Courtyard Compounds means enclosed dwellings whose buildings ring a yard on four sides, with the Beijing courtyard house as the main example. The house is laid out symmetrically along a central axis, with the main hall and the side wings each in their place, and who sits above and who beside, who is inside and who outside, is settled by where the rooms stand.
This enclosing plan is very old. The Western Zhou building site at Fengchu village in Qishan, Shaanxi, already has a gatehouse, a front hall and a rear room, with east and west wings enclosing the yard.
In the Yuan, house plots in Dadu were allotted by parcel, lanes and courtyards were combined, and compound after compound was set between the streets. In the Ming and Qing the Beijing courtyard house arranged elders and juniors by the axis, the main hall and the side wings, and became the mature model of the northern courtyard house.
So to read a courtyard house one looks both at the order inside a house and at its place in the city.
Courtyard Compounds is the class in the chapter on Architecture on enclosed courtyard dwellings, with the Beijing courtyard house as its main example. Buildings on four sides enclose one yard and stand symmetrically along a central axis, so that the household order of elders above juniors, and the line between inside and outside, is set down in the space where people live. The class concerns how the buildings are ringed and arranged, and how a house sits among the lanes of the city.
