Cui Yong: How to eliminate cultural anxiety in the fusion of Chinese and Western architectural ideas?
China News Service, Beijing, January 10 Title: Cui Yong: How to Eliminate Cultural Anxiety in the Fusion of Chinese and Western Architectural Ideas?
Author Ren Yumeng
Traditional Chinese architecture emphasizes the trinity of form, mood and ecological concept, as stated in the Zhou Li, "Sometimes the heavens and the earth have qi, the materials have beauty, and the work is skillful, and the four can then be good." Western buildings are kit-chic and are good at using advanced technology. Together, these two shape the future development of Eastern and Western architecture.
Recently, Cui Yong, doctor of architectural history and theory of Tongji University and researcher of the Institute of Architecture and Public Art of the China Academy of Arts, was interviewed by the "East and West Question" column of China News Agency, expounding the concept of "the unity of nature and man" in traditional Chinese architecture, and the enlightenment of the integration of architectural forms, modalities and ecological concepts to the development of contemporary Eastern and Western architecture.
The interview transcript is summarized below:
China News Service: Traditional Chinese architecture is the crystallization and witness of thousands of years of agricultural civilization, and it is also the embodiment of the idea of "the unity of heaven and man" advocated by the ancients in the tangible world. In your opinion, what are the main features of traditional Chinese architectural thought?
Cui Yong: The most important feature of traditional Chinese architecture lies first of all in its philosophical rationality, that is, the idea of organic integration of the human environment and the natural environment contained in the building. Traditional Chinese architectural thinking is consistent with the Chinese way of life and the wisdom of survival, and has the ultimate belief in the concept of "the unity of heaven and man", and pursues the harmony of heaven, tunnel and humanity, and does not fight or conflict with nature. This feature is reflected in the fact that the building is close to the mountain and the water, or the mountain is surrounded by water, forming what the ancients called "feng shui treasure land".
Visitors visit the Palace Museum in Beijing on April 30, 2021. Photo by China News Service reporter Sheng Jiapeng
Secondly, in traditional Chinese architecture, the classification of three modern architectural disciplines of architecture, architecture, city and garden is organically integrated. A city can be a garden, and a building can be a city. Take the Forbidden City in Beijing, for example, when the Forbidden City was both the world's largest feudal imperial city and a huge building with 9,999 rooms. Combined with the Summer Palace, the Yuanmingyuan and other architectural complexes, the Forbidden City can also be seen as a huge garden. In contemporary China, cities that still have a trinity of architecture, city and garden include The "Mountain City" Chongqing, Wuhan where the Three Rivers meet, and so on.
China News Service: In terms of the form, mood and ecology of the building, what are the construction characteristics of Chinese architecture? For example, in terms of architectural form, traditional Chinese architecture is dominated by wooden tenon structures, how is this different from the Western architectural system?
Cui Yong: Traditional Chinese architecture integrates form, mood and ecology, which are also the three standards that beautiful architecture should meet.
Architectural form is the shape of the building, traditional Chinese houses, palaces, religious buildings, in the architectural materials and structure, are mainly based on wooden mortise.
Tourists visit the famous Liao Dynasty Wooden Pagoda in Ying County, Shanxi Province. Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is fully known as "Buddha Palace Temple Shakya Pagoda", and the height of the pagoda is 67.31 meters. The whole tower is pure wood structure, nailless and rivetless, together with the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy and the Eiffel Tower in France, it is called "the world's three major chi towers". Photo by China News Service reporter Hou Yu
On the one hand, the choice of wood in traditional Chinese architecture is a natural choice and the embodiment of Chinese wisdom. Wood is one of the five elements, with the symbolic meaning of "wildfires burn endlessly, and spring winds blow and grow again". The choice of wood determines that the construction of the building is mainly based on the tenon structure, which makes the building easier to stitch, assemble, and even demolish and rebuild. In general, the choice of wood as a building material fits the concept of organic architecture in China.
On the other hand, the material of wood also determines that the forms of wooden buildings are interconnected. As described in the "A Fang Gong Fu", "each holding the terrain, hooking the heart and fighting the horns". The interconnected architectural structures form a single building as a unit, horizontally extending into streets and alleys, and even towns and cities, which is a pro-land art and a landscape of the earth.
Aerial photo of Fujian Yongding Chuxi Tulou Group. Tulou is a large-scale residential building with raw soil as the main building material, raw soil and wood structure combined, and stone is used to varying degrees, and is known as the treasure of traditional Chinese houses. In 2008, "Fujian Tulou" was included in the World Cultural Heritage List. China News Service reporter Wang Dongming photographed
In contrast, Western stone buildings represented by ancient Greece and Rome generally extend vertically. The buildings themselves resemble three-dimensional statues, and Gothic architecture has developed this style to the extreme, "wanting to be higher than the Heavenly Gong Test".
China News Service: In terms of architectural conditions, the "human touch" of traditional Chinese architecture is even stronger, as the "Yellow Emperor Gongjing" said, "The husband is the hub of yin and yang, and the track model of humanity." Is there a similar architectural concept in the West?
Cui Yong: Architectural mood is the expression of people's aesthetic emotions and cultural psychology in architecture. Such as the mausoleum building, cautious and majestic, showing the reverence of the ancients for the ancestors, the Great Wall stretches for thousands of miles and is full of magnificent and fierce feelings.
In addition to the feelings that people give to architecture, traditional Chinese architecture is actually an order and ethical space in itself, and people living in it are hierarchical. From the courtyard to the Forbidden City, it all reflects the hierarchical relationship and order of human morality.
Chinese regard architecture as a carrier for experiencing the "way of heaven, earth and man", and experience life from top to bottom, and its ethics and humanity are even stronger. Western architecture, on the other hand, is more in line with scientific principles. Some Western modern architects promote abstract steel structures, treating architecture as machines and digital products.
The Hong Kong Palace Museum stands in the West Kowloon Cultural District. The museum is scheduled to officially open to the public in July 2022. Photo by China News Service reporter Zhang Wei
China News Service: In terms of architectural ecology, China pursues the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, and believes that architecture is actually a "life field". Is there a common academic origin with the organic architectural concept of Frank Wright, the founder of Modern Architecture in the West?
Cui Yong: Architectural ecology is the living embodiment of the ecological philosophy concept in architecture, China pursues the integration of man-made environment and natural environment, "does not seek the eternal survival of original things", emphasizes feng shui, pursues "xiangyang", and fits Lao Tzu's philosophical thought of "all things are negative yin and embrace yang, and the atmosphere is harmonious". The West is more inclined to the concept of survival separated from nature.
It is worth mentioning that the American architect and the founder of Western modern architecture, Wright, also drew on Lao Tzu's architectural ideas, that is, "human law, earth law and heaven, heaven law Tao, And Dao law nature". Wright believed that "good architecture is like a plant, growing out of the earth, towards the sun", using architecture as an extension of nature, and its masterpiece, the flowing water villa built in Pennsylvania, is a typical representative of organic architecture.
Citizens visit the iconic landscape of New York, USA", "Big Pine cone". The honeycomb structure consists of 154 flights of stairs and 80 landings for visitors to enjoy the cityscape from different angles. Photo by Liao Pan, a reporter from China News Service
China News Service: In the history of modern Chinese architecture, there have been cultural anxieties about the conflict and fusion of Eastern and Western architectural ideas, but they have not been completely eliminated.
Cui Yong: The conflict and anxiety of modern Chinese architecture began to emerge from the 1910s to the 1920s, which was also the beginning of the modernization of Chinese architecture. The May Fourth Movement not only introduced Western scientific, liberal and cultural ideas, but also Western building materials, technologies and concepts. With the return of the first generation of architects such as Liang Sicheng, Yang Tingbao, Tong Liao, and Chen Zhi from the University of Pennsylvania, there have been many explorations and attempts to integrate Eastern and Western architecture throughout China.
At the same time, foreign architects are also trying to build traditional Chinese architectural forms in China with Western building materials and technologies, such as the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing's Purple Mountain, where the glazed tiles laid on the roof of the building are traditional Chinese architectural symbols, but their construction materials are reinforced concrete, showing the effect of a Western-style layout and structure with a Chinese shell. This also reflects the struggle and conflict between the two architectural systems of the East and the West.
On May 31, 2018, tourists visited the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing. China News Service reporter Yang Bo photographed
In the 1970s, the world architectural trend began to rapidly move backwards. Since the reform and opening up in 1978, Chinese architecture has also begun to integrate with the world and mushroomed like mushrooms, which has brought opportunities for the development of urban and rural architecture in China during this period.
From the 1990s to 2000, Chinese architecture began to really enter the market, and a large number of foreign architects came to China to establish design offices, making Chinese architecture more international, and China also became the arena of world architecture. It can be said that an important chapter in the history of modern architecture in the 21st century is in China.
In particular, China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and the hosting of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have been a promotion for Modern Chinese architecture, even postmodern architecture. It was during this time that China's pure modern architecture began to connect with the world.
Tourists visit the Suzhou Museum in Jiangsu Province. The architectural design of the Suzhou Museum, designed by the famous architect I.M. Pei, is a unique architectural design and is a landmark building that showcases Suzhou culture. Photo by Shi Bairong, China News Service
However, although contemporary China provides space for the integration of Chinese and Western architectural trends, due to the psychology of quick success and short-term profit, as well as the architect's neglect of the overall consciousness of traditional Chinese architectural forms, modalities and ecology, some people blindly pursue the formula of Western architectural construction, resulting in the phenomenon of "one side of a thousand cities" in China. There are also some people who are greedy, seek foreigners, seek strangeness, and disregard ecological balance. To this day, China has not been able to find the best way to interpret Western science and technology with Eastern art.
China News Service: In your opinion, how should architecture in the future better integrate the artistic essence of the East with the sophisticated technology of the West?
Cui Yong: To strengthen the development of Chinese architecture in the future, it is necessary to make contemporary architectural talents have both traditional Chinese architectural background and cultural connotation, modern architectural awareness and advanced Western science and technology, and adjust China's architectural education and talent training with the idea of "middle school as the foundation and Western learning as the body".
On June 29, 2021, the "Red Lantern" of the Jianchuan Museum Comprehensive Exhibition Hall in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, was officially opened to the public. The shape of the museum adopts the shape of a traditional Chinese red lantern, which contains the traditional Chinese culture of "the heavenly circle place, the outer circle and the inner square". China News Service reporter Zhang Lang photographed
As for the enlightenment of Chinese architectural concepts to the West, in fact, since the 20th century, the Western vision has begun to extend to the East, as exemplified by the organic theory in modern architecture in the West. In addition, modern Western architecture has also begun to pay attention to the human touch and ecology of architecture, emphasizing neighborhood relations, urban gardens, and generally the organic combination of people and the environment.
The emphasis on the common development of material, spiritual and ecological civilization in traditional Chinese architecture has set a good example for future generations, which is also what modern architecture in the East and the West needs to learn, inherit and carry forward together, and it is the concept that human beings need to return to in the process of jointly building a homeland. (End)
Respondent Profiles:
Cui Yong, Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory, Tongji University, Researcher and Doctoral Supervisor of the Institute of Architectural Art, China Academy of Arts. He is a director of the Chinese Architectural History Society, a member of the Expert Committee of the 20th Century Architectural Cultural Heritage Committee of the Chinese Cultural Relics Society of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, a member of the Expert Database of the National Art and Science Planning Project of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, a member of the Expert Database of the Chinese Architectural Society of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, a review expert of the Degree and Graduate Development Education Center of the Ministry of Education, and a review expert of the China Postdoctoral Science Fund of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. He is mainly engaged in the protection of Chinese architectural cultural heritage, the history and theory of architectural art, and the history of Chinese and foreign culture and art.