A Form of Affection: Sense of Place and Social Structure in the Chinese Courtyard Residence

Abstract

This paper considers the Chinese courtyard residence as a form of affection. By affection, the author means the wide range of subjective constructs—emotions, attachments, commitments of the heart—entailed in the context of living in a family. The Confucian worldview within which this courtyard residential typology flourished rendered indistinguishable the spatial–formal configurations of the courtyard home and the affections experienced within it. The significance of this convergence is as follows: the Chinese courtyard paradigm amounts to a case study for a larger theoretical discourse—namely, the question of how human subjective responses integrate with physical environments to achieve “sense of place.” The paper's conclusion extracts seven traits from the Chinese courtyard typology and posits them as characteristics for more general experiences of “sense of place.”