No. 31 (2026): Risks and built environment: From knowledge to project
Essays and Viewpoint

Risks and opportunities in rural heritage: the case of Yuanjia village’s built environment

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  • Barbara Galli,
  • Emilio Faroldi,
  • Yupeng Wang
Barbara Galli
Dipartimento di Architettura, Ingegneria delle Costruzioni e Ambiente Costruito, Politecnico di Milano, Italia
Emilio Faroldi
Dipartimento di Architettura, Ingegneria delle Costruzioni e Ambiente Costruito, Politecnico di Milano, Italia
Yupeng Wang
Department of Environmental Building Design, Urban Planning, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/techne-17863

Published 2026-07-29

Keywords

  • rural regeneration,
  • collective memory,
  • rural heritage,
  • new technologies,
  • authenticity

How to Cite

Galli, B., Faroldi, E., & Wang, Y. (2026). Risks and opportunities in rural heritage: the case of Yuanjia village’s built environment. TECHNE - Journal of Technology for Architecture and Environment, (31), 104–114. https://doi.org/10.36253/techne-17863

Copyright (c) 2026 Barbara Galli, Emilio Faroldi, Yupeng Wang

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

This essay examines the regeneration of Yuanjia Village (Shaanxi) as a paradigmatic case for understanding the construction of collective memory in contemporary China. Initiated in 2007, the transformation intertwines tourism, community governance, and construction technologies, yielding a landscape that appears traditional while, in fact, it combines redevelopment strategies, market dynamics, and innovative processes. The project raises crucial questions and encourages reflection on authenticity as a relational and unstable category, shaped through selection and spectacularisation processes. The case study further illustrates the capacity of Chinese rural communities to reinterpret tradition in ways compatible with modernity, thereby assigning an active role to heritage in local development.

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