Cottage Winds
Suzhou Xiangcheng District Taying Bridge (top) and London Tower Bridge (bottom)
A main road called Huayuan Road in Xiangcheng District, Suzhou, built a Taying Bridge across Yuanhetang and was completed and opened to traffic in December 2009. The bridge resembles a tower bridge over the River Thames in London, England, except that two towers have been changed to four. Since its inception, the praise has been mixed. Some people think that the bridge is very exotic and a good place to take wedding photos; others think that this is a typical "cottage building", which is extremely inappropriate for the ancient city of Suzhou. Not long ago, Suzhou Xiangcheng Jiaotong Investment Group launched the bridge maintenance project, and it is said that its shape will be greatly modified and will no longer maintain the image of "cottage".
The impression of "cottage" is a network vocabulary that only appeared more than a decade ago, but it has quickly become the most frequently used buzzword in the media and daily dialogue, and today, the so-called "cottage" products have filled every corner of life: TV is broadcasting the cottage version of the idol drama, boutiques are selling the cottage version of the brand-name clothing and brand-name leather bags, there are cottage stars on the advertisement to do endorsements, in addition to cottage mobile phones, cottage computers, cottage jewelry, cottage Spring Festival Gala, cottage papers... Even a cottage street. It seems that we have justifiably entered the era of comprehensive cottages, and anything can be taken to "copycat". Of course, in this lively cottage drama, cottage architecture is also one of the protagonists.
Shenzhen Window of the World imitates the Roman Colosseum and the Eiffel Tower in Paris
The earliest cottage architecture was the world's parks and folk culture villages everywhere, which appeared long before the word "cottage". Most of these amusement parks reproduce some classic buildings or houses at home and abroad in the form of miniature landscapes, as a collection of displays, which is a special product of the era of closed scarcity in that year, which is excusable and once beautiful. In recent years, due to the improvement of the economic conditions of the broad masses of the people, the broadening of their horizons and the improvement of their aesthetic ability, everyone is more willing to visit the original real monuments and landscapes, and this kind of cottage version of the artificial landscape is gradually neglected.
Just as the so-called wave of uneven, wave after wave, with the construction of urban and rural areas in full swing, more new cottage buildings have blossomed everywhere, and the grand situation far exceeds the miniature landscape of the small family in that year.
Anhui District Government Office Building (Top) and U.S. Capitol Building (Part 2)
The government office building in a certain district of a city in Anhui Province directly copied the shape of the US Capitol Building, which is magnificent in scale and has the courage to fight with foreign devils across the sea.
Eiffel Tower of a residential area in Hangzhou, Zhejiang (left) and Eiffel Tower in Paris (right)
A neighborhood in a town in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, mimicking the Eiffel Tower in Paris, built a small tower, which is not as tall as the prototype, but at least tens of meters high.
A certain economic and technological development zone in Henan imitates The Langxiang Church (top) and the French Longxiang church (bottom)
More than a dozen cottage buildings have been built on both sides of the main road of the economic and technological development zone in Henan Province, imitating the ancient and modern famous buildings of Japan, Italy and France, including the famous Longxiang Church of le Corbusier, a French modern architect.
Jiangsu County Opera House (top) and Sydney opera house (bottom)
A village in Jiangsu province cottage Tiananmen square and cottage Roman villa
A county in Jiangsu also offered a big hand, modeling a cottage version of the World Expo China Pavilion and the Sydney Opera House. A village in a city in Jiangsu is known as the "world's first village", and has built a number of cottage buildings such as Tiananmen Square, Shanzhai US Congress, Shanzhai Roman Villa, Shanzhai Great Wall, etc., which can obtain another title - "the first village in the world".
Tiananmen Square, Beijing
Copycat version of Tiananmen Everywhere
Tiananmen square may be the most copied ancient Chinese classic building, there are at least more than ten places in the country, in addition to the above-mentioned village, including a township government building in Henan, a town government building in Chongqing, a district square in a city in Shanxi, a village gate in Tongzhou, Beijing, and a south gate tower in a city in Ningxia.
The south gate building of a city in Ningxia
Among them, the south gate tower of a city in Ningxia is actually an old city gate rebuilt during the Republic of China period, which originally did not look too similar to Tiananmen, but the local government deliberately did a facelift, painted the city wall red, hung a statue of Chairman Mao in the center, and symmetrically added two slogans on both sides, turning a real historical building into a copycat version of Tiananmen.
The above cottage buildings are still considered to have heads and faces, and they can recognize the relationship between relatives. Office buildings, residential buildings or villa areas in many places mainly use similar buildings in other areas as cottage objects, and the prototype is not so famous, but the cottage is more powerful. So it is easy for us to see the familiar California towns, Australian styles, New York mansions, Jiangnan gardens and even distant cousins of Vanke and Greentown all over the north and south, with similar faces and lack of recognition.
Popular reasons
There are many sayings about the specific meaning of the word "cottage": grassroots, piracy, cloning... Leaving aside the legal level, from the perspective of cultural forms alone, the essence of the cottage is a low level of plagiarism and reproduction, most of which are shoddily simple imitations, and at most there is only market value, no real artistic value.
I saw an article on the Internet titled "Cottage Architecture everywhere", which was very well written, in which the author asked bitterly: "The US Capitol building has hung the Chinese national emblem, the Egyptian pyramids have become a hotel, the Olympic Bird's Nest has moved into the Temple of Earth Park, and the 'twin brothers' of Tiananmen Have settled in Yinchuan... The strong cottage wind blows into the construction field, there are always or subtle or shoddy simulation works to make people spit rice, what are the brains of these cottage builders? ”
Honestly, no one knows what's going on in the minds of these cottage builders. However, if you casually speculate with the heart of a villain, the root cause of the prevalence of cottage architecture in China is probably the following three:
One is a symbol of the expansion of power. This is represented by government buildings that mimic the U.S. Capitol, the White House, and Tiananmen Square. It is not difficult to find that most of the people who are willing to build such cottage office buildings are the government at the township or district level, although the level is low, but the emperor is far away, my territory is my master, the government building should have the style of the yamen, and must be built in the most prestigious style. Where is the architecture the most imposing? China has to count Tiananmen Square, and foreign countries have to count the US Congress, so they will not give in, and they will first copy the cottage and then say.
The second is a novel gimmick. These places themselves have no scenery worth seeing, and they want to be in place in one step, attract attention, and then create some political achievement projects, whitewash the prosperity, and do not play some cattle. As for the suitable local environment, whether it is beautiful or ugly, it is completely irrespective. A city in Shanxi province spent a huge amount of money to build a copycat version of Tiananmen square and the Temple of Heaven in the central square, and the local citizens did not like it very much, but the ruler Zhenzhen defended with great reason that many ordinary people could not go to Beijing in their lifetime, so what is wrong with letting them see Tiananmen square and the Temple of Heaven locally?
The third is cheap commercial replication. Most of the commercial buildings, residential buildings and office buildings in the local cottage version belong to this category. For many developers, why hollow out what innovation, which place which real estate is good to sell, directly move over on the line, now the information technology is developed, to ensure that there is no deviation, how fast and good to save, the highest efficiency, anyway, you can not go to the court to sue me for copyright infringement.
A hotel in Las Vegas, USA (top) with egyptian pyramids, sphinx (bottom)
Of course, it is not only China that has cottage architecture, and some people have found that the same phenomenon has occurred in foreign countries, such as a copycat version of the pyramid and sphinx in a luxury hotel in Las Vegas, and a rich man in Bangladesh who copied a Taj Mahal. But we can't deny that no place in the world will be as popular as China is today.
The emergence of so many cottage buildings in China has also attracted foreign attention, and the authoritative American architecture magazine Architecture Record once published a special article on this issue, which made us blush: "In China, people are always happy to copy things." (They like to copy things in China.) The second half of the implied sentence is "unwillingness to create something new." ”
It's actually Chinese wrong to say that. At least the ancient Chinese are very good at inventing and creating, and China's ancient architecture is also unique in the history of world architecture, with a complete system and stylistic characteristics completely different from Western architecture.
A friend once asked me: Was there no Leiren cottage building in ancient China? I dare not say absolutely none, but certainly very little. The main reason is that due to the great constraints of materials, climate and craftsmanship, and the lack of accurate communication media, it is difficult to simply copy the landmarks of one place to another. At the same time, the ancient Chinese society is hierarchical, the buildings have clear regulations, different levels can not imitate each other, if there are officials who dare to build yamen into a cottage version of Tiananmen, absolutely can not escape the fate of the door. More importantly, each place in ancient times had its own unique folk customs, cultural traditions and aesthetic habits, and the cottage architecture full of a sense of crossing could not be accepted by the local mainstream society.
Divided
We have become accustomed to all kinds of cynicism about cottage works, but similar phenomena are still emerging. From another point of view, its existence also has a certain rationality.
Imitation is the main form of human artistic activity. Take China as an example, learning calligraphy, painting, Go, poetry, no matter which kind of category, generally start from imitation, score, imitation and other simulated behaviors, such as "copying a thousand times, self-style art", "familiar with reading three hundred Tang poems, can not do poetry but also chant", through repeated practice of the classic sample routine, figure out the meaning, in order to gradually master the basic techniques.
At the level of practical creation, artists and craftsmen who can innovate are always a very small minority, and the vast majority of practitioners are just imitators who follow the trend.
Yuan Dynasty Ni Zhan's "Yuzhuang Qiu ji Tu" (left) and Ming Dynasty Xiang Yuanbian's "Imitation of Yunlin Pen Intention" (right)
Mr. Qian Zhongshu's short story "Cat" wrote that a famous Chinese painter in the Republic of China period, "do not understand perspective, can not sketch, get rid of the 'foreign grave mountain' and tap water, have not visited the famous mountains and beautiful water, only rely on the ancestral collection and the Japanese Colo edition of the "South Painting Collection", today's painting landscape 'imitation of the big idiot brush', tomorrow's painting of trees and stones 'once saw the cloud forest has this', the business is busy. The "big idiot" mentioned here refers to Huang Gongwang, and "Yunlin" refers to Ni Zhan, both of whom were in the Yuan Dynasty, opening a new generation of wind, and their themes, compositions, and brushstrokes were often used by later painters. Although the artistic value of these imitations is limited, it can at least reach a certain level, which is not without merit.
British 18th Century Villa (Top) and Italian 16th Century Rotunda Villa (Part 2)
The same is true of the architectural world. Masters are often able to invent new techniques and even create new paradigms, becoming the object of other peers' pursuit. After all, the number of works that a master architect can complete throughout his life is limited, and it is often through many imitations that his personal style is promoted to more buildings and a greater trend is formed. For example, in the 18th century, Britain once rose "Palladianism", taking the late Renaissance architect Palladian as an imitation object, especially like the shape of its round hall villa, and built many similar mansion buildings in the British Isles.
Architecture based on imitation has its own set of rules, and different practices also have obvious differences.
First of all, when imitating, you need to consider whether the form of the prototype is suitable for you. All buildings, like plants, have problems with water and soil, and it is common to build here, and it is a joke to move to another place. In particular, many classic buildings are often inseparable from the location where they are located, and carry special historical background and symbolic meaning, detached from their original environmental atmosphere, forcibly copied, can only be the East Shi Gong, Handan toddler. In contrast, the cottage versions of many office buildings and residential buildings do not feel particularly annoying, precisely because their prototypes have a relatively low dependence on history and the environment, their own recognition is not too strong, the cultural meaning is also weak, and the imitation barrier is much smaller.
Second, imitation also requires a serious attitude. Now the whole country is advocating the "craftsman spirit", in fact, 99% of the craftsmen in all industries in ancient times have done imitation and repetitive work all their lives, and their level is not how creative they are, but whether the work is done authentically. The value of a delicate imitation is certainly many times smarter than the rough cottage version. We can't tolerate many cottages, often not because of the aversion to imitation itself, but because they are too poorly imitated, shoddy, and disgusting.
Finally, I would like to say that as a serious creative act, even if it is imitation, it should also promote trade-offs and changes. Qing Dynasty royal architecture has a special form of imitation, called "writing imitation", which can be used as a reference.
Write imitation projects
Chengde Puning Monastery (Top) and Samye Monastery in Tibet (Part 2)
"Writing imitation" is the meaning of "imitation + imitation", that is, first draw it according to the prototype, and then imitate a new one in another place - usually choose excellent buildings or gardens as the model, make appropriate cuts to the prototype material, take its essence, discard some unsuitable things, and then combine the terrain of its own place to re-create. There are many successful examples in this regard, such as the Puning Temple of the Eight Temples outside Chengde imitating the Samye Temple in Tibet, the small golden mountain of the Summer Resort imitating the Jinshan Temple of Zhenjiang, the Ruyuan garden imitating the Jiangning Zhan Garden, and the Qingyi Garden (the predecessor of the Summer Palace) that reproduces the overall landscape pattern of Hangzhou's West Lake, all of which can be adapted to local conditions and obtain effects that are both similar to the prototype gods and have innovative ideas.
Most of the imitation projects in the Qing Dynasty took the famous gardens in the Jiangnan region as reference objects. Considering that the climate, materials and water and soil environment in the north are different from those in Jiangnan, all the imitation buildings in the Qing Dynasty maintain the northern official style building green brick and gray tiles, red and green color paintings, and gentle cornices instead of using the forms of Jiangnan's pink wall tiles, plain beams and columns and angled cornices, which are more suitable for the environment of severe wind and sand in the northern region and the killing of trees in winter, and are more in line with the dignified and stable appreciation habits of northerners.
Summer Resort Xiaojinshan (top) and Zhenjiang Jinshan Temple (bottom)
At the same time, all the imitation projects have been deleted and changed according to the location conditions, such as the small golden mountain of the summer resort, although it imitates the Zhenjiang Jinshan Temple in the overall outline, but the scale is much smaller than the prototype, replacing the seven-level pagoda with a three-story pavilion, which has both a similar side and contains many detail differences.
Wenyuan Pavilion (Top) and Ningbo Tianyi Pavilion (Part 2)
Another example is the Forbidden City Wenyuan Pavilion imitating the style of Ningbo Tianyi Pavilion built on the second floor and six bays, but the roof is dominated by black glazed tiles, with green glazed trim, which feels more dignified and exquisite than the ordinary black tile roof of the prototype, and is more in line with the atmosphere of the court. Another example is the Changchun Garden's Ruyuan Garden, which is built to imitate nanjing Zhan Garden, but the scale is more than doubled, and the dynamic waterfall is introduced, and the landscape level is richer and more interesting.
In addition, the Qianlong Emperor once ordered the construction of a nine-story longevity pagoda imitating the Hangzhou Liuhe Pagoda in the central position of Wanshou Mountain, and when it was built to the eighth floor, a collapse accident occurred, and the Qianlong Emperor found that the effect of writing imitation Liuhe Pagoda here was not good, so he simply ordered all the demolition and construction of a new pavilion, which is the Buddha Xiang Pavilion we see today. It can be seen that when the conditions are not met, the emperor will also decisively abandon the act of imitation, rather than blindly demanding.
The ultimate pursuit of art is to innovate the old, and the blue is better than the blue, and to create new artistic effects on the basis of borrowing from the classics and imitating the classics. In the process of copying and imitation, there will inevitably be a large number of second- and third-rate imitations, but it has also spawned many new classics, such as the ancients' evaluation of Li Bai's "Dengjinling Phoenix Platform" poems used Cui Hao's "Yellow Crane Tower", but they are also sung for thousands of years, "the momentum of the law is not easy to change"; and for example, the "Jiangxi Poetry School" of the Northern Song Dynasty, the calligraphy of Zhao Mengfu in the Yuan Dynasty, and the paintings of the Four Kings of the Early Qing Dynasty are all given new ideas on the basis of a large number of imitations of the masterpieces of predecessors, with their own unique value.
To some extent, cottage architecture may be the only way in the process of China's modern urbanization development, and it can be treated with tolerance. However, as a municipal supervisor and construction practitioner, you also need to use your brain, choose the right learning object, find the right form of adaptation, and carefully implement it, so that you can finally turn the pupa into a butterfly, make a real breakthrough, and create an excellent building that belongs to this era. If you are blindly satisfied with the cottage, or even take pride in the cottage, it is inevitable that you will become the laughing stock of history.
This article is from "Everyone", author: Eleven Beizi, head map source: Visual China