Dongwu Hall Historic Preservation & Renovation

Sapce designEarth & StonePlantPINWURong Design Library2017

The Dongwu Hall was started by the villagers of Qingshan Village in the late 1960s. It was a place for village meetings and performances and once served as the cultural center of Qingshan Village. The hall features a large wooden joinery structure with rammed earth walls. All construction materials were sourced from local resources, including stones, river sand, soil, and wood from dismantled old houses. At that time, conditions were very challenging with no architectural drawings, no support from engineers, and insufficiently thick timber needed to build the largest structure in Qingshan Village. Local carpenters and masons, using their remarkable ingenuity, solved the problem of insufficiently thick timber by selecting highly curved wood for the beams. The master carpenter explained that curved wood is more resilient and pressure-resistant than straight wood, allowing it to bear greater pressure from the roof.

— Jovana Zhang, Zhang Lei, Christoph John

Dongwu Hall represents the pinnacle of architectural wisdom in Qingshan Village. It features no elaborate carvings or expensive materials, and it was built without architectural drawings, yet it achieves the highest aesthetic accomplishment in rural architecture. Here, you can see the harmony between human and nature inherent in Chinese agrarian civilization's architectural wisdom. It embodies the fundamental principles of rural architecture: using local materials, making the most of resources, and the beauty of practicality.

When we entered the building in the winter of 2016, about one-third of the roof had already collapsed. Seeing this highly intelligent and elegant old building on the verge of total collapse, we quickly decided to work with the local government to undertake a protective restoration, allowing it to be revitalized.

The principles of the entire restoration plan were simple: preserve all structures, materials, and traces that could be saved, while reinforcing the structure and repairing the roof for waterproofing. In 2017, the Dongwu Hall, on its 50th anniversary, began its first major restoration. This restoration involved a full dismantling and repair of the wooden framework. Nearly all the timber structures were numbered, taken apart for repairs, and then reassembled. Most of the curved beam structures were preserved, and almost all of the rammed earth walls were repaired without being dismantled.