Since different concessions in China have different climate, culture, society, foreign power and so on, the concession houses also show different characters from concession to concession. Because of these differences, it is important to consider the potential relationships between the internal space and the external environment for the architectural design. Compared to the European buildings or traditional Chinese houses in the same decade, concession houses in China have the space that mixes the character of the western architecture and Chinese architecture in the form. For this reason, concession houses use the boundaries that combine the adaptability to the environment and the form of different countries such as the curved walls or the tower form used as a staircase to create various relationship between internal space and the surroundings. This research focuses on the concession housed in different regions in China, and is aimed to clarify the similarities and differences among them.
In the present study, the concept of “interior/exterior” is used to obtain a comprehensive understanding on the differences and commons of spatial composition among concession Chinese houses in different regions by analyzing how to capture the internal and external space, and their boundaries.
Flow of research:
1) Research target selection. As a subject of this research, a concession house should have enough data such as the plan of each floor, the elevation, to analyze the character of plan. There are totally 100 concession houses selected as subject of this research from 4 regions in eastern China that used to be the concession.
2) Extract < the form of ambit > of the target buildings, to typify the configuration.
3) Extract < the property of ambit > of the target buildings, to typify the configuration.
4) The configuration format of the “interior/exterior” is derived from the relation between form and property. With the consideration of region, climate, culture, original country of the form and so on, the differences of “interior/exterior” character in different configuration format are analyzed.
About the composition of internal/external in concession houses in China, the concession houses with character of buildings in different countries show a balance of internal/external character by the influence of different regions in China, which means they adapt the environment. When the houses with character of buildings in different countries were introduced to different regions in China, the original internal/external character were maintained. On the other hand, when the internal/external character of concession houses cannot adapt the regionally, the new internal/external was derived. Above all, the adaption and developmental process of the internal/external transition of concession houses are clarified.
