Yin Yu Tang ~ Merchant's House at Peabody Essex Museum
Here is a more complete version of the Yin Yu Tang project ~
Provided by John G. Waite Assciates
The Yin Yu Tang ("Hall of Plentiful Shelter") is a 200-year-old merchant's house from southeastern China that was disassembled, shipped to the United States, and re-erected at a museum in Massachusetts. During the conservation and re-erection, Chinese craftsmen worked alongside American craftsmen and construction workers. In the process, traditional Chinese construction practices were integrated with modern construction techniques.
The architectural goal of the project was to retain the historic fabric of the building while preserving its centuries-old character. The house is typical of vernacular architecture from the Huizhou region of China: traditional timber-frame construction supporting an unglazed tile roof with a sandstone foundation, brick walls, and a white lime exterior. Wood is an essential component of the building; it is used for the structural frame, floors, ceilings, partition walls, doors, window sash and frames, and elaborately carved interior screens.
As part of the conservation and repair process, new woodwork was required to have the same physical characteristics as the original materials and be visually consistent with the historic character of the house. New work was marked discreetly to distinguish it from the historic building fabric and was designed to be reversible, to allow for more advanced technologies in the future. The architects and conservators avoided the use of modern consolidants and steel reinforcement; instead, traditional wood repair techniques were used. The timber frame was re-erected using traditional joinery techniques, and traditional wood repairs were made to replace deteriorated or missing woodwork. Dutchman repairs were made wherever possible to salvage the historic construction. New components were used only where elements were missing or severely damaged.
Because Yin Yu Tang had been taken apart and reassembled, it was categorized as a new building under the Massachusetts State Building Code. Building modifications that were required to meet life-safety and seismic requirements of the code were painstakingly designed to minimize the impact on the historic fabric of the house. Wood was an essential component in the construction of a new elevator and stair tower annex, where bamboo flooring was utilized in the lobbies and cork flooring was installed in the custom-fabricated elevator cab. Salvaged early growth cypress was used to construct traditional Chinese wall paneling for the elevator cab as well. Within the house, wood partitions were blind-hinged to provide an accessible path through the first floor. The roof was carefully retrofitted with a marine plywood diaphragm to resist seismic loading and to provide a base for membrane roofing that was sandwiched between the original layers of Chinese roof tile.
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