Chinese Vernacular Architecture

Ai Weiwei, a contemporary Chinese artist, was widely reported to “literally” destroy China’s tradition in art in his 1995 act of dropping a Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) urn and breaking it. An article calls this performance “an iconoclastic act”. Ai was quoted as saying that this gesture is “powerful only because someone thinks it’s powerful and invests value in the object.” (Check Visualarts, Cornell for the image and the article and also Artzinechina for a fuller article about the artist in question).

The article continues: “The urn is valuable only because the arbiters of taste and the art market have determined that this is so. In recording the act of its destruction, the meaning and value of the urn is transformed and co–opted into a contemporary, editioned art work that subverts and disrupts the prevailing value system to which it previously belonged.”

I am only highly suspicious of this kind of act towards their ends – whatever they are – because it rings so alarmingly similar to the rationale to destroy ancient architecture in 1950s’ Beijing (back to my topic of course). “When they decided to dismantle and demolish the city’s menlous (gate/ entrance towers) and pailous (ceremonial archways) in the 1950s, the government would gather the public in front of these structures to ‘denounce them for their evils’” (Fang, Ke. Contemporary Redevelopment in the Inner City of Beijing, 2000).

The predecessors of Chinese architecture scholars in China, who usually are also defenders of this millennia-long form of art, have had to combat ignorance about what we call “Chinese architecture”. Now the task is harder and the burden heavier. Prof. Ruan Yisan of Tongji University who works on historic preservation in China, continually talks about the need to “educate the policy-makers”, about the meaning and significance of respecting and preserving traditional architecture. But it seems that the existence of Chinese architecture at present is a complicated issue involving a power struggle between a), greedy and powerful real estate developers, contractors and expropriators, corrupt government officials, the so-called master architects and architectural firms who care more about garnering money and fame than anything else, b), responsible individuals who appreciate the historic, cultural, scientific and aesthetic values of these ancient structures. Guess who loses in this struggle?! It might be an achievable goal to “educate the policy-makers”, to make laws and regulations and to even execute them in China. But how do we defend the Chinese architectural heritage against the darkest human nature of vanity, greed and vulgarity?

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This is something I wrote last year. I thought I’d share it.

The Art of Chinese Architecture: An Illustrated History (Yitao Xu, 2002) presents the development of the Chinese architectural system, as well as the social and technological conditions that have sustained Chinese architecture over the last 4,000 years. Among colorful illustrations of both photographs and architectural renderings are the text that covers palaces, ceremonial and religious temples and structures and landscape and vernacular architecture. It also contains sections on the works and lives of influential Chinese architects, both ancient and modern.

Xu’s illustrations – especially of dougong, the traditional interlocking support that ties the upper horizontal members to the columns and thus directs the weight of the rooftops down to the foundation – were detailed and accurate (as taken from my own firsthand experience from visiting structures built in this fashion). Through my travels to many of China’s historic places, I have come across many dougong, and Xu’s detailed labeling of each interlocking piece has assisted me to fully understand these complex wooden constructions.

Additionally, Xu proposes that Chinese architecture did not decline in the later dynasties of the Ming and Qing. According to Xu, “Architectural historians have overlooked the value of architecture from the Ming and Qing dynasties. However, Ming and Qing architecture did not only represent breakthroughs in creating artful collective space, it was also an innovative time for building techniques.” Xu’s assertion of the importance of later Chinese architecture (most texts consider the Tang Dynasty to be the artistic height) led me to reexamine the current literature available. I hope to explore and expand the literature of these later periods, specifically on vernacular structures.