Italian architects going East

This book intends to give a contribution to an urgent issue, that concerns the presence of the past in the actual contemporary China, involved in a rapid development that risks to erase the traces of its millenary urban history. The town of Anhai, in Quanzhou city metropolitan area, presents a wide and various urban heritage, typical of Fujian: extensive fabric of traditional, red brick courtyard houses goes together with the presence of some important monuments, among which the ancient Anping bridge is the most relevant. An impressive landscape, formed by slightly hills among which runs a swampy river, constitute the natural frame of this town, that the authors visited to participate to a design workshop organized by Tianjin School of Architecture. The workshop represented the opportunity to deepen the understanding of the traditional fabric of Southern China, studying design strategies that are now collected in this book. Fujian has got nine prefectures. One of the biggest is Quanzhou city, in which the town of Anhai is located, settled in the southern part of Jinjiang city area. Anhai faces the Shijing river where it becomes a sort of swamp crossed by the long and impressive Anping bridge, a stone bridge realized in 12th century.Called Wanhai in ancient times, the town took the name of Anhai under the Song dynasty. Nowadays it has almost 200,000 inhabitants, most of them involved in many productive industrial activities, but along its history it was part of a rural network organized in main and minor market centers. The signs of this past are still recognizable in the actual urban structure, with many ancient villages characterized by traditional courtyards houses and many important ancient monuments, such as the Buddhist Longshan Temple. Around these ancient fabrics, modern high density neighborhoods with skyscrapers represent the image of contemporary China. This difficult, delicate balance between the new and the old, makes Anhai a perfect case-study to find strategies for future developments capable to enhance the Chinese traditional heritage.