Research On Tectonic Culture Of The Plain-brick Architecture In Fuzhou In The Recent Past

As one of the oldest building materials of China, the brick has developed and evolved during thousands of years, and finally formed a variety of masonry system.Today it is still one of the most economical and popular materials. People usually distinguish constructing cultural features by bricks in Fujian Province. Fuzhou is the center of “gray-brick culture circle”, just as Quanzhou is the center of “red-brick culture circle”. A majority of plain-brick architectures in Fuzhou appear in “gray bricks and tiles”, which formal representation tends to modern-architecture style and the style integrated Chinese and Western. Unlike Minnan-red-bricks,Fuzhou-red-bricks are brought in Fuzhou by westerners when they constructed in settlement. Whether gray-brick or red-brick, the technology of them is full of features.They both profoundly reflect the impact of the natural environment and special history culture in Fuzhou.However, clay bricks have many problems in production process, such as an excessive consumption of energy, serious damaged to farmland, heavier air pollution by exhausting emission and so on. So clay bricks do not meet the conditions of a particular period in our country, and are forbidden to produce in the end. Besides, due to the reinforced concrete buildings of modern architecture liberated the construction system, providing the necessary condition to large-space buildings and large-scale buildings. So plain-brick architectures have gradually begun to fade into history since1980 s. But plain-brick culture is a cultural tectonic which bearing deep affection and has unique regional charm, should we let it submerge in a wave of construction by reinforced concrete. Of course, contemporary architects and scholars have made their own efforts to resist monotonous architecture designs. From the perspective of cultural tectonic, this paper analyzed architectural arts and social cultural connotations which plain-brick architecture bore in Fuzhou, not only providing initial regional factors and technical elements to today’s regional architectural culture, but also exploring appropriate ways in modern time for plain-brick architecture in Fuzhou.This paper consists of three parts. The first part is an introduction summarizing the background and significance of the subject, the objects and content of the study,the theoretical framework and research methods, and summarizes relevant research status at home and abroad. The second part is the core of this article, including two to five chapters. First, the author did some surveys in the existing plain-brick architectures in Fuzhou, and then introduced the representative typical plain-brick architectures in detail. Secondly from the point of processing technic and masonry technology, with scientific experiments the author analyzed the difference between gray-brick and red-brick, including mechanical and chemical properties. Thirdly the author analyzed the humanities property, decoration features and multicultural influence of plain-brick architectures. The fifth chapter described the analogical design, development and innovation of brick structure language under contemporary technology and design concept. The third part is the conclusion.In summary, this paper focuses on the current situation of plain-brick architectures in Fuzhou.We analyze the regional characteristics from the tectonic of technical and cultural level, the domestic and international for the Brick language, in order to seeking countermeasures of plain-brick buildings in Fuzhou.