Roof as an artifact - Da Wu Ding; post 1

It has taken dynasties to develop what we see today as exquisite roof structures in traditional Chinese architecture, so exquisite that contemporary buildings crown themselves these roofs to appear even more exquisite.

These four images to showcase this very phenomenon; from the top:

Beijing Friendship Hotel, built in 1954
Beijing West Railway Station, built in 1996
Building belonged to China Merchants Bank
Jimei University campus

The cycles of adaption of traditional roof as an icon are rather of short time intervals, and of little alternation. Roofs become pure ornaments of no structural necessity.

The tradition of this rampage goes back to the Monument to the People's Heroes at Tiananmen Square. Designed by Liang Sicheng, construction began in 1952, and finished in 1958, a time when the early People's Republic was heavily aided and influenced by the Soviet Union, where Socialist Classicism, otherwise known as Stalinism, was the official stylistic agenda in architectural design. This inevitably brought the trend of "Socialist content with ethnic forms" to China, giving birth to the first wave of "modern" Soviet-inspired Da Wu Dings.

by Neil Yan, 3rd Year Standing

Terracota army; post 1

My name is Anthony Jakovljevic, I am in fourth year and the artefact that I will be reporting on is the Terracota Army.

Qin Shi Huang was the first emperor of China. When he was 13 production of his Terracota army had begun. It is a grouping of an estimated 9000 figures consisting of mostly soldiers but also depicted are war horses, chariots, and even entertainers such as acrobats and musicians. The figurines are part of the emperors necropolis located just outside of Xi'an in the Shaanxi province and are superstitiously meant to guard him and his empire in the afterlife. The army is spread across three underground pits and figures are placed and sized according to rank and significance. The Army was discovered and excavated in 1974.

Terracota is an unglazed, clay-based ceramic. The Terracota army was constructed by both goverment laborers and local craftsmen, this is known because every shop had to signature its work for quality control, because of this historians have discovered that shops which once made everyday terracota objects such as drainage pipes were assigned to the assembly-line construction of the Army. The heads, arms, legs, and torsos were constructed and fired up seperatley and then assembled togethor. I find these artefacts fascinating because although they were created in a manner of mass production, the craft remains exceptional and each figure is detailed uniquely. For example, the faces were created by initially applying one of eight different moulds, and then clay was used afterwards for the detailing of each individual figure. The figures were originally painted in bright tones of pink, blue, green, black, brown, white and lilac, although most of these pigments have flaked off by the time they were discovered. The figures were accessorized with real weapons, however studies show that the tomb had been subject to fire and looting, and that part of the army remained unfinished.

 Tradition, Transition and Translation

Frank Lloyd Wright was known for having gained inspiration from Japanese architecture. Yet, Japanese architecture was profoundly influenced by traditional Chinese architecture. Werner Blaser in his book, West Meets East- Mies van der Rohe, investigated the correspondences between Mies’ buildings, and traditional Chinese and Japanese architecture. What qualities in the traditional Far East Asian architecture have fascinated these masters? How this architecture were constructed and how did its characteristics continue to convert and translate into our modern architectural practice in Asia? Bearing those questions in mind, this seminar intends to take the students to explore the qualities associated with traditional Chinese and Japanese architecture, such as structural systems, tectonics and concepts of space. How the tectonics and the spatial perception of traditional buildings are abandoned, communicated or translated into modernity will also be discussed. Critical themes affecting contemporary Asian architectural practice are elaborated including critical regionalism, vernacular architecture. The notions of modernity and how traditions can fit into transformed cultural context with a new identity will be analyzed. The planned teaching therefore encourages students first to rethink the contemporary architectural practice by looking into the highly developed traditional technologies; and second, to gain insight into western architectural culture by exploring the other eastern architectural tradition.