China is urbanizing at breakneck speed. Hundreds of millions of people have migrated from rural areas to cities in search of jobs or higher wages, even as the government commissions new buildings and infrastructure in less populated places, to try to even out development.

Many of the 900 million people living in China’s rural villages have undoubtedly benefited from this huge transition, been lifted out of poverty, and been given better access to education and healthcare. But rapid development and massive migration away from these villages has also led to the loss of traditional architecture spanning back hundreds of years.

However, over the six years I have spent conducting research on such rural villages, I have seen an emerging wave of architects helping to regenerate these villages from within and preserve the heritage of their buildings for future generations.

Vanishing villagers

China’s housing ministry has made some efforts to preserve the nation’s agrarian architectural heritage. There have been five waves of official shortlists designating “China’s Traditional Villages” since 2012. As a result, 6,799 villages have been formally considered for conservation and tourism-led regeneration.

But there are some 2.5m more ordinary and underdeveloped rural villages where such heritage is being lost at an alarming rate. In some places, traditional buildings are built over to make way for expanding cities or accommodate tourists. In many others, the destruction is more gradual.

In the remote parts of rural China, villages are mostly inhabited by the elderly and pre-school children whose parents have left to seek work in towns and cities. As the traditional clan-based social structure of Chinese villages has dissolved, ancestral buildings are becoming dilapidated from lack of maintenance—if not abandoned altogether.

Before China’s rapid urbanization, architecture once served to tie a village together. Constructed using local materials, traditional buildings expressed local characteristics, reflected local rituals, and were cared for collectively by families and village communities. These forms, practices, and values are absent in modern developments, which are produced at an industrial scale and designed for economic efficiency.