Ordinary Houses

Following Economic Reform in 1978 and continuing until 1992, modern lay-built houses emerged in rural regions and villages of the People’s Republic of China. The one to four story structures were constructed from the reuse and reassembly of material from disassembled traditional houses, with the timber framing and masonry infill rearranged within a new concrete frame. Organized as a building manual, including a catalog of house types, the book provides retroactive documentation of architecture from a period of dramatic change. As China’s urban transformation accelerated in the 1990s and families moved to new high-rise residences, these “ordinary houses,” now largely overlooked, expand notions of heritage and serve as valuable examples for future architectural design, adaptive reuse, and rural revitalization. Insight into building techniques shaped by economic transitionNumerous construction drawingsNew perspective on material reuse