Microcosm

For a final day in Fuzhou, a visit to the fabled Hakka 土楼 tulou, villages built as square or cylindrical fortresses. It feels like a village rolled up and folded in on itself, but also like a proto-apartment building, or even something from a sci-fi movie. In this late 19th century one, 怀远楼 Huaiyuan, four layers of small rooms with tiny windows are arrayed around an inner ring, creating a corridor of market stalls on its outside, and an open ring of kitchens on the inside - no plumbing in the rooms! Inside that is a temple/classroom. Other tulou have different, bigger or smaller constructions inside, and some are still inhabited. As a solution to a design problem, they're brilliant and evocative. To live in, perhaps a little too panoptical for me!