Research Of Ali Vernacular Architecture

Vernacular architecture is the spiritual wealth of all mankind since it contains abundant historical and cultural information. Ali is located in the most west of Tibet,the history of human activities of this area can be traced back to the late Paleolithic period which is at least ten or twenty thousand years ago. Zanda and Purang, the southern counties of Ali, which is the birthplace of the primitive religion of Tibet-Bon religion, have bred the ancient and splendid Katao civilization. During the middle of10th century and early17th century, the powerful Guge kingdom ruled Zanda and gave birth to the Yihong period of Tibetan Buddhism. With all the historical contributions, Ali created its unique vernacular architecture with its deep historical heritage and glorious civilization. Researching and organizing them is of great value to the study of architectural cultural diversity.This paper selects vernacular architecture of Zanda and Purang which have rich cultural connotation as the main object of study. Its main contents include the location and type of villages based on the macro-level; The planning thoughts and spatial form of villages, a variety of factors that affect their formation based on the meso level;The building site, plan,space of various types of buildings to explore cultural connotations of Ali vernacular architecture based on the micro-level; It also gives a brief introduction to residential buildings of the remaining six regions of Tibet to find out similarities and differences between Ali and the remaining six regions; Taking Kejia for example to analyze its settlement pattern and residential space,followed by summarizing cultural characteristics of Kejia village’s vernacular architecture; Analyzing Ali vernacular architecture from natural view,cosmology,clean concept and defense mechanism; At last, the paper makes recommendations to the protection and development of the vernacular architecture.It also illustrates the value of Ali vernacular architecture and the significance to today’s architectural design.