Transplantation Of Categories

The author holds that cultural and historical foundations are needed to construct and deepen architectural form esthetics. In modern times, college education, engineering practice and theoretical criticism (on architectural form esthetics) in China are mainly dependent on Western esthetic categories and basic principles. Without a thorough understanding of Western architectural form esthetics and having no native theories for application, Chinese architects usually feel incompetent in their development of theory studies. Landscape painting is one of the most important artistic types in China. Abundant theories on this traditional way of painting reflect esthetic intentions and patterns characteristic of Chinese culture and once have direct influences on landscape gardening. This dissertation aims to transplant some esthetic categories in landscape painting to architectural design under the new historical context.The research includes the following points: first, it proves that similarities do exist between different types of art regardless of their differences in terms of freedom, directness, implication and breadth, which constitutes the premise of the transplantation; second, after a thorough research in theories on landscape painting, the author of this dissertation generalizes and summaries categories that have their own gradation and structure, and uses Jing Hao's "Six Essentials" (qi, charisma, thought, landscape, brushwork and ink) as the preliminary model of the transplantation; third, we prove the plausibility of the transplantation from an architectural point of view and add some modifications. Concepts and propositions are replaced by categories to break the limitation of times and artistic individuality; "thought" is replaced by "conception" to enrich the categories; some elements of form in Western architectural form esthetics, such as point, line, surface, volume, texture, color, light and shadow, are matched to the concepts of brush and ink in landscape painting to overcome the discrepancy in artistic language use; then, a detailed study is made on the transplantation of the six categories, namely, qi, charisma, conception, landscape, brushwork and ink. The study focuses on four aspects: the origin and definition of the six categories, typical esthetic propositions in the categories that can be transplanted, relations among different categories and the transplantation of concrete categories to architectural esthetics.In conclusion, centered on categories and grounded on concepts and propositions, the research builds a structure with three levels (panoramic level, macroscopic level and microscopic level), which forms a relatively complete, clear and complementary formal esthetic system. To avoid possible neglect of artistic individuality caused by the transplantation, this dissertation never ceases to refine, generalize and modify concepts, and to test the plausibility of the transplantation through sufficient examples, aiming to provide an effective and sustainable esthetic framework with Chinese characteristics that can be applied to architectural teaching, design and criticism.