Influnce Of Chinese Culture And Art On Landscape Theory And Methodology

The unique Chinese culture was born and grown up with the special Chinese natural environment. Since Cang Jie invented characters with the combination of pictograph and intonation, the Chinese language has the following features:the meaning can not be expressed only with language; the Chinese thinking is not well defined but functions as a whole part; the Chinese culture emphasizes unity not pieces. This kind of culture characteristics has established the philosophy of Confucianism and Taoism, which forms the two complimentary aspect of the traditional Chinese people's personality. Meanwhile, it has a strong influence on the Chinese landscape architecture, "from the nature and above the nature", representing the Chinese philosophy about life. In contrast with western culture, the Chinese culture has very distinct unitary development features. From "original religious spirit" of Yin and Zhou dynasty to "rational thinking" of early Qin dynasty, from Qin and Han "romantic legend" to Wei and Jin "people's awareness", from Sui and Tang "Fantastic and spectacular" to Song "delicate and fine", the Chinese culture progressed slowly in the super steady feudalistic agriculture society. Finally, the Chinese culture and art reaches the peak in the Bei Song dynasty and landscape architecture is one example. This dissertation will focus on reflecting the Chinese culture characteristic and its influence and promotion to traditional landscape's development and evolution."Modern means the transformation and invention of the tradition." Unlike restoring the ancient ways, the modern problems can only be solved with contemporary methods by contemporary people. The research and analysis on the original thinking for traditional landscape is the prerequisite for inheriting and criticizing the traditional landscape in respect of the racial spirit. In the dissertation, the tables and figures are used to summarize the time background, philosophy and art and their impact on the changes of landscape. Then, different time scale is defined based on "the spirit of the time" to analyze the thinking difference of landscape in different time. At last, by comparing the traditional and contemporary philosophy, the author adopts the project examples to investigate how to use the modern peoples'life style and esthetics to inherit the traditional landscape art spirit.This dissertation has investigated the Chinese culture characteristic's influence on landscape architecture and has achieved in the following several aspects:1. This dissertation proposes to use the diagram and pictures to summarize and analyze Chinese landscape's background and time spirit. 2. Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are three steps of Chinese art thinking evolution. This dissertation first proposes to use philosophy and esthetics to investigate the cause of the progress for the landscape building methodology.3. This dissertation proposes and analyzes the traditional scholars'Confucianism and Taoism complementary thoughts.4. The modern materialism philosophy is used to discuss the landscape building thoughts "harmony between the heaven and human".