Research and Evaluation of the Mountain Settlement Space Based on the Theory of “Flânuer” in the Digital Age —— Taking Yangchan Village in Huangshan City, Anhui Province, as an Example

Abstract

The theory of “flânuer” originated in the fields of philosophy and social sciences. In recent years, the term has been extended to research on built environments and has been developed as a walking-based research tool for the civilian built environment. Flânuer integrates the subject constructing and the object experiencing the space, exploring the spatial needs of humans from physical to spiritual aspects. In the digital age, “flânerie” has been expanded to virtual spaces through data footprints, providing an opportunity to transform “walking” research from a purely phenomenological space research method to a scientific framework that integrates subject and object, quality and quantity, and data and art. As typical built environments constructed through the aboriginal people’s walking, participating and interacting with mountain landscape as well as different kinds of rules, this mountain settlement then triggers tourists’ flânerie experience, and provides an opportunity for the development of the theory and practice of flânuer. This study starts from the construction of the settlement space that triggered by interaction between the aboriginal’s flânerie and daily life with environment in Yangchan Village, a mountainous Tulou settlement in She County, Huangshan City, Anhui, analyzes the spatial characteristics of the settlement of Yangchan that spawned from walking from the perspectives of the multidimensional theory and concept of flânuer in the digital age, and then objectively evaluates the value of the resulting mountain settlement in guiding people’s flânerie experience and promoting emotional associations by integrating multiplatform data mining, analysis and calculation. On this basis, we excavate the construction wisdom of Tulou settlement in Yangchan, which originated from the interaction between the individual and the site, to provide a reference for their protection and further development, to more subjectively assess the value of research and design for mountain settlements based on data assessment, and to improve the multidimensional methodological framework of flânuer in the digital age.

Keywords

• flânuer
• spatial characteristics
• yangchan village
• semantic data mining and analysis
• emotional association evaluation