The Study Of The Conservation And Utilization Of Ancestral Halls In Guangzhou Urban Villages

As a traditional Chinese ritual building, ancestral architecture has its unique architectural style and cultural connotations. Its clan system is well-developed with a great number of ancestral halls, especially that of the Ling Nan region lying far away from the imperial power. Therefore, the ancestral architecture is of high research value.Guangzhou urban village shrine was originally a general village ancestral village in Guangzhou. Nevertheless, it was made to form some obvious differences by the urbanization, compared with other general ancestral villages. This essay tries to clarify the causes of discrepancies of ancestral villages, in order to better formulate appropriate policies for the protection and utilization of ancestral villages and to achieve the unity of protection and usage, through field research and study.The essay is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is an introduction. It describes reasons for this subject, summarizes the researches about Guangzhou ancestral villages, and states about the object, background, significance and methods of this paper.The second chapter mainly analyzes the social background and the evolution of the ancestral villages as well as the developing process of their functions, and thus draw a conclusion that the function of the ancestral hall changes according to social demands and provide historical foundation for the function renewal of village shrines.Chapter III summarizes the current condition and the subject of protection and utilization of ancestral villages and discusses about its causes, according to the field research there.The fourth chapter focuses on the comparison and analysis of the utilization cases of ancestral villages transformation. Also, it summarizes measures and means to transform these cases in terms of environment, function, space, equipment, etc., which provides a realistic basis for the following conservation and utilization strategies.The last chapter puts forward some corresponding recommendations towards the current condition and problems of the shrines, including screening and optimizing the existing ancestral function, advocating to adopt various subject participation ways, using reversible transformation methods and space reconstruction, and planning equipment and pipelines on the whole.