Introduction
The influences of the “Beaux-Arts” upon Chinese architecture seem clear. However, how these influences penetrated at an institutional level in the last two decades of the twentieth century have not been unfolded. This paper tries to explore this issue from the viewpoint of how the “Beaux-Arts” “composition” sustained the constitution of design principles for architectural production in China. It will examine three aspects of such constitution: the setting up of the principles for governing architectural forms, regularisation of design methods and approaches for architectural practice, and the construction of a “tradition” for the expression of “Chineseness”, by looking at three books: On Space Composition of Architecture, the History of Chinese Architecture, and the Principles of Housing Design. Perhaps from this perspective, we can have a better understanding of contemporary Chinese architecture and urbanism, which has retained the “Beaux-Arts” practice in the changing circumstances of state policies, ideologies and economics.
These three books have not so far been discussed in any of the English-language literature, and are even omitted in Chinese literature. However, in reality, they played a fundamental role in forming the basis of architectural knowledge in China. They were all written by teachers from architectural schools and for pedagogical purposes. The History of Chinese Architecture and the Principles of Housing Design were textbooks and were complied by two groups from five universities. First published in the early 1980s, they were used in different architectural schools right up until the beginning of this century. On Space Composition of Architecture was written by an individual author, Peng Yigang, who was a professor at Tianjin University. Although it was not a textbook, it has been an indispensable reference for architectural teachers and students. Since it was first published in 1983 up to 2006, the book went through twenty-seven prints and 158640 copies were issued.
Certainly, the contents of the books may not be followed in their entirety and could be adjusted for the purposes of different teaching programmes. Nevertheless, their structure of and the methodical approaches to design problems and solutions have remained the same. Moreover, the timing of their publication was crucial. Because proper architectural publication was constrained for some twenty years, the greater number of textbooks issued in the early years of the Reform time—the time when the current architectural education restarted—acted as a device to carry on the preceding practical achievements as well as teaching and research into current practice. That is to say, after the halt of architectural education in the “Cultural Revolution”, these publications ensure the continuity of the training of the 1950s into the 1980s.
Before going to the detailed analysis, we need a few words to address the role that “composition” plays in the “Beaux-Arts” system. “Composition” is an essential technique of the “Beaux-Arts” architecture and relates to an array of different “constructions” of architectural knowledge. As a design method, its central act is to “put elements together” as a unified whole—“an act of unification”. This act is accomplished through a set of procedures: to choose the best solution to a given problem (parti); to select the proper elements, formally and functionally; and to appropriate them and combine them together in a certain way and for certain purposes. The process relies on two established aspects: to “choose” depends upon a systematic construction of the resources; and to “combine” the elements properly requires directing rules and principles. That is to say, while the choices are free and individual, the established basis for them is rational and universal.<FootNote>
Julien Guadet once said that “composition cannot be taught”. In response, Neil Levine has pointed out in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts that “what the student could learn was the vocabulary, the method, and the taste needed to study and refine the composition and execute it with care.” See: Neil Levine, “The Competition for the Brand Prix in 1824”.
</FootNote> At this point, the “Beaux-Arts” is not a style, but a modern form of knowledge. “Composition” might be responsible for the eclectic styles of the nineteenth century, but as Alan Colquhoun has pointed out, it itself is “a means by which rules of design common to all styles can be established” [
1].
On space composition of architecture
Peng Yigang’s On Space Composition of Architecture is perhaps the most widely circulated architectural book written by a Chinese architect, which directly “dealt with architectural form”<FootNote>
Peng Yigang, born in 1932, graduated from the Department of Architecture of Tianjin University in 1953, and has taught there ever since. He currently holds a professorship in Tianjin University and is a fellow of the Chinese Academy of Science. In 1979, he published his first book, the Basic Knowledge of Architectural Drawing. In 1986, he published his third book, the Analysis of Chinese Ancient Gardens, which used the principles of the On Space Composition of Architecture as an analytical tool to decode the spatial arrangement of Chinese gardens. Peng’s teacher, the Head of the Architectural Department at that time, Xu Zhong (1912–1985), graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois in America in 1937, the year when Walter Gropius and Mise van de Rohe arrived in America.
</FootNote>. However, we should not confuse Peng’s use of the term “space” with modernist discourse, if we agree that “space” is a concept particularly related to “modernism” in European and American architecture. “Space” here is a practical term rather than one that indicates a conceptual category. For Peng, “space” describes the dimension of utility of architecture in its quest to accommodate different uses and is a physical element equal to “decoration” in the composition of “architectural form”.
“‘Architectural form’, often mentioned by people, in a strict sense, is a concept of synthesis which is formed from the assemblage of various elements: space, volume, outline, void and solid, intrusion and extrusion, colour, texture, decoration, and so on. In these elements, some keep the close and direct relation to function; some do not closely and directly relate to function; and some almost have no relation to function at all. Based upon this fact, if we indiscriminately account for everything in terms of function, it is apparently wrong. From this point of view, ‘form following function’, the motto of modern architecture, although having its reasonable and correct aspects, obviously exaggerates the role of function by generally regarding every form from function. At this point, it indeed has certain one-sided views.
Thus, what is the element of form directly relating to function? It is space… Architecture, for people’s use, is nothing else but its space. Starting from this point, someone goes further and compares architecture to a container—a container accommodating people. That content determines form in architecture mainly means that architectural function requires corresponding form of space” [
2].
Undoubtedly, to Peng, “space” and “form” merely meant the physical existence and shapes of buildings. Using the terms “space” and “form” did not connote a categorical differentiation of “modernism” and “Beaux-Arts” architecture. Instead, on the basis of “composition”, the book incorporates some “modernist” ideas, means, and practices into the “Beaux-Arts” framework. We will see the situation reiterated in this paper.
“Composition” had been a concern of Chinese architects for a long time in regard to governing and justifying “architectural form”. The concern was directly indebted to the “Beaux-Arts” influence from the late 19th century onwards. In 1984, when Qi Kang reviewed Peng Yigang’s book, he recalled that his teacher, Yang Tingbao, learnt “composition” from Yang’s teacher Howard Robertson, the author of the Principles of Architectural Composition and a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.<FootNote>
Qi Kang, born in 1931, graduated from the Architectural Department of Nanjing Institute of Technology, (former National Central University and now Southeast University) in 1952, and has taught there ever since. He currently holds a professorship in Southwest University and is a fellow of the Chinese Academy of Science. He was awarded the title “Master of Architectural Design” in 1990 and won the Sicheng Liang Architectural Prize in 2000.
</FootNote> Qi, a professor at Southeast University, was a graduate of the 1950s and was a leading figure in architectural practice and education of that generation. He himself had been interested in “composition” since the 1960s.
“In the early 1960s, I had a chance to systematically read foreign books on architectural composition, such as [those on] compositional principles written by Pickering, Robertson, Curtis, Hamlin, and Harbeson. Thereafter, I extensively read the relevant books, including
the Principles of Architectural Composition edited by Tsinghua University, which should be a valuable book for teaching at the time” [
3].
All the books mentioned by Qi were on the track of the “Beaux-Arts” line. Although Peng Yigang did not make such references in his book, he admitted that its framework was based upon Hamlin’s and Curtis’s books, and attempted to extend the principles elucidated by them into a more contemporary, in his own words, “modern architecture”<FootNote>
Interview with Peng Yigang by Hua Li, February 2007.
</FootNote>. N.C. Curtis’s Architectural Composition published in 1923 predated any commitment to “modernism”. Hamlin’s Forms and Functions in Twentieth Century Architecture, published in 1952, was a climax of writing “a new Guadet” under the influence of the “Beaux-Arts” system even at the time of penetration of “modernism” [
4]. In the context of Chinese architecture, Peng’s book, written in the early 1980s, plays a role that carries on this sort of “second hand” influence into the twenty-first century.
The interest in “composition” in the 1980s was both historical and practical. The discussion on architectural form and aesthetics was taboo during the “Cultural Revolution”. A vacuum was created in architectural pedagogy and practice in regard to transferring architectural ideas into a proper presence of building. Peng Yigang has recalled that:
“From my point of view, the design quality of a student was more dependent upon his capacity of composition at the time. When amending students’ projects, I always met the problem of composition, but could not talk about it systematically. Of course, architectural design is not just composition, but also relates to functions, etc. But it needs to embody them to form a concrete project by composition. Otherwise, they are only ideas. Our teaching in design studios then was to link various functional relations of a building together by diagrams. For this, students felt very easy to understand. But they need to form a complete project, plans, elevations, sections, etc., through composition. Once referring to the problems of composition, no one could tell clearly. Some teachers said that you (students) would recognise it on your own experiences. It could only be understood by sense and could not be explained in words. I did not think that it should be like this”<FootNote>
Interview with Peng Yigang by Hua Li, February 2007. Interestingly, Julien Guadet held the same point that “composition cannot be taught”, but at the same time, he admitted that “it is a matter of ‘inspiration’ and therefore ‘cannot be fruitful unless it is served by knowledge’.” See: Neil Levine, “The Competition for the Grand Prix in 1824”.
</FootNote>.
As all “Beaux-Arts” treatises, the central act that Peng tried to regulate was the relationship between the part and the whole. In accordance, the book had two objectives, to elaborate the “rules” of controlling and guiding the relationship and to provide the generalised solutions for such, i.e. the “resources” for “parti”. The book started from a basic unit of space—a room, and its physical shape, size, volume, openings, and performances were determined by its functions. The book went through the ways in which several spaces assembled a part of a building, several parts being gathered together to form a single building, and several single buildings joining together to compose a building complex, corresponding to use, structural technology, expression of character, and the environment and topography of the building site. The composition, for Peng, obeyed a universal principle—“varieties in unity”, i.e. the “aesthetic law of form”.
“To architecture both ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, although dealing forms very differently, all the excellent works inevitably follow a universal law– varieties in unity… To make it clearly, varieties in unity, also called organic unity, can also be explained as seeking variations within unification and seeking unity within varieties, or as containing various differences within a unified whole. Any plastic art is composed of various parts, between which there are both differences and internal relationships (coherences). Only according to certain laws to organically compose them as a whole, we will see diversity and variety in terms of their differences; and harmony and order in terms of their relationships” (Ref. [
5], P33).
Peng elucidated six governing rules—employment of simple geometries, the relationship between primary and subordination of the parts, balance and stability, contrast and subtlety, rhythm, proportion and scale, and exemplified their applications to different scales of “composition”. The hierarchical control from the part to the whole was not just theoretical, but also practical. In technical terms, the theoretical elaboration of the book was accompanied by a great number of diagrams and illustrated cases together with notes. We can imagine that, bearing the principles and the solutions in mind, students would be able to choose proper approaches from the offerings, to adapt them to particular requirements and conditions, and to appropriate them in accordance with the “universal law”.
Likewise, the rules of “composition”, to Peng, were the basis and practical “tools” serving for the expression of “characters”, rather than directly doing it by themselves. He consciously differentiates such as follows:
“Aesthetics of form and artistic quality are two different categories. In architecture, every artistic work must conform to the aesthetic law of form. On the contrary, every building that conforms to the aesthetic law of form does not necessarily have artistic quality” (Ref. [
5], P4).
As far as he was concerned, the former ones only determined the “outward shapes of a building”, and the latter required the shapes to convey meanings. Architectural styles could vary according to time, nation and region, and individual architects, but they were all built up on the basis of “composition”. Thus, in terms of the structure, the provisions, and the objectives of the book, we can safely conclude that it was an exercise in “Beaux-Arts” education, i.e., to teach the students “the vocabulary, the method, and the taste needed to study and refine the composition and execute it with care.” [
6]
Principles of Housing Design
The second textbook to be examined here is about regulating the principles of housing design. There is a vast source of Chinese and English literature on housing issues in China from various points of view—policy, social distribution, planning to specific designs, and technological matters. However, our examination of the textbook, the Principles of Housing Design, concerns two aspects: the regulated design approaches through which the final product could come into being, and the teaching form of the design studio through which professional training was conducted. The first edition of the textbook, which is discussed here, was published in 1980, and was used until the second edition—one of the “Key Textbooks” organised by the Ministry of Construction during the Ninth Five Years (1996–2000)—came out in 1999. Its seven editors and five consultants were experts drawn from seven architectural schools, one research academy and one design institute.<FootNote>
The two chief editors, Zhu Changlian and Li Zaishen, taught at the Chongqing Institute of Architecture and Engineering (now Chongqing University) at the time. As to the other editors, Jin Zhensheng came from South China University of Technology, Tong Heling from Tianjin University, Zhang Jiaji from the Harbin Institute of Architecture and Engineering, Zhang Shouyi from Tsinghua University and Zhao Xilun from the China Academy of Building Research. One of the consultants, Gu Baohe, was a practising architect at the Shaanxi Institute of Architectural Design.
</FootNote> Its contents cover the main issues in the previous thirty years of research and practice. The editing team, which included educators, researchers and practitioners, somehow ensured that the principles proposed in the textbook could work in practice, although the link between theory and practice is not entirely seamless. Moreover, for teaching purposes, the book is compiled in accordance with the programmes of the design studios, which have been organised around building types, such as school, hotel, theatre and cinema, etc., following the model of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.<FootNote>
Gu Daqing stated the same point in his newly published article, “Studio Teaching as Research and Its Significance to the Development of Architectural Education in China”, Time & Architecture (Shanghai), 03/2007. Gu was a graduate of the Southeast University in 1982, and is currently teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
</FootNote> In this sense, the outline of the textbook rather than its specific contents represents a general form of training the “students (in architectural schools) to analyse and to resolve problems” [
7].
Housing has been a key issue in Chinese architecture since the 1950s. The establishment of state ownership and the welfare system and the high level of construction gave rise to the “new” practice of Chinese architects<FootNote>
Some forms of mass living, such as the Linong house, Guangdong-style house, etc., which were different from the traditional one family courtyard house, had existed in Chinese cities from the late nineteenth century to 1950s, but their constructions were more spontaneous. To say that housing design was a “new” practice in Chinese architecture means a systematic organisation of production from design method, technology application, construction means, to financial considerations and the distribution system.
</FootNote> (Fig. 1). From 1953 to 1956, more than 50000000 square metres of housing was built. Since 1952 the standard design has been implemented, and has been systematically adhered to on the national and regional scales. “By 1953, the total area of housing under construction, employing the standard design, reached 679000 square metres, accounting for 34 percent of all construction” [
8]. In 1955, the Planning Bureau of the Ministry of City Construction held the National Appraisal Conference of Standard Design. In 1956, 26 out of 128 projects, submitted by 25 architectural institutes from 14 provinces, were selected and approved as the blueprints of the standard design. In 1959, when construction of the Ten Grand Buildings in Beijing brought a climax of discussion on the “new style” of Chinese architecture, the Architectural Journal published as many articles on housing designs as those on the “new style”<FootNote>
In 1959, the Architectural Journal published 148 articles in total. 16 of them were about housing design and 15 about architectural styles and creation.
</FootNote>.
To many people, housing design in China seems to be influenced by “modernism”. Perhaps this is due to its simple appearance, its utilitarian and economic priorities and the spread of standardised design. However, we need a few words to clarify this. Housing is indeed a central issue in “modernist” discourses, whereas it did not appear in the programmes of the nineteenth century Ecole des “Beaux-Arts”. But in the twentieth century, some “Beaux-Arts”—based treatises included designs for mass housing. For instance, the Forms and Functions of Twentieth-century Architecture allotted three chapters to “The Apartment House”, the “Problems of Mass Shelter” and the “Layout of Residential Communities”. This shows that, at a technical level, the “Beaux-Arts” system had the capacity to cope with the high level of construction of residential buildings<FootNote>
The theoretical and conceptual differences between the Forms and Functions of Twentieth-century Architecture and “modernism” could be demonstrated by different categorisations. The former put hotel, individual house, and apartment house together in the category of Buildings for Residence, but this never occurred to “modernist” architects.
</FootNote>.
The situation seems very evident in China. The principles, methods and models of housing design were first introduced from the Soviet Union with the “new” ideas of “standardisation, industrialisation, and mechanisation”. However, the contributions of Constructivist architects such as Moisei Ginzberg, Ivan Nikolaev, etc. were concealed [
9]. The principles, which were later adjusted and developed according to the conditions in China, were taken as cardinal means for execution<FootNote>
The unsuitability of the Soviet housing design to the Chinese situation was extensively discussed at the time and in contemporary historical writings. The unsuitability seemed mainly on two factors. One was the housing standard of the Soviet Union – nine square metres per person –, which was much higher than the Chinese standard of four square metres per person. The other was that the Soviet’s perimeter layout of the housing block did not satisfy the requirements for sunlight and ventilation in China.
</FootNote>. In the case of the textbook, constructivist and modernist theories and practices were omitted. However, to Chinese architects who were accustomed to “Beaux-Arts” “composition”, in terms of gathering the elements together to form a whole, the means of standard design did not seem difficult to be accepted and manipulated. A Chinese once described the Soviet standard design as follows:
“A unit was to be designed with standard components conforming to a construction module. Various combinations of such standard units were to form different buildings, and when the different buildings were put together, they formed residential areas. The fundamental ‘cell’, so to speak, in the design of housing was the unit. A residential unit consisted of several households all using the same staircase, and its advantage was that each apartment was independent and therefore quiet” [
8].
This situation does not contradict the view that there are differences between “Beaux-Arts” architecture and “modernism”, but is rather another manifestation of the conformity of the “Beaux-Arts” system to the modern organisation of architectural production.
In China, the economy was a determining factor in housing production. Particularly, from the 1950s to the 1970s when the state guideline—“production first, livelihood second”—was intended to keep the level of housing investment as low as possible, technical issues were prioritised (Fig. 2). In the case of the
Principles of Housing Design, the problems it was concerned with were “the unification of modules, parameters and components; the housing standards and economic assessment; the design of household types and land-saving of high-rise housing; lowering the cost by reducing the use of steel”, etc. (Ref. [
10], P1) There was no discussion of social and urban issues, but one chapter in particular was dedicated to “Housing Standards and Economic Matters”, i.e., how “economic standards” led to and justified design principles and corresponding design methods. Take the “housing standard” as an example. The textbook states:
“Many countries’ standards for residential areas are prescribed individually according to different household types, but our country’s is to control the average standard per household. Household types and their ratios (the number of different household types to the number of total constructed households) were both left to designers to tackle according to different conditions. Therefore, the design of household types and ratios will directly affect control of the area standard” (Ref. [
10], P208).
In response, it addresses the detailed solutions, one of which is:
“To adopt several household types to meet the needs of living, and at the same time to control the average area of each household under the prescribed standard, the designs of the household types are interrelated…We can squeeze the area of one household type in order to improve another household type, and even change another household type. For example, we squeeze the areas of two- and three-bedroom flats and add a small square lobby or a small inner room to a one-bedroom flat” (Ref. [
10], P209).
This way of addressing the “problem” or “target”, proposing the design principles, and exemplifying their applications is reiterated throughout the whole book. To what extent specific solutions are still at work seems less important than the way of thinking about and executing a “design”. In other words, the purpose of the teaching programme in a design studio, as indicated, was to train architectural students to find practical solutions to “given” problems rather than to encourage critical thinking about them.
The proposed solutions are not just empirical, but rely upon regulated knowledge. In general, the Principles of Housing Design is organised on a similar structure to On Space Composition of Architecture, and conveys similar functions: to formulate the design approaches and to provide available solutions. However, its contents are more specific and practical. Housing design, in terms of the principles, starts from a basic unit, a “household” (hu).
“A residential building can consist of one household or several households, or even tens and hundreds of households, and the internal space of one household contains several different rooms. ‘Household’ is the basic unit of housing design. In housing design, we must above all analyse and study the size and composition of a ‘household’, and then consider compositional relationships between households” (Ref. [
10], P3).
The textbook subsequently goes through the design principles governing household formation from the smaller parts to the larger whole: the functional rooms of a “household”; their relationships and composition; and the groupings of “households” as a “building unit” (danyuan) and of building units as a single building, in three forms – one or two-storey housing, multi-storey housing, and high-rise housing. At the same time, it elucidates the principles of accommodating different conditions and requirements, such as climate, topography, and mixed use; industrialisation; and the consideration of appearances. All the principles are elaborated with regard to function, physical performance, technological support and financial cost; with a brief analysis or description of their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages, and a great number of diagrams and illustrated cases—454 figures in a total of 231 pages—which exemplify the application of the theoretical principles to the practical solutions. The textbook formulates an array of approaches through which the different requirements could inform the final products.
We have to be cautious about the effect of the textbook. In reality, many students might not have read through it and might not have adopted the specific suggestions in their projects. Instead, they might have preferred to look up the “new” publications and foreign journals for inspiration, “new” forms and “new” solutions. However, as the textbook was edited as an outline of teaching programmes, what seemed of importance was that it framed a basis for searches and appropriation in four respects. First, it framed the general problems that would be resolved in design work. Second, it framed the general programmes of the building type. Third, in response to them, it framed the principles for justifying a project and the proposed solutions. Fourth, it relates the design principles and solutions to the problems and programmes. If you like, it would work as a collection of references and resources to be selected, “recomposed”, and appropriated according to specific conditions. We can imagine that this kind of teaching outline could easily be transferred and adapted to “real” practice<FootNote>
Interestingly, some graduates found that the textbooks were more useful when they practised than when they studied at school.
</FootNote>. At this point, we can probably conclude that the teaching programmes of the design studio established the knowledge base for architectural production in China.
History of Chinese architecture
The representation of the “Chinese character” in architecture relies upon systematic research into and interpretation of the history of Chinese architecture, which itself was constructed on the basis of the “Beaux-Arts” system. From my point of view, the influence comes in two related aspects: the principles for identifying the characters and the categories for structuring the building types and elements.
As a historical narrative, the textbook did not talk in abstract about analytical and structural principles. Instead, it embedded them in an account of the achievements of ancient Chinese architecture, viz.
“…the harmonious unification, the design methods and the construction technologies in urban planning, building complexes, gardens, residential houses, spatial arrangements, architectural arts, and materials and structures” (Ref. [
11], P1).
The part of the textbook concerned with antiquity consists of eight chapters. Four of them are on individual building types—palace, altar and mausoleum, religious building, house and garden. Two chapters depict wooden architecture and construction details in the Qing dynasty. In general, stylistic development is the main focus. For instance, when the textbook summarises the five achievements of the Forbidden City in Beijing, four of them directly refer to its formal characteristics:
“…the emphasis of the central axis and symmetrical layout; the employment of courtyards and variations of the scales of the spaces; the contrast of the scales of the buildings; the splendid colour and decorations; and the technological facilities” (Ref. [
11], P65–67).
This characterisation is intertwined at the same time with the “reconfiguration” of building units and components. It is the reverse of the process of “composition”, and dissects the “whole” into “parts”.
“Timber-frame construction in ancient China had many variations. Single buildings had
dian,
tang,
ting,
xuan,
guan,
lou,
xie,
ge,
ta,
ting(
zi),
que,
men and
lang. The [forms of] the plan were square, rectangular, circle, triangle, pentagon, octagon, etc. These units composed various building complexes from house to temple and palace” (Ref. [
11], P157)<FootNote>
Here are the translations of the single buildings: dian: monumental hall; tang: main hall; ting: lobby; xuan: lofty building; guan: guest room; lou: building of two or more stories; xie: pavilion or house on a terrace; ge: multi-storied pavilion; ta: pagoda: tingzi: pavilion; que: paired gate piers; men: gate or porch; and lang: roofed open corridor.
</FootNote>.
“From its appearance, a single building can basically be divided into three parts: platform, main body and roof. Among them, the most notable change occurs to roofs, whose forms comprise
wudian,
xieshan,
xuanshan…” (Ref. [
11], P159)<FootNote>
wudian: hip roof; xieshan: gable and hip roof; xuanshan: overhanging gable roof.
</FootNote>.
According to the textbook, each of the parts has different forms, different compositional elements in different shapes, materials, scales and colours, and different ways of being joined together. For the unification of the ‘parts’ into a harmonious whole, the textbook describes a governing system—“modules”.
“At a very early time, architectural design and construction [in China] had implemented the “module” system similar to modern architecture (Song dynasty used ‘cai’ and Qing dynasty used ‘doukou’ as standards) and the normalisation of components. To the forms, scales, and construction details from the whole to the part, they had the rather detailed prescriptions” (Ref. [
11], P156).
Moving from whole to part, the textbook builds up a systematic account of ancient Chinese architecture by classifying buildings into types, units, and components, and formulating ways of joining them together according to different uses and technological availabilities.
Nevertheless, the systematic account is not a simple documentation of the historical facts or a literal translation of ancient archives into modern architectural terminology. The structuring of historical materials rather than the contents themselves is a “modern” construction of the “tradition”. Two comparative cases may make this point more intelligible: the Building Standards (yingzao fashi) of the Song dynasty and the Structural Regulations of the Qing dynasty (Qingshi Gongcheng Zeli), and Henry K. Murphy’s summary of the characteristics of ancient Chinese architecture.
The Building Standards of the Song dynasty and Structural Regulations of the Qing dynasty (
Qingshi Gongcheng Zeli) both served important references to historical research, and lent it all their technical words and construction criteria [
12]. However, they seem to be organised differently and for different purposes. Ultimately, they are construction manuals corresponding to the control of building costs. In the case of the Building Standards, two chapters out of the total thirty-six explain technical terms; fifteen chapters are about construction methods, including surveys, foundations, various types of masonry and carpentry, and paintings, accompanied by six chapters of illustrative drawings; and thirteen of the total are about the calculation of labour and materials. There is no statement of the principles of conducting the generation of building forms and compounds. The instructions can be adapted to different situations, such as craft customs, building size, costs and so on, but they do not seem to add up to universal “design methods” as the modern researchers had asserted. Zhao Chen, an architectural historian from Nanjing University, has argued that the historical research, under the influence of Liang Sicheng, was an application of “composition theory” to the analysis of the facades of ancient Chinese architecture, i.e. “trying to detect certain proportional relationships to define the styles of ancient Chinese architecture”; to take the column as “a fundamental element to control the facade of a whole building”; and to take “cai” and “doukou” as “Ratio” to “determine the proportion and scale of the architectural facade” [
13].
The organisation of building types in the textbook either does not exist in the Song Dynasty’s Building Standards, or is quite different from the Qing Dynasty’s Structural Regulations. Indeed, the Structural Regulations lists twenty-seven building kinds, such as halls, city gates, pavilions, etc., but they basically depend upon structural and construction differences rather than typological differentiations in the modern sense. When Yinong Xu, a contemporary scholar, studied the development of urban form in Suzhou, he discovered:
“Lack of discernible difference between the forms and styles of Chinese urban and rural buildings was fundamentally determined by a characteristic absence of formal bond between building types and social institutions” [
14].
Zhao and Xu do not directly point to the influence of the “Beaux-Arts”, but their discoveries suggest that the characterisation of Chinese architecture in the textbook was indeed a “modern” construction of “tradition”.
The second comparative case is Henry K. Murphy’s summary of the characteristics of ancient Chinese architecture. In his article, “An Architectural Renaissance in China”, he identifies five essential features:
“[…] the curving and upturned roof; the orderliness of arrangements, seen in the almost universal grouping of the principal buildings about great rectangular courts and in the marked adherence to axial planning; the frankness of construction; the lavish use of gorgeous colour; and the perfect proportioning, one to another, of its architectural elements” [
15].
Murphy did not read the ancient Chinese manuals, and his points are not exactly those made in the textbook. However, the textbook, as shown above, shares more affinities with Murphy than with the ancient manuals in terms of its formal approach to analysing traditional construction and its way of characterising it by referring to the featured elements, the axial planning and the proportion or scale to govern the groupings. Insofar as the training of Murphy and the Chinese architects were all based upon “Beaux-Arts” education, we can conclude that the textbook, the
History of Chinese Architecture, was a “modern” interpretation of traditional construction in China drawn up on the basis of “Beaux-Arts” knowledge and training [
16].
It should not be forgotten that the origin of historical research into ancient Chinese architecture was to provide references for practice. When the Institute for Research in Chinese Architecture was established, one of its objectives was to “study the inherent architectural technology in China, [in order to] assist the creation of new architecture in the future” [
17]. Aside from its academic research, the Institute was also involved in real projects, and offered consultations for practising architects and those engaged in architectural education (Ref. [
18], P37–42). From 1935 to 1937, in order to help the design of the “national style”, the Institute subsequently published the ten-volume Illustrated References for Architectural Design, directed by LIANG Sicheng and compiled by LIU Zhiping. The References functioned as a library of “vocabularies”. Each volume addresses one component of ancient buildings, such as the platform, stone baluster, bracket, tile, etc., and supplies a number of photos with drawings and notes. As to their effect, FU Chaoqing commented:
“The influence (of the references) upon the new Chinese classical-style architecture from the 1930s was incalculable. It can be proved by the apparent increase in the detailed decoration in the kind of building constructed at that time” (Ref. [
18], P39).
In 1953, another reference series, which was organised in a similar format and had more drawings and photos, was published to coincide with the promotion of “socialist content, national form”.
The textbook may not have had an immediate effect upon practice but by establishing itself on the same structural ground, it acted as an index for practice. It formulated a methodical approach to characterise the “traditions”; that is to say, it abstracted characteristic elements from their own construction context, and relocated them in categories of modern construction, and in consequence, was able to appropriate them as “symbols” in a certain order.
Although Chinese architectural history before the nineteenth century is not strictly part of the scope of this paper, our argument is that the representations of the architectural past undertaken in the twentieth century are indebted to the “Beaux-Arts” framework of analysis and architectural representation. The effect of producing a universal framework of architectural analysis automatically derived from classical architecture forced non-European traditions of architecture into its framework and categories. This is not solely a Chinese phenomenon, but is suggestive evidence that even in a post-imperial world, history is seen as the continuation of a certain “euro-centrism”. The argument of the paper is that “modern architecture” in China, which is also broadly associated with “Beaux-Arts” architecture, was imported not as an alternative to Chinese architecture but as architecture itself, in the sense that traditional Chinese design and construction did not really make its own transition into the “modern”. In the case of these historical materials in this section, what we see is that even the architectural past in China was altered to a “modern” European framework of analysis and representation.
Obviously, the three books were written for different fields and different purposes, and were based upon different materials. On Space Composition of Architecture, written by a single person, dealt with an essential question in architectural design, i.e. how to generate a proper form for the final product, at both theoretical and practical levels. Its materials came from different countries at different times, from ancient China to contemporary Europe and the USA. The Principles of Housing Design was more specific. As its name indicated, it was concerned with the design of a particular building type, aiming at regulating the process, methods and approaches of housing design, and the teaching form of the design studio. The cases illustrated in this book were modern and without particular constraint of one country or region. If the first two books were focused on the issue of design regularisation, the History of Chinese Architecture was in another field. It was a historical book which intended to construct a systematic account of achievements of ancient Chinese architecture. Because of this, its narrative was grounded on the buildings constructed, documents recorded, and paintings drawn in ancient China. That is to say, the three books reflect a discursive formation of architectural knowledge in contemporary China.
In fact, except for Peng Yigang’s On Space Composition of Architecture, “composition” was not the central issue in the Principles of Housing Design and the History of Chinese Architecture. Nevertheless, from the preceding discussions, we can see that they shared a certain common ground to abstract, interpret, structure, and construct the materials, narrations, categories, methods, and principles. The common ground, as far as this paper is concerned, was sustained by the methodical arrangement of the “Beaux-Arts” “composition”—a constructed means of a “modern” knowledge of architecture. Two points need to be highlighted. One, the methodical arrangement did not set against “modernist” ideas, means, and techniques. Both Peng Yigang’s book and the Principles of Housing Design employed a number of “modernist” cases. But insofar as they were abstracted from their theoretical, social and physical contexts and were relocated into the categorical structure, “modernism” was likely fragmented and dissolved into an evolutionary sequence of “Beaux-Arts” architecture rather than a critical opposition to it. Two, because the three books were published in the early 1980s, some of their contents may not be suitable and had probably already become outdated in terms of the current architectural practices and discussions. But insofar as their structures are retained in architectural pedagogy, the “Beaux-Arts” influence still underlies the productions.
Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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