Rethinking the Collective / Rural Urban Framework, The University of Hong Kong

ContextOver a 1000 years ago, large introverted earthen buildings (tulous) of the Hakka culture emerged in southern China in a fiercely combative culture. Extended families built thick earthen walls for collective defence, while maintaining a shared open space for farming activities in the centre. Each family in the traditional tulou live in a vertical section of rooms, accessed through a shared corridor and balcony. Thus, the building establishes a specific relationship between a number of individual spaces and a collective space.