Reform and opening up have brought unprecedented liberation to Chinese society, and various ideological trends have emerged. In the 1980s, the great controversy on cultural traditions in the cultural and ideological circles also stimulated the discussion of the inheritance and innovation of architecture in the architectural circles, and topics and propositions such as "root-seeking", "feng shui", "unity of nature and man", "context" and "semiotics" arose. As early as the 1950s, Chen Zhihua paid attention to the creative ideas of modern Chinese architecture, and co-authored with Ying Ruocong (1931-2006) "Commenting on Zhai Lilin's 'On Architecture and Beauty and National Forms'". In the new era, he wrote more articles on various new architectural trends, calling for the protection of historical heritage, and at the same time, he clearly advocated innovation, opposed the old, and even opposed the return to feudal thought and culture in the name of tradition. For this controversy, he translated Le Corbusier's "Towards New Architecture" and "Style and Time" of Günzburg, two classics of modern architecture, as well as the Program and Manifesto of the Various Schools of Construction in Europe in the Twentieth Century, and co-edited the Selected Works of Modern Western Art Aesthetics (Architectural Aesthetics Volume) with Mr. Wang Tan. By tracing the development of Western architecture, he believes that the modernization of architecture is mainly the democratization and scientificization of architecture. He asserted: "If Chinese architecture is to be modernized, it must also take this road." ”
As an architect with a background in sociology education, Chen Zhihua has been thinking about and advocating the sociology of architecture since the 1980s. In the early spring of 1987, a graduate student from the teaching and research group would go to Yunnan to investigate the Bai villages and houses in Dali, and he specifically instructed him to learn from sociological and cultural anthropological methods.
Mr. Hu Lichen (1938-), a 1956 alumnus of the Department of Architecture of Tsinghua University and a former deputy director and chief planner of the Zhejiang Provincial Construction Department, also took him and his colleagues to visit the Nanxi River Basin in his hometown of Yongjia County. This trip led Chen Zhihua's academic research in a new direction. He said: "Xinye Village and the villages in the middle reaches of the Nanxi River make us very excited, we are like archaeologists digging out a dungeon with a shovel, and our eyes are full of rare treasures." ...... We have also found that since the reform and opening up, the peasants have gradually gained money and want to build new houses, and local buildings have to make room for new houses. After weathering the wind and rain, the local buildings that have been fortunately preserved will soon disappear under the new wave of construction. So we made up our minds, gave up the work of producing large peaches in our hands, and hurried to study our vernacular buildings, leaving a cultural archive for our nation before they disappeared completely. ”
In front of Huizhou residences
Soon, Chen Zhihua's college classmates and working colleagues, architectural historian and photographer Lou Qingxi also joined the vernacular architecture research team chaired by Chen Zhihua. In the more than two decades since then, they have traveled to 14 provinces and cities in China and nearly 100 villages.
(Excerpt from "Chen Zhihua Anthology, Chen Zhihua's Short Biography", written by Lai Delin, Li Qiuxiang and Shu Nan)