The Fujian Tulou Conservation Strategy: a Sino-Italian joint project

In the context of the forthcoming cooperation between the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering of Xiamen University (XMU SACE), China, the Department of Cultural Heritage of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-DSU), Italy, and the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and Pacific Region (WHITRAP Shanghai), China, the authors of this paper address the conservation and revitalisation strategy they are developing for the Fujian Tulou World Heritage Site in the Fujian region of China. In the past three decades, the built heritage of the Tulou and their associated landscapes have undergone huge transformations, mainly because heritage values are not properly acknowledged. Now, the priority is to strengthen the assessment of heritage value in order to design innovative conservation and development strategies that fully take both conservation requirements and how to enhance people's lives into consideration. Based on research conducted by the School of Architecture of Xiamen University, this paper first assesses the main conservation and development challenges of the Fujian Tulou. Secondly,it discusses an Italian operational tool for conservation and revitalisation, the "Recovery Handbooks" and "Codes", developed over the last thirty years. It explores how their methodology can provide an appropriate framework for developing the body of knowledge needed to draft the "Fujian Tulou Recovery Handbook": a new conservation and protection tool to safeguard heritage values and their physical carrying attributes.