ECHOES OF DECLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPHS: THEIR ROLE AND APPLICATION IN THE RESEARCH AND PRESERVATION OF CHINA’S BUILT VERNACULAR HERITAGE

Abstract. Vernacular architecture is constructed spontaneously and used by ordinary people, and they have been subject to constant modifications by changes in ownership, functions, and constructions according to people’s living demands. In the last two decades, many cases which were constructed in the traditional way and survived China’s overwhelming urbanization process have been listed in the preservation list with the increasing interest in cultural heritage. Regarding this type of heritage that is a result of multiple modifications, many restorations aim to recover the changed architecture to traditional formal integrity. Due to the rarity of detailed written or image references, some restorations become a kind of “creation” and fall into the cliché of stylistic restoration, which is posing an artificial risk to their historical values. Facing this difficulty, the authors turn to an important historical record - the DISP (declassified intelligence satellite photographs): since 1995, the US has declassified three batches of satellite photographs that were taken from the 1960s to the 1980s, before China’s great change in Reform and Opening Up, almost covering all of China. These photographs are an important historical photographic record of the territory as well as the vernacular architecture scattered on it. This paper uses two cases to illustrate the important role of these photographs in China’s built vernacular heritage: both as a reference to restoration and as a valuable source for historical research. The authors also discuss the prospect and limitations of this source.