Identification and Conservation of Spatial Genes in Traditional Chinese Villages: A Case Study of Sandefan Village

Traditional villages in China constitute a newly proposed category of cultural heritage. It transcends the existing demarcation between tangible and intangible heritage categories and represents a systematic and living heritage. Within these villages, the representations of Chinese civilization, such as traditional residential buildings, village conventions and folk customs, traditional handicrafts, agricultural landscapes, have been created, inherited, and employed. Traditional villages are regarded as the ‘gene bank’ and ‘living fossil’ for China's traditional culture. In the conservation practice regarding the built environment of traditional villages, what truly matters is not the preservation of existing traditional houses or streets, but the long-established spatial order or rules that have steered the settlements' development for thousands of years. Hence, the identification and upkeep of the spatial genes guiding the development of residential settlements in traditional Chinese villages are of supreme significance. This research adopts genetic analysis approaches to summarize the construction regulations of traditional Chinese settlements and interpret their significance and cultural connotations. Subsequently, with Sandefan Village as a case, it utilizes the logical framework of gene identification - decoding - expression to systematically investigate, extract, and analyse the spatial genes of traditional villages, and further summarizes the strategies for the dynamic conservation of traditional villages based on safeguarding their spatial genes.