Research On The Architectural Morphology And Its Evolution Along Qiansanmen Street

The site of Qiansanmen Street was once the southern wall of Beijing’s inner city and was an essential part of the urban landscape of the old city.The dramatic transformation of Beijing’s urban morphology through modernisation is also evident in the evolution of the architectural morphology along Qiansanmen Street.As the ’second avenue’ after Chang’an Street,Qiansanmen Street is still lined with typical historical buildings from all periods of Beijing’s history,preserving the city’s architectural memory.The variety of building types on both sides of Qiansanmen Street has led to a diversity and fragmentation of the architectural morphology along the street.In order to bridge the defects of fragmentation and give full play to the advantages of diversity,the first basic work necessary to do is to sort out and summarize the morphological evolution process and motivation,and quantitatively analysis the architectural morphology along the streets of Qiansanmen Street.The study begins by dividing the evolution of the architectural morphology along Qiansanmen Street into stages and analysing the role of three influential factors: the political system and situation,the economic environment and urban planning.This is followed by a classification of the age and function of the buildings along Qiansanmen Street,and a study of the existing building types in relation to their architectural morphology,forming the basis for the understanding of the architectural morphology along Qiansanmen Street.The buildings along Qiansanmen Street are firstly divided into residential and public buildings.There are two types of residential buildings: traditional courtyard houses and high-rise houses,whose characteristics and evolutionary patterns correspond to the formal types.As for the public buildings,the functional types of public buildings are more diversified,so the formal types of public buildings along the street are divided into five categories for study,namely traditional Chinese forms,Western forms,Soviet forms,traditional revival forms and modernist international forms.This is followed by typical case studies and comparative analyses of each type of residential and public building to summarise the morphological characteristics of each building type,including the date of construction,plan composition,fa(?)ade features,detailing and material structure.Finally,a quantitative analysis of the overall morphological characteristics of the buildings along Qiansanmen Street and the process of their evolution are presented in this study.The overall morphological characteristics can be quantified into three components:street outline form,plan form and facade form along the street.In this study,two parameters,namely interface density and proximity rate,are introduced in the analysis of plan form;in the analysis of facade form along the street,parameters such as building facade area and facade height are introduced for quantitative analysis,while facade colour is studied in type.This study presents a typological study and a quantitative study of the overall morphological characteristics of the buildings along Qiansanmen Street,which allows for a complete characterisation of the building form along Qiansanmen Street and provides basic information for the further regeneration and construction of Qiansanmen Street,as well as providing a reference for similar studies.