How does Contemporary Chinese architecture create an artistic conception of "blending ancient and modern"?

▲Dongziguan Village, Changkou Town, Fuyang District, Zhejiang Province, is picturesque and beautiful. After the "most beautiful relocation house" of the village's Hangzhou pai people's house became popular on the Internet, it attracted a wave of tourists to visit and play. Some villagers have seen the business opportunities and have set up homestays, becoming well-known "homestay villages". (Photo by Xu Junyong, China News Service)

Located in the Fuyang District of Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, Dongziguan Village Farmers' New Home is now a well-known tourist punch card. A few years ago, in order to protect ancient houses, ancient villages and improve the living environment, the local government carried out unified planning and design of relocated houses along the Fuchun River. As soon as this group of residential settlements designed by architect Meng Fanhao was unveiled, it was "brushed" because of its white-walled dewa and staggered style, which resembled the ink Jiangnan written by the painter Wu Guanzhong. Dongziguan Village has also become a well-known "net red village" because of this "most beautiful relocation house", setting off a local rural cultural tourism fever.

The reason why the Dongziguan architectural complex can stand out is because it fits people's vision and imagination of Chinese poetic residence. Indeed, Chinese has been building houses and gardens for thousands of years, paying attention not only to the material environment that can be accommodated, but also to the meaningful space on which to rely on peace of mind. With the passage of time, traditional architectural forms have been difficult to adapt to the lifestyle of contemporary Chinese. While solving functional problems, modern buildings rising from the ground should also continue the roots of Chinese culture and give people a sense of intimate cultural identity and spiritual belonging. This is an important issue in front of the interface of Chinese architecture.

Dongziguan Village is not alone. In the current urban and rural construction, attaching importance to traditional culture and local characteristics has gradually become a trend. More and more people are beginning to realize that contemporary Chinese architecture can neither eat the ancient and simply apply the traditional Chinese architectural design style; nor can it be in the form of superficial collage symbols; it cannot be built behind closed doors, away from the real life of ordinary Chinese. In recent years, a number of excellent works with modern forms and distinct Chinese styles have emerged in the field of domestic architecture, innovating and exploring the cultural expression of architectural design in different dimensions.

Open up the space where tradition and modernity blend

40 years ago, the classic of architecture, Li Yunjun's book "Huaxia Yismith", insightfully demonstrated that traditional Chinese architecture is a unique cultural carrier completely different from Western architecture. "Huaxia Yismith" represents a "meaningful architectural form system" that can make Chinese have a high sense of identity and belonging. The cultural style, value concept and aesthetic pursuit of contemporary China have far exceeded the bearing capacity of traditional architectural forms, so it requires innovative iteration of architectural forms, and architects need to continuously enrich the formal language of architecture in the process of absorbing traditional nutrients and taking root in the land under their feet, and open up the space for the integration of tradition and modernity.

Architect Wang Shu draws ideological nutrients from the study of traditional Chinese calligraphy, painting, Jiangnan gardens and houses, excavates design resources, and explores an original architectural path that combines the meaning of traditional Chinese culture with the expressiveness of modern space. In the design of his masterpiece Ningbo Museum, he applies the Yingshan method in traditional Chinese gardening to the relationship between the volume cutting of the building and the internal space, and also applies the "tile wall" technology derived from Zhejiang residences to the façade performance of the building, and the waste bricks and tiles collected from the demolition of the local old houses are collaged on the surface of the clear-water concrete outer wall, forming a "time texture" rich in historical vicissitudes. Such a modern and culturally rich museum building has become a local cultural landmark.

In the process of innovation and iteration of architectural forms, it is necessary to deal with the relationship between architecture and regional characteristics and cultural traditions. After all, the cultural temperament and spiritual identity of a community and a city are permeated and manifested in the material environment they create. Use architecture to reflect the spirit of the city, enhance cultural identity, stimulate spiritual cohesion, and become the direction of contemporary architects' efforts.

The Jingdezhen Royal Kiln Museum, which will be completed in 2020, uses architecture to show and enhance the spirit of the city. Through combing through the history and culture of Jingdezhen, the architect Zhu Kai extracted porcelain kilns and kiln bricks with special emotional value to the locals, and used this as the main line of design. He drew inspiration from the local technique of hand-made irregular "kilns" (masonry and kiln repair), combining arches of different sizes and juxtapositions into vivid spaces. On the inner and outer surfaces of the building, the architects mixed old kiln bricks covered with a "kiln sweat" glazed texture collected from the local abandoned kiln site to form an unforgettable environmental shading. This museum effectively distills the history and culture of Jingdezhen and becomes a local cultural space where people linger and feel the wisdom of labor and the spirit of craftsmen passed down from generation to generation.

Innovate the expression form of "Chinese artistic conception"

Artistic conception is the creation of a realm unique to Chinese culture that transcends the ontology of the environment. The artistic conception contains both the material "reality" and the spiritual, emotional and cultural "virtual realm", and the admiration of the artistic conception makes the traditional Chinese spatial creation often have a timeless meaning beyond the transcendent image. The creation of artistic conceptions such as the unity of heaven and man, the new with the ancient, and the birth of virtual reality have different degrees of embodiment in many modern Chinese architectures. In the competition with the international architectural community, contemporary Chinese architects continue to deepen their understanding of the artistic conception, and more actively explore the modern means of "creating the environment", so that the beauty of the artistic conception of Chinese architecture can be continued through rich and diverse forms.

In Ruicheng County, Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province, architect Wang Hui built a modern white sand courtyard around the Five Dragon Temple, a relic of the Tang Dynasty, through simple walls and landscape treatment. Set off by the pure surroundings, the Five Dragon Temple is like an exhibit carefully placed in an open-air museum, and a wonderful "chemical reaction" occurs between the modern landscape and the thousand-year-old cultural relics building.

In the design of "See Also Wutaishan Theater", architect Zhu Xiaodi used a 730-meter-long zigzag reciprocating wall to construct a seven-fold and seven-fold leading space before entering the theater. The surface of the wall is interwoven with different reflective materials such as stone, glass and stainless steel, which are constantly undulating patterns, like mountains and waves, stretching endlessly, and the depth of history is born.

The new cultural reinterpretation of the relationship between man and nature also promotes architects to innovate and express the "Chinese artistic conception". Architect Li Xiaodong designed the hedge book house, with unpolished log branches to cover the glass surface of the building, the exterior is hidden between the mountains and waters, the interior is mottled by light and shadow, making people feel like being in the depths of the dense forest; the valley concert hall designed by architects Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, the whole building is like a natural mountain stone accumulated over a long period of time, curved and folded structure, rough and simple, as if from heaven, as if inviting the audience to enjoy a symphony of nature. The bamboo forest theater designed by architect Xu Tiantian uses the wild moso bamboo in Songyang, Zhejiang Province, to create a circular empty field in the bamboo forest, and to bundle the tough top of the moso bamboo on the side of the field into a natural theater, without spending a brick and a tile without any intention.

Show the humanistic charm of contemporary life

Architecture is the space of human life, carrying people's memories, emotions and spirits. In recent years, many excellent architectural works showing the charm of Chinese-style life scenes have emerged, which have been well received at home and abroad.

The Xicun Compound, designed by architect Liu Jiakun, is located in the Xicun Creative Industry Park in Chengdu. The 40-acre wide inner courtyard integrates the functions of football fields, bamboo forests, markets, restaurants, shops, exhibition halls, courtyards and other functions, and a 1.5-kilometer-long gentle slope running track that allows people to run all the way from the courtyard to the top. As a diverse and inclusive cultural and creative collective, this compound not only looks back at the traditional collective life, but also surges with the vitality of contemporary China. As the architect himself said, it is like a "giant Sichuan hot pot", whether it is quiet or boiling, it emits a strong taste of life.

In Changde, Hunan Province, architects Qu Lei and He Xun designed the renovation project of the old Ximen shantytown for eight years, proving that a variety of social and ecological scenes can greatly increase the charm of a city. On the basis of all 1,600 residents relocating in situ, the architects excavated the original sewage culvert in the site, dredged it into a 600-meter-long landscape river, and created a rich life scene on both sides of the river. The designers mix and match different functional contents and style forms of architecture, landscape, urban outdoor environment facilities, public art works, etc., from the whole to the details are full of contemporary ordinary Chinese life.

In the final analysis, Chinese architecture is a life of continuous development and an ecology that is constantly woven. With the increasing improvement of China's comprehensive national strength, strengthening cultural self-confidence and recreating "Chinese Craftsmen" have become the historical mission consciously shouldered by more and more contemporary Chinese architects. It has both cultural depth and creativity, inheriting the excellence of traditional Chinese architecture and integrating with modern architectural styles, which not only highlights the characteristics of Chinese culture but also closely related to the current life scenes of Chinese. It is expected that such architectural works will continue to appear in people's field of vision. (End) (Original title: Contemporary Chinese Architecture - Ingenious Construction of Poetic Habitat) (Source: People's Daily)

Author/Rong Zhou

Editor-in-charge: Choi Sang-kwang