Multi-Level Housing Governance in Rural Settlement: Transformation of Two Vernacular Houses in Zhejiang Province of China

Vernacular houses are a dynamic complex that assemble multi-dimension variables of time, space, and people. Two governance systems, which are the officials and the people, control the village on different levels, and the spheres of their influences are distinct during different socio-economy periods. In this paper, a multi-level analytical framework is used to regroup information. Three agents are engaged in modeling the issue that each plays a different role in different levels of construction. This paper takes the two cases, the Old Tang House (OTH) and the Sishuishanzhuang Chen House (SSCH) in the Xiaqiao Village (under bridge village) in Zhejiang Province of China to study the transformation process of housing settlement in three building levels. The methods of morphology and typology are used to illustrate and disintegrate the process of housing transformation. Then, a further reading of space is conducted to explain how the hidden agents influence and control the transformation. As a result, a clear hierarchy of governance approaches is proved that the larger the scale of observed space, the higher the order of governance power. What happens in settlement level are always controlled by formal governance, meanwhile, in architectural level are controlled by more informal agents from individuals.