LIVING ARCHITECTURE: Chinese

Abstract

FOREWORD No aspect of Chinese culture has been more neglected than architecture. This is due largely to the erroneous reports of western travellers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even Sir William Chambers visited only Canton and judged all Chinese architecture by what he saw there. His works, which enjoyed a large readership during the second half of the eighteenth century, helped to spread in Europe the idea of an architecture at once monotonous and uninspired and of an art of gardening viewed through western eyes and judged by western conventions. When more objective studies were undertaken at the end of the nineteenth century, they were hampered by problems linked with the very essence of Chinese architecture. The impermanence of timber structures and the imprecision of the texts in which they were described seemed almost insuperable obstacles. As a matter of fact, the works of the Chinese and Japanese archaeologists showed that this impermanence was only relative. Indeed thirty or more edifices built between the eleventh century and the thirteenth are still extant and count among the oldest timber structures in the world. Moreover, the fragility of the material is made up for by a remarkable preservation of types and forms. The problems are complex, nonetheless. Successive reconstructions and restorations have modified the original aspect of a great many ancient monuments and make it difficult to study architectural evolution; a great many documents have not yet been collated; the terminology is often rather vague and lacks equivalents in western languages. But the immense strides made by Sinology in the last fifty years, the many diggings, and a better knowledge of the country, its cultural constants and the phases of its history will throw new, more searching light on Chinese architecture and town planning. Incidentally, many aspects of this art bring it close to contemporary western views. This little book could not have been written were it not for the works of the eminent scholars who first studied the subject and solved the most arduous problems it raised. Let me acknowledge my indebtedness in particular to Professor Paul Demieville, Professor Alexander Soper and the late Professor Osvald Siren.

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