Table Of Content(Continued from front fl ap) Allegorical Architecture offers the fi rst detailed
architectural analysis of built forms and build-
Ruan offers “thick description” of Dong
architecture in an attempt to understand the C H I N E S E A R C H I T E C T U R E ing types of the minority groups in southern
China and of the Dong nationality in particular.
workings of architecture in the social world.
It argues that Dong architecture symbolically
Paying attention to Dong architecture within “This may seem a specialized study of a minority group in SE China—whose partially tran-
resembles its inhabitants in many ways. The
a regional as well as a global context makes it scribed language he learnt while studying their buildings—yet Xing Ruan has used this
built world is an extension of their body and
possible to combine detailed formal analysis marvelous miniature to illuminate the complex relation between many other societies,
mind; their experience of architecture is fi gura-
of settlement patterns and building types and their daily life, their rituals and ceremonies, and their buildings. But the book is much
tive and their understanding of it allegorical.
their spatial dispositions with their effects in a more. Xing Ruan extrapolates from his miniature a timely and very important reminder
Unlike the symbolism of historical architecture,
social context. Architecture, in a broad sense, of how building and behavior interweave and how essential some understanding of that
A l l e g o r i c a l which must be decoded through a specula-
is assumed to be an art form in which the complex and vital relation must be for the future of the built environment.”
tive reconstruction of the past, the Dong tell
f eelings and lives of its makers and inhabitants
are embodied. The artifi ce of architecture— J O S E P H R Y K W E R T, Paul Philippe Cret Professor of Architecture Emeritus, A R C H I T E C T U R E stories about inhabitants in their l iving state
its physical laws—is therefore analyzed and University of Pennsylvania in the recurrent process of ritualistic making
and inhabiting of their built world. This book
contested in terms of its instrumental capacity.
thus offers architectural analysis of both spatial
“Allegorical Architecture is a truly remarkable achievement in that it is both a detailed
Allegorical Architecture is a work of refreshing dispositions (building types) and social life
ethno-architectural study of a small minority group, the Dong, in China, and also a work
originality and compelling signifi cance. It will (the workings of buildings).
of far broader scope, one that boldly and subtly addresses major issues in built form and
provide timely lessons for those concerned with
life, such as the importance of architecture as conveyor of meaning in the absence of
the meaning and social sustainability of the Xing Ruan likens the built world to allegory
written texts, the impact of majority culture on minority culture and vice versa, change
built world and will appeal to architects, plan- to develop an alternative to textual under-
within tradition, tradition as change, and the implication of these fi ndings and concepts
ners, cultural geographers, anthropologists, standing. The allegorical analogy enables
for modern architecture and the modern world.”
historians, and students of these disciplines. him to decipher minority architecture less as
Y I - F U T U A N , Professor Emeritus of Geography, University of Wisconsin a didactic “text” and more as a “shell,” the
X I N G R UA N is professor of architecture inhabitation of which enables the Dong to
at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, renew and reinvent continually the myths and
Australia. He is coeditor with Ronald Knapp stories that provide them with an assurance of
of the series Spatial Habitus: Making and home and authenticity. Attention is focused
M eaning in Asia’s Architecture, published less on the supposed meanings (symbolic,
by University of Hawai‘i Press. practical) of the architecture and more on how
it is used, inhabited, and hence understood
by people. Throughout, Ruan artfully avoids
the temptation to textualize the built world
and read from it all sorts of signifi cance and
symbolism that may or may not be shared
by the inhabitants themselves. By likening
architecture to allegory, he also subtly avoids
the well-worn path of accounting for rich
*4#/ Living Myth and Architectonics traditions via a “salvage ethnography”; on the
contrary, he argues that cultural reinvention is
Jacket design: Diane Gleba Hall
an ongoing process and architecture is one of
in Southern China
U N I V E R S I T Y O F H A W A I ‘ I P R E S S the fundamental ingredients to understanding
Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888 www.uhpress.hawaii.edu X I N G R UA N that process.
(Continued on back fl ap)
RuanJacketFinal.indd 1 1/9/07 3:22:59 PM
Ruan A L L E G O R I C A L A R C H I T E C T U R E
Allegorical Architecture
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Spatial HabituS: Making and Meaning
in aSia’S arcHitecture
Edited by Ronald G. Knapp and Xing Ruan
House Home Family: Living and Being Chinese
Edited by Ronald G. Knapp and Kai-Yin Lo
Allegorical Architecture: Living Myth
and Architectonics in Southern China
Xing Ruan
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Xing Ruan
Allegorical Architecture
living MytH and arcHitectonicS
in SoutHern cHina
University of Hawai‘i Press
Honolulu
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© 2006 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
11 10 09 08 07 06 6 5 4 3 2 1
library of congreSS cataloging-in-publication data
Ruan, Xing.
Allegorical architecture : living myth and architectonics
in southern China / Xing Ruan.
p. cm.—(Spatial habitus—making and meaning in Asia’s architecture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8248-2151-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8248-2151-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Architecture, Dong. 2. Ethnic architecture—China, Southwest.
3. Vernacular architecture—China, Southwest. 4. Symbolism in architecture—
China, Southwest. I. Title. II. Title: Living myth and architectonics in southern
China. III. Series: Spatial habitus (Series)
NA1546.S66R83 2006
728.0951'3—dc22
2006015042
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the
guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Book design and composition by Diane Gleba Hall
Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
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to tHe MeMory of My MotHer,
wHo Had faitH in tHe good
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contents
Preface ix
A Note on Names and Terms xiii
Prologue 1
Form and Meaning 2
Legibility and Instrumental Form 9
1 _| Architectonic FAbricAtions oF Minorities 13
the dong and others
Historical and Political Fabrications 14
An Architecture-Based Culture 23
2 _| Myth And rituAlistic Postures 38
the workings of the Settlement
Myth and Settlement 40
Settlement Pattern 45
Settlement Made Legible 66
Figurative Imagining 81
3 _| chorAl syMbolizAtion 89
the Social life of public Structures
From Village Heart to Hearth 90
Naming and Tacit Analogies 101
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Type and Artifce 111
Choral Symbolization 122
Politics and Poetics 135
4 _| tyPe, Myth, And heterogeneity 138
pile-built dwellings
Type and Reason 139
Type and Myth 146
Type and Formal Structure 149
Type and Inhabitation 154
Type and Heterogeneity 163
5 _| out oF tiMe 167
ahistorical architecture and cultural renewal
An Accidental Drive for Ethnicity 168
Foreign Forms, Old Shells, New Uses 172
ePilogue 179
Notes 183
Bibliography 191
Index 215
viii _| c o n t e n t S
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Preface
This book has had a long gestation period: the primary research and feld-
work were conducted between 1989 and 1993; my PhD dissertation of 1997
grew out of the feldwork; and a great deal of the feldwork has been used
in the current book, which was written between 2003 and 2004. Although I
did not have the opportunity to write this book immediately after the dis-
sertation—that would have been a quite diVerent book—in retrospect I am
grateful for this delay. When the project was frst conceived in the late 1980s,
the so-called postmodernism in architecture was largely about a free use of
historic motifs in architectural facades. I thought there was a need to discuss
the meaning of the built form beyond its look.
Now almost two decades have gone past, during which time we have
seen several phases of architectural vogue. While the revival of the austere
in modern architecture is still with us, the current digital frenzy seems to
predict that buildings and even large city fabrics will have to turn and twist.
Whatever the looks of the built forms, however, the fundamental concern
of my early research—the legibility of our built world—has, to my surprise,
remained unchanged. But it was not until I had the time to sort and order the
materials into various themes for the book that I realized that the conceptual
frame is more important than the materials: I wanted to combine the study
of the physical laws of the built forms, or the artifce so to speak, with their
“circulation” in social life. It was a realization that architects, planners, and
environmental designers are not solely responsible for a meaningful built
world—and the inhabitants are not completely free from the “control” of a
ix
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