Urban Design Research On Nanjing Zhonglanli Block From The Perspective Of Contextual Continuance

The death and life,the development and stagnation are inevitable processes that the historical cities must go through,and those processes also contribute to the great challenges that the urban construction must face in the future.The historic urban quarters are aging and declining,while the modem architecture lacking of the expression of the localized culture.In such scene of contextual juxtapose,the urban design from the perspective of contextual continuance has provided a dynamic view towards the city development and the possibility to solve the transition,balance and coordination problems between the historical area and modern city area.This research chooses the Zhonglanli Block in Nanjing,China,which marked with the context imprint from Ming Dynasty until now as the research carrier,this block is also facing the city renewal.Through a great amount of field study and the participation in the real design project,this study has been equipped with abundant first-hand information.First of all,the research establishes the framework consisted by the analysis of the implicit factors and explicit factors of context through the carding of the concept of context.Then the research analyzes the implicit factors of Zhonglanli Block from three aspects:historical evolution,functional requirements and the demands of multiple stakeholders.The continuance of the implicit factors is rereflected by the public value orientation,which is acquired and summarized by means of interviews and about 500 questionnaires.Subsequently,the paper analyzes the constitution of the explicit factors in Zhonglanli Block from different space scales:spatial texture,architectural form and interface composition.It also proposes several urban design advices from the explicit contextual continuance perspective.Furthermore,the research presents the actual design process of Zhonglanli project.It shows how the implicit and explicit factors function together to influence the design,and the final results are evaluated.In the end,the paper discusses the reasons that cause context juxtaposition in Chinese historical cities,and extend to the way that the dynamic context concept could guide the city development,as well as the rethinking and suggestion of urban design governance in historic quarters on the basis of the Zhonglanli project.This research systematically studies the factor analysis and continuation methods from the view of contextual continuance,and applies them to the real urban design project.The thesis also discusses the underlying causes,which distress the protection and development of the historical cities.The proposed universal concept and design methods could work as the reference for the urban design of the similar areas in the future.