Residential construction best expresses the evolution of the Chinese lifestyle over the years and is one of the major problems generated by the new massive Chinese urbanization. The city main structure is easily recognizable: a large sprawl of buildings almost placed without a hierarchical disposition. In the various lots are easily identifiable several patterns. Only with the typologies study can be possible understand the relationship between the various political events, the lifestyles and the form. The contrast in morphology between the different prototypes seem to be a sudden mutation, but actually suggest a gradual housing typological evolution lasting over a century. 

Few housing types can be considered historically and critically dominant in the modern Chinese city. The book aims to guide the readers into the urban chinese housing evolution during the last century, through the explanation of the basic chinese new hystory, culture and approach with several examples.

The different types are then analyzed according to different methodological approach: a socio-cultural approach, which leads to the prototypes examination developed and framed in a particular political, cultural and economic context; a theoretical nature approach of the architecture, researching and highlighting the pure theoretical foundation that led to the birth of a new type in a purely physical and architectural way; a practical approach, the influence of a typological transformations on the different inhabitants everyday lives and its practical impact on the society.