In response to homogenization and cultural alienation arising from externally driven landscape-making in contemporary rural construction, this study seeks to explore a new pathway for endogenous rural development grounded in “living aesthetics.”The study employs action research and comparative case study methods to conduct an in-depth analysis of two micro-intervention rural construction practices in which the author directly participated. The findings indicate that rural cultural resilience and a sense of emotional belonging do not stem from large-scale external construction but are deeply embedded in distinctive and vibrant “everyday narratives.”Villagers’ life trajectories, memories attached to old objects, wisdom derived from daily labor, and neighborhood ecological ethics contain rich aesthetic value, yet these qualities are often overlooked in conventional design processes. Accordingly, the paper distills a design strategy that replaces “planning” with “awakening.”This strategy argues that future rural design trajectories should shift from external landscape production toward the activation and resonance of internal living aesthetics. This shift relies on a social design approach centered on “narrative excavation” and the “performance of the everyday,” which activates villagers’ agency and thereby cultivates place-based communities with stronger cultural resilience and emotional attachment. This study offers a practical framework for future rural design that goes beyond physical environmental transformation and targets emotional resonance and cultural regeneration, providing important theoretical and practical reference for promoting sustainable rural development within the context of urban-rural integration.
