etc.) focus on memory object's external image and materialized contents; structural elements (blocks of the scene, the organization of lines and rhythm, spatial form, etc.) focus on how the object's properties and contents to construct overall atmosphere and generate feelings; cultural elements (types, place names, events and characters, rituals, landmark, etc.) focus on the understanding that memory body generated based knowledge and experiences already existed.Based on above mentioned approaches, the paper presents memory elements of traditional block like multiple vocabulary for expression, block's identification, the authenticity of memory carrier, stable block forms, the integrity of neighborhood atmosphere, neighborhood activities, participate possibilities of block activities and block's sustainable development and etc. for urban design strategies use, combined with specific analysis of relevant cases.