Listing Buildings of Modern Heritage in Changsha, China

Abstract

Buildings of Modern heritage are a very crucial category of heritage to preserve in Changsha, a historical city of which the majority of built heritage has been destroyed. Listing Historic Buildings has been adopted as the main way for their conservation. For that purpose, 4 lists in the scope of modern buildings have been announced by municipal offices so far to replenish the coverage of the national-wide system for protection. By analysing the background, the employed criteria, the responsible authorities and the protection measures, the advantages and the obstacles to overcome for the listing system in practice could become clearer. In a recent survey of historic buildings in Changsha to be listed, 266 buildings have been screened to enter the candidate database, according to certain criteria that allows expansion of the choices. A research has been conducted to understand the layout, the features and the current conditions of these buildings. One of the major discoveries is that a large number of collective housing built in the 1950s and 1960s possess good qualities in architectural design, crafts and construction, and better still, mostly stand adjacently in walled neighbourhoods. Such results shall be helpful to define the goals for the upcoming lists of Historic Buildings in Changsha, and in combination with the study to previous lists, they could be meaningful to understand the prospect of Modern heritage conservation in Changsha.