• LINKS
  • BELAB WEBSITE
  • SICHUAN UNIVERSITY
  • CENTER OF BUILT ENVIRONMENTS, UW
• CONTENTS
  • BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
  • BE LAB SEQUENCE AND TIMELINE
  • PREPARATORY SEMINAR AND CHARETTE
  • SUMMER FIELD STUDIO
    • Study Tour in Sichuan and Yunnan
    • Survey and Design Work in Taoping
  • UW TAOPING DESIGN STUDIO
  • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  • PARTICIPANTS
  • NOTES

Post-earthquake, large-scale government investment in the reconstruction of the entire region has added fuel to all these developments, possibly exacerbating challenges that existed before for the preservation of cultural identity, ecological sustainability, hazard mitigation, and balanced, equitable economic growth.

After the earthquake, the central State Administration of Cultural Heritage designated Taoping a “key national heritage site”, and made the task of planning the historic village’s reconstruction the responsibility of a firm in Beijing specializing in historic architectural design and construction. At the same time, the county government put a moratorium on further construction of the village’s self-built new tourist development (Figure 7). Instead, using central government-coordinated post-disaster reconstruction funds and technical assistance from Hunan Province, the county plans a “unified development” (Figure 8). It is not clear what share of risks and benefits individual Taoping families would have according to this plan, which was being developed by a design institute in Hunan.