Tourist Reception Center

West-Line Studio focuses on strategies for producing space through generally applicable technological systems, exploring geographically grounded patterns of growth in contemporary architecture and future ways for vernacular architecture to develop. ‘Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages’ is the studio's working designation for its research into the development of vernacular architecture. After more than a decade of sustained work, its geographically grounded approach to vernacular technology has gradually taken shape. In the recently completed Chetian Village Visitor Reception Center, the studio focused on an organisational model of repeated configurations of units, parallel rows and interlocking nodes. This maintains the relative independence of each row while achieving the evenness and wholeness of a parallel composition. The formal treatment emphasises the characteristic combination of enclosing walls and rows of walls found in Chetian Village's buildings.

西线工作室专注于研究通用技术体系下空间生产策略、探索当代建筑的地缘生长模式，与乡土建筑的未来生长方式。“上山下乡”系列是西线工作室乡土建筑发展研究的工作代名词，经过十余年的坚持，西线工作室的地缘型乡土技术方式逐渐成型。在最近完工的车田村游客接待中心项目中，西线工作室将关注点聚焦在单元同构＋列平行＋咬合节点组织模式上，这既保持了列与列之间相对的独立性，亦获取了平行组合所具有的匀质性与整体性，而在形式处理上重点突出车田村建筑“墙围合＋墙排排”的形式感。

Haobo Wei: What we call regional identity is, in fact, the inertia produced by the long-term influence of a particular geographical structure and a particular model of the lifeworld. By inertia, I mean the repeated processes through which habits and practices are constructed and themselves construct, as a consequence of materialised social structures. ‘Analysing inertia and developing it’ is central to West-Line Studio's vernacular work. We have two specific working models.

魏浩波：所谓地域，其实是特定的地缘结构与特定生活世界模型长期投射下的惯性，惯性意指物化社会结构所导致的习性与实践的构造与被构造的反复过程。“解析惯性，发展惯性”是西线工作室乡土工作的重点，具体有两种工作模式。

One is ‘site order + formal prototype + generally applicable construction’. Take the Chetian Village Visitor Reception Center as an example. Chetian is a mountain settlement built of stone, laid out in terraces along open ground and a river. It has a distinctive site order consisting of repeated configurations of units, parallel rows and interlocking nodes. The visitor centre adopts this order as the generative mechanism through which its spaces take shape. Its three parallel functional strips all use similarly configured units, each deriving its spatial composition from an L-like plan. This organisational model of similarly configured functional units and repeated parallel addition retains the relative independence of each row while achieving the evenness and wholeness of a parallel composition. Its formal treatment emphasises the characteristic sense of enclosing walls and rows of walls found in Chetian's buildings. These bear traces of local identity.

一类是“场地秩序＋形式原型＋通用建造”。以车田村游客接待中心为例，基地所处的车田村是一山地石头村落，沿开阔地与河流退台布局，有着特殊单元同构＋列平行＋咬合节点的场地秩序。游客中心据此导入这种场地秩序作为空间成型生发机制——三列功能平行带均采用了单元同构的方式，平面均以类“L”型的衍生方式完成各自的空间构成，这种功能单元同构＋平行复加组织模式，既保持了列与列之间相对的独立性，亦获取了平行组合所具有的匀质性与整体性；而在形式处理上重点突出车田村建筑“墙围合＋墙排排”的形式感，这上面带着身份的痕迹。

Studying site order is an attempt to discover the basic thinking and techniques of grouping through which the spaces of traditional settlements grow. Analysing tectonic form aims to explore how formal operations can retain local people's memories of their original living environments and their emotional attachments to them. Attention to generally applicable construction technologies makes us fully aware that the vernacular is by no means merely a fossil to be admired or an exhibit delighting in its own beauty. It is a living organism, a home-grown contemporaneity. Its construction must necessarily keep pace with the technological environment of contemporary society. Only through a reasonable partnership with today's wider technological systems can it develop healthily. This can also effectively prevent ‘pseudo-vernacular’ architecture that damages ecosystems by forcibly reviving old building techniques through methods that run counter to ecology and time—making ‘tofu cost as much as meat’—as well as the ‘false vernacular’ of superficial symbolic packaging.

研究场地秩序是试图发现传统聚落空间成长的基本思路与成组技术；剖析建构形式的目的则在于探索如何在形式操作层面驻留当地人生活的原境记忆与情绪依恋；关注通用建造技术体系是使我们自身充分意识到乡土绝不只是用于瞻仰的化石与孤芳自赏的展品，它更是鲜活生命体，是土生土长的当代性，它的建造状态必然与当代社会技术环境同步，只有与当下的大社会技术体系合理搭档才能有健康的发展，才能有效地避免破坏生态环境，“豆腐盘成肉价钱”似的强行恢复旧的建造技术的逆生态与逆时间方式的“伪”乡土建筑现象，以及简单符号化包装的“假”乡土发生。

Combining the three expresses respect for the lineage-like and genetic relationships embodied in site-control orders, which carry forward the inertia of time and experience. It also seeks, through operations on tectonic prototypes and controlled transformations of them, to maintain a recognisable visual identity and a basic stability, achieving a sense of origins that feels somehow familiar. Above all, it aims to establish a specific, targeted way of working with generally applicable technologies to guide practice in response to the realities of contemporary vernacular construction.

三者结合，既体现了对场地控制秩序这一延绵时间与经验惯性的类血统与基因关系的尊重；亦企图通过对建构形式原型的操作与变形控制，保持形象身份认同与基本稳定，达成某种似曾相识的渊源感；更希望针对当代乡土建造现实，建立特定的有的放矢的通用技术工作方式以指导实践。

The other model is ‘reconstructing the public life of a settlement’. The soon-to-be-completed Chetian Cultural Center, also located in the heart of Chetian Village, reconstructs a socio-material structure combining belief and secular public life. This structure is translated into a combination of the cultural centre, a waterwheel and aqueduct, an open-air stage and an open village square. Built entirely of local stone, the cultural centre draws on a substantial historical background to recreate the village's monumentality. It is also a sacred village place for displaying local history, holding indoor public activities and adjudicating matters of justice. Its layered, stone-lane-like circulation routes and ceremonial exhibition halls movingly carry history forward. The riverside waterwheel and the winding aqueduct raised into the air faintly evoke Chetian's former means of production. The open-air stone stage seems to seek a renewed point of contact with the pleasure of entertaining oneself and one's neighbours through classic local Miao operas. The broad, open square and groups of stone seats create settings for diverse forms of public life. Together, these nurture a harmonious social condition marked by cultural cultivation, knowledge of the past, understanding of affairs and the education of the heart. This is an effort to recreate the dream of a rural society in harmony with human nature.

一类则是“聚落公共性再构造”。即将竣工的同是位于车田村中心的车田文化中心再建了一种信仰＋世俗公共性的社会物质性结构，这一结构具体由文化中心、水车水渠、露天戏台与空坝子的组合转译完成。通体以当地石头垒砌的文化中心以其厚重的历史背景再造着村落纪念性，更是村落历史展示、室内公共活动、裁决公理的村落神圣地，其层层叠叠石巷般的环道与仪式性展厅动容地传承着历史；那临河的水车，与被举在半空的曲折的水渠组合则隐约地再现着车田村曾经的生产手段，而那露天的石戏台似乎要以那些当地经典苗戏为媒介，找寻自娱自乐的回味点；空旷的广场坝子与置于其上的石墩组则制造着多样性的公共生活发生地；这些共同孕育着一种有人文修养的、知古明事、教化人心的和谐社会状态，这是再造人性和谐的田园社会梦想的努力。

Haobo Wei: The key to a site visit is really your method of observation, your judgement about what matters and your professional experience. In western China, this requires accumulated knowledge and insight into such fundamentals as broad geographical structures, distinctive geographical characteristics and specific local techniques; embodied experience of, and sensitivity to, patterns of life within subcultural circles; a conscious ability to shift the perspective of one's ‘experience’; and a practised ability to carry through the most essential thinking, including the development of modernist ideas about the structure of place and techniques of spatial control. Of course, it also requires an established method of rural investigation, among other things. Ultimately, these form the basis for a framework of on-site work. Spending more time only makes the work more detailed; the ability to think is what enables us to grasp the central problem.

魏浩波：现场踏勘的关键其实是你的观察方法、关键点判断与专业经验。在西部实践，当对大的地缘结构、明显地缘特征、具体地缘技术等常识性内容有积累与见识；对次文化圈层状态下的生活模型有身体力行的体验与敏感；对“经验”换位的自觉调整；对发展现代主义场所结构观念、空间控制技术等这些最核心的思考能熟练贯彻；当然还得有一套成型的田园调查法等等，最后，在这些基础上构建一套现场工作框架，时间的延长只是使工作更细致，但思考力才是抓问题的关键。

Haobo Wei: The Chetian Village Visitor Reception Center was fortunate in this respect. West-Line designed the architecture and interiors; for the landscape, we exercised design control. The client purchased the interior furniture. This almost end-to-end design involvement allowed the mechanism of parallel, similarly configured units to be carried through from the external site into the interior, achieving a unified approach to spatial control from outside to inside.

魏浩波：车田村游客接待中心算是幸运，建筑、室内由西线设计完成，景观则属于控制完成，室内家具甲方自购。这种近乎全过程设计，实现了建筑从外部场地至内部空间对平行同构机制的贯彻，达成建筑由外向内的空间控制方式统一。

It enabled an ordered spatial transition from large-scale horizontal extension outside to small-scale vertical density inside. It realised the idea of breaking down the external whole, level by level, into internal clusters of units. This is the reverse of Chetian Village's process of spatial growth, in which units form strips, strips form groups and groups form clusters. The entrance forecourt contracts into a square white courtyard, then flattens into a stone lane. At the instant the lane crosses a gap, an inward-gathering force splits it into a dispersed group of units. Together with a mechanism for configuring evocative, imaginative effects of light, this produces the quiet, settled texture of a village amid mysterious red light, vibrant yellow-green light and dust-laden natural light…

实现了建筑从外部大尺度横向延展状态有序列地渐变到内部小尺度竖向密集状态的空间转化，实现了从外部整体性层次分解为内部簇状单元群的设想，这是投射着车田村聚落：单元成条、条成组、组成群空间成长的逆过程结果。实现了从入口前广场收缩为一方白院，再压扁成一条石巷，石巷在跨越缝的刹那，被内聚力量裂变成一组离散的单元群，配着光的幻想意境配置机制，生产着在神秘红光、盎然的黄绿光、染尘自然光中沉着的聚落质感……

Haobo Wei: More than a decade ago, as the Dream Stream group of mountain buildings was hung piece by piece on the hillside, we began to focus on how geographical structures inform the grouping of spaces. After more than ten years of persistence, West-Line Studio's geographically grounded approach to vernacular technology has gradually taken shape. It is a targeted working model that clarifies the site-control order through which traditional vernacular construction handles particular terrain, analyses the specific tectonic forms arising from that geographical setting, and combines these with contemporary construction technologies.

魏浩波：十余年前，当“梦溪笔谈”山地建筑群一点点挂在山上时，开启地缘结构对空间成群方式的关注起，经过十余年的坚持，西线工作室的地缘型乡土技术方式逐渐成型，这是一种基于理清传统乡土建造处理特殊地境的场地控制秩序，与解析其源于地缘的特定的建构形式基础上，并同当代建造技术条件相组合的有的放矢的工作模式。

This technical approach comprises three principal elements. First, site orders with specific meanings are developed into mechanisms for generating space. Second, traditional tectonic prototypes form the basis for the development of form. Third, generally applicable construction that pays attention to ‘experience’ is used as the principal technical means.

这套技术方式由三个重点内容构成：一是以具有特定意义的场地秩序发展为空间生发机制；二是以传统建构形式原型为形式演绎的基本；三是关注“经验”的通用建造为主要技术手段。

Establishing this model of vernacular technology implies three clear aims. The first is to shift the usual starting point for analysing traditional experience, moving the emphasis towards traditional experience of site control and prototypes of tectonic form. The second recognises that, because of fundamental changes in the technological background and technological consciousness of our era, traditional vernacular building techniques and ways of combining materials have lost the temporal, resource, craft and technological conditions that sustained them. Vernacular practice must therefore find technical approaches compatible with contemporary technological realities. The third is to understand technology fully as an instrument, consciously counteracting its tendency to become an end in itself, and to develop it into a powerful tool serving a living vernacular world and diverse site conditions.

这套乡土技术模式的建立，隐含了三点明确的目的：转移分析传统经验的常态切入点，将重心偏移至传统场地控制经验与形式建构原型的分析上；传统乡土建造技术与材料配置方式因大时代技术背景与技术意识的根本性变革，已经丧失其存在的时间、资源、工艺与技术条件，因此必然要寻找与当代技术现实匹配的技术方式进行乡土实践；充分理解技术工具性特征，有意识地化解技术“自为性”，并努力将其发展成为鲜活的乡土世界与多元场地状态服务的有力工具。

Haobo Wei: The problems of vernacular construction in western China remain very serious. Three are particularly prominent. First is the superficial understanding of tradition as a combination of forms or symbols that resemble it outwardly but are disconnected from its spirit. This understanding is widespread. Second is the direct transplantation of an urban ‘beautiful lifestyle’ into the countryside. This is the effect of production mechanisms from the wider, universalised society, and it disregards the social structures of subcultural circles. Third is the phenomenon of ‘pseudo-vernacular’ architecture in which excessive use of primary natural materials threatens the carrying capacity of the habitat. Behind it lie modes of production that run counter to ecology and time.

魏浩波：在西部，当今乡土建设问题依旧十分严峻，其中有三类问题比较突出：一是将传统肤浅地理解为“貌合神离”的形式或符号组合，这种理解很是普遍。二是城市的“美丽生活”方式直接移植入乡村，这是普世社会生产机制投射的结果，忽略了对次文化圈层社会结构的尊重。三是过度使用原生材料危及生境容量的“伪”乡土建筑现象，其背后所潜藏的是逆生态与逆时间的生产方式。

Haobo Wei: In a world where external determinants have such destructive power that people's inner motives and bodily desires have become entirely insignificant, experimenting with the ‘vernacular’ is an attempt to explore possibilities that may illuminate the human ‘lifeworld’ enduringly. Envisioning sustainable development addresses precisely this ultimate question: how such precious possibilities can continue to exist.

魏浩波：在一个外在决定性具有如此摧毁力量，以至于人的内在动机与身体渴望已经完全无足轻重的世界里，对“乡土”的尝试是试图探索永恒照亮人类“生活世界”的可能。可持续发展图景的预设正是关注这种可贵的可能性持续存在的具有终极意味的命题。

In contemporary society, the forces of capital and power continually seek to control technological progress and efficiency in order to realise their intentions of profit and power. Under the pressure of these aims, the individual is forgotten. Human nature, however, seeks to hold fast to the human ‘lifeworld’. Human nature and technology are therefore two counterbalancing forces. Only when both coexist can society develop normally and harmoniously.

当今社会，资本力量与权利力量一直试图通过对技术进步和效率特质的控制，实现其利润与权利意图表达的目的，在这些目的的驱使下作为个体的人被遗忘了，而人之本性则试图固守人的“生活世界”，所以说人之本性和技术实际是两股制衡力量，只有这两股力量同时并存，社会才能正常和谐地发展。

What, then, is human nature? Calvino tells us through allegory: it is the places where human public life and exchange occur; the sensory containers in which the body, moved by its surroundings, awakens again; the natural world in which we entrust our bodies to the hills, and so on… In short, human nature is the growth of possibilities, and the ‘vernacular’ is one way in which those possibilities grow.

那何谓人之本性？卡尔维诺以寓言方式告诉我们：那是人类公共生活的交换与发生地，那是身体触景生情复苏的感官性容器，那是托体同山阿的自然世界等等……简言之，人之本性即是可能性的生长，“乡土”正是这种可能性的生长方式之一。

By encompassing the coordinated development of the economy, society, diverse cultures and environmental protection, sustainable development has become the broadest contemporary vision of possibility. In essence, it concerns the conditions of human existence, while also carrying a utopian sense of ultimate purpose. Its breadth and scope give it a somewhat encyclopaedic structure, requiring a way of working comparable to selective reading and judgement. Its utopian, ultimate character, meanwhile, needs the support of a continually advancing, systemic understanding of technology.

可持续发展的命题以包含经济、社会、多元文化和环境保护协调发展等内容成为当代最大可能性预设，本质上是关注人的存在状况，同时其间还透着乌托邦似的终极意味。可持续发展所含内容博大与广泛，使之具有某种百科全书似的结构，需要如选择性阅读与判断般的工作思维。乌托邦似的终极特质则需要不断进步的系统技术观的支撑。

Thus, ‘vernacular character + a perspective on technology’ becomes a working framework that accords both with one of sustainable development's ultimate propositions and with human nature, while making full use of the technological systems built by capital and power. Such a framework responds to local people's dual need for traditional spirit and contemporaneity; the question of bringing back those who have left may then become solvable. This exploration is especially significant in western China, where traditional settlements with natural forms and dense distributions intersect with a rich diversity of contemporary conditions. In short, the regeneration and growth of the vernacular world also express respect for human civilisation and protection of human nature. The vernacular must not die.

由此，“乡土性”＋“技术观”成为既吻合可持续发展终极命题之一，又符合人之本性，同时亦能充分运用资本力量与权利力量所建构的技术体系的工作框架，这样的工作框架契合当地人对传统精神与当代性的双重需要，流失的人群回归的问题是可能解决的。同时，这种摸索对于自然姿态、高密度分布的传统聚落与丰富的当代性多元交融的中国西部尤有意义。总之，乡土世界的再生与生长亦是对人类文明的尊重与人之本性的保护，乡土不能死亡。