Context and connections. Urban strategies for reimagining traditional rural settlements in China

The relationship between urbanism and rurality in China presents inevitable historical implications, traceable in the efforts which, starting from the Maoist era, have been dedicated to reducing the gap between cities and the rural areas. Starting from this assumption, the workshop, held in Anhai (Fujian province) in November 2018, finds its critical place in the already vast field of China studies. Through the key concepts of “context” and “connections” as tools for urban design, the article aims to set forth a possible operational framework for the transformation of such a traditional rural settlements. In that occasion the transformation of rural settlements has been considered within the expanded territory from which communities historically derive meaning and nourishment. The four topics – Strategies for sustainable life; Historical districts urban design; Technique and technology of restoration; Cellular automata and social behaviour – identified at the beginning of the workshop, even when facing the building scale, have outlined a clear trend that goes towards the dimension of territory and landscape. Among the educational experience goals, there was not only the proposal of an overview for a sustainable development of Anhai town, but also its reconnection to the thousand-year old spatial system that hosts it.