Chinese architecture and the Beaux-Arts

410 Pages·2011·17.46 MB·English

by  Steinhardt

CHINESE ARCHITECTURE
AND THE BEAUX-ARTS
Edited by JEFFREY W. CODY, NANCY S. STEINHARDT, and TONY ATKIN
Chinese Architecture
and the Beaux-Arts
Spatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia’s Vernacular 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
Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts
Edited by Jeffrey W. Cody, Nancy S. Steinhardt, and Tony Atkin
CHINESE ARCHITECTURE
AND THE BEAUX-ARTS
Edited by JEFFREY W. CODY, NANCY S. STEINHARDT, and TONY ATKIN
University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu
Hong Kong University Press
© 2011 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
First published in North America by University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-8248-3456-2
Published in Asia by Hong Kong University Press
ISBN 978-988-8028-71-9
Printed in Hong Kong, China
16 15 14 13 12 11 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chinese architecture and the Beaux-Arts / edited by Jeffrey W. Cody, Nancy S. Steinhardt, and Tony Atkin.
p. cm. — (Spatial habitus)
Primarily the revised and expanded papers from an international conference held at Penn’s School of Design,
Oct. 3–5, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8248-3456-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Architecture, Chinese—20th century—Congresses. 2. Architecture—China—Western influences—
Congresses. 3. Eclecticism in architecture—China—Congresses. I. Cody, Jeffrey W. II. Steinhardt, Nancy
Shatzman. III. Atkin, Tony. IV. Series: Spatial habitus (Series)
NA1545.5.C48 2011
720.951'0904—dc22 2010017413
Printed on acid-free paper and meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by Cynthia NG Ying Fai
Printed and bound by Liang Yu Printing Factory Limited, Hong Kong, China
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
A Note on Chinese Names and Other Clarifications ix
Jeffrey W. Cody Introduction xi
PART I DIVERGENCE TO CONVERGENCE

Nancy S. Steinhardt 1 Chinese Architecture on the Eve of the Beaux-Arts 3
David Van Zanten 2 Just What Was Beaux-Arts Architectural Composition? 23
PART II CONVERGENCE TO INFLUENCE
Jeffrey W. Cody Convergence to Influence 41
Introductory Perspectives
Tony Atkin 3 Chinese Architecture Students at the University of Pennsylvania 45
in the 1920s
Tradition, Exchange, and the Search for Modernity
GU Daqing 4 An Outline of Beaux-Arts Education in China 73
Transplantation, Localization, and Entrenchment
K. Sizheng FAN 5 A Classicist Architecture for Utopia 91
The Soviet Contacts
FU Chao-Ching 6 Beaux-Arts Practice and Education by Chinese Architects 127
in Taiwan
PART III INFLUENCE TO PARADIGM
Jeffrey W. Cody Influence to Paradigm 147
Introductory Perspectives
Yang Tingbao, Dong Dayou, and Liang Sicheng
Xing RUAN 7 Yang Tingbao, China’s Modern Architect in the 153
Twentieth Century
Seng KUAN 8 Between Beaux-Arts and Modernism 169
Dong Dayou and the Architecture of 1930s Shanghai
ZHAO Chen 9 Elevation or Façade 193
A Re-evaluation of Liang Sicheng’s Interpretation of
Chinese Timber Architecture in the Light of Beaux-Arts Classicism
Lü Yanzhi, Zhang Kaiji, and Zhang Bo
Jeffrey W. Cody 10 From Studio to Practice 207
Chinese and Non-Chinese Architects Working Together
Rudolf G. Wagner 11 Ritual, Architecture, Politics, and Publicity during the Republic 223
Enshrining Sun Yat-sen
Delin LAI 12 The Sun Yat-sen Memorial Auditorium 279
A Preaching Space for Modern China
Yung Ho CHANG 13 Zhang vs. Zhang 301
Symmetry and Split: A Development in Chinese Architecture
of the 1950s and 1960s
Chinese Cities
Peter J. Carroll 14 The Beaux-Arts in Another Register 315
Governmental Administrative and Civic Centers in City Plans
of the Republican Era
ZHANG Jie 15 Chinese Urbanism beyond the Beaux-Arts 333
Joseph Rykwert Afterword 361
The Four and the Five
Contributors 369
Index 373
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
At its core, this book is the result of an international conference, “The Beaux-Arts,
Paul Philippe Cret, and 20th Century Architecture in China,” which took place at
the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design from October 3 through 5, 2003.1
The idea for the conference, meant to reflect upon Penn’s largely unsung
contributions to the development of Chinese architecture, arose from conversations
that Sydney-based architecture professor Xing Ruan had with Joseph Rykwert.
Subsequently, Rykwert conferred with Penn professors Nancy Steinhardt and Tony
Atkin and the dean at that time, Gary Hack, who provided funding from the School
of Design. Steinhardt and Atkin then asked Jeffrey Cody, at the time Professor at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong, to assist in organizing the conference. Financial
support was received from the Albert Kunstadter Family Foundation, the Graham
Foundation for Advanced Study in the Fine Arts, and the Asian Cultural Council,
as well as Penn’s School of Design and Center for East Asian Studies.
Many of the talks delivered at the conference have been revised and expanded
to become chapters in this book, and a few new ones have been added. The process
was longer than we hoped and could not have occurred without the good will of
every essay author. We thank each of them for their many contributions at various
stages. We also thank the following: the editors of the University of Hawai‘i
Spatial Habitus series, Ronald Knapp and Xing Ruan, for their encouragement
to turn the conference papers into this book; the ever-supportive University of
Hawai‘i Press Senior Editor, Patricia Crosby; and the equally enthusiastic Publisher
of Hong Kong University Press, Michael Duckworth. Finally, we truly thank
Carole Tashel of Atkin Olshin Schade Architects for her never ending patience,
high standards, and unflagging belief in this book. Without her, the book could
not have been finished. The result of all the above is an array of scholarship
that coheres around issues related to Western classicism adapted to Chinese
traditions, architectural modernism taking root amid political uncertainty, and
Chinese socialism integrating new languages of architecture into a cacophony of
cultural change.
In China, architectural challenges are compelling, in part because China’s
historic architecture has suffered enormously in the recent past from so-called
“modernization” (xiandaihua), in part because reconciliation between conservation
and replacement is still being resolved, and in part because the impulse in China to
be “new” or “avant-garde” is engaging not only so many younger Chinese architects,
but also a multitude of renowned architects from around the globe.2
The infectious dynamism in China associated with architectural design,
production, and implementation—as well as with urban design, planning, housing,
infrastructure, and environmental degradation/conservation—is so extraordinary
viii Acknowledgments
that the scale and scope of the implications arising from this integration are almost
unimaginable. During the 2003 Penn conference, Gary Hack raised the intriguing
question of what scholars and critics would be saying about Chinese architecture if
a similar conference were to be held at the beginning of the twenty-second century.
Most of us will never know the answer, but we can hope that the ideas, cases,
analyses, and syntheses contained in this book will assist future researchers to better
understand what we have just termed the dynamism of early twenty-first century
architecture in China.
Notes
1. The following twenty-two scholars delivered papers at the 2003 conference; they are listed in
alphabetical order with their affiliations at that time following their names. Tony Atkin (Penn),
Peter Carroll (Northwestern), Yung Ho CHANG (Peking University), Jeffrey Cody (Chinese
University of Hong Kong), Jean-Louis Cohen (New York University and l’Institut Français
d’Architecture), FU Chao-Ching (National Taiwan University), Elizabeth Grossman (Rhode Island
School of Design), GU Daqing (Chinese University of Hong Kong), HUANG Yunsheng (University
of Virginia), Seng KUAN (Harvard University), LI Shiqiao (National University of Singapore),
Andrew I-Kang LI (Chinese University of Hong Kong), QIN Youguo (Tsinghua), Xing RUAN
(University of Technology, Sydney), Joseph Rykwert (Penn), Jonathan Spence (Yale), Nancy S.
Steinhardt (Penn), David Van Zanten (Northwestern), Rudolf Wagner (University of Heidelberg),
Mary Woods (Cornell), ZHANG Jie (Tsinghua), and ZHAO Chen (Southeast [Nanjing]
University). In addition to these papers, David Brownlee (Penn), Gary Hack (Penn), and Tunney
Lee (MIT and Chinese University of Hong Kong) gave commentaries about the papers.
2. For xiandaihua, see Thomas J. Campanella, The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and
What It Means for the World (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), especially chs. 4 and 5,
121–171. For conservation impulses and challenges, see Neville Agnew and Martha Demas, eds.,
Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute,
2002); and Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Lost in the New Beijing: The Old Neighborhood,” New York
Times, 27 July 2008, Arts and Leisure, 1. For the work of non-Chinese architects in China, see
“Special Issue: Beijing Transformed,” Architectural Record 196, no. 7 (July 2008).
A NOTE ON CHINESE NAMES
AND OTHER CLARIFICATIONS
Romanizing Chinese names, places, and other words originally written with Chinese
characters has posed the same kinds of challenges here that are found in all English-
language books seeking to convey Chinese meanings with non-Chinese words. For
most Chinese, family names (xing) precede given names (ming[zi]); this was the case
through history and is still the practice in China today (for example, ZHAO Chen).
But some Chinese regularly publish or practice under names in which the ming(zi)
precedes their xing (for example, Xing RUAN). There is also a group who have
adopted Western given names while retaining their Chinese xing and ming(zi), (for
example, architects Robert FAN Wenzhao and Benjamin CHEN Zhi and our author
Kerry Sizheng FAN). We clarify the surname of our contributors by presenting
them in all capital letters on the Contents pages and in the Contributors section.
For the most part we use pinyin for transcription, since it is the most
widely accepted convention for Romanizing Chinese. However, in some cases,
we have retained earlier accepted Romanizations (for example, Sun Yat-sen rather
than Sun Zhongshan). Where appropriate, we have provided multiple names or
other clarifications.
Occasionally, because of the French origins of l’École des Beaux-Arts, it was
deemed important to retain French words and, in some cases, French sentences
about Beaux-Arts concepts. For convenience, we have provided English translations.