A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Urban Architectural Culture From The Perspective Of View Of Nature

The essay aims to probe into the view of nature in urban architecture culture inChina and America and elaborate how they have different influence on the urbanarchitectural culture of both countries. The view of nature is the way how humanbeings get to know about the world. Therefore the different views of nature in urbanarchitecture are the different ways to decide what urban history China and Americapossess respectively, how they plan the city, design the building, arrange the space,construct the symbol; and how the urban history, the urban planning, buildingdesigning, space arranging and symbol implying are interpreted.Based on the general philosophy of the two countries, the essay selects a fewpairs of comparative views of nature in urban architecture which are more evidentlyand dominantly reflected in the urban architecture. In China, people prefer man andnature are of one, while in America they prefer man is above others. The Chinese putstress on the group while the Americans put stress on individual. The Chinese attachmore importance to the past while the Americans attach more importance to the future.The Chinese have the idea of hierarchy order while the Americans tend to have theidea of equality. China’s Feng Shui is a kind of fuzzy thinking while America’sEnvironmental Behavioral Theory is based on quantities and logic and evidence. Andalso there are some other views that are reflected in the urban architecture: business isgiven more priority to in America than in China, and arms are more significant inAmerica than in China, and so on.In order to elaborate how the different views of nature mentioned above affectthe urban development in two countries, first of all, the essay makes a careful studyand chooses four points in their urban history: the formative periord, the introducingperiord, the climax periord and the asymptotic periord, which show that China’s longurban history and America’s short one have different urban cultures but they still havemuch comparability. And after China’s thousands of years of developing andAmerica’s hundreds of years of evolving, human beings arrive at almost the samearena where both China and America, both the eastern and the western, are not separated far from each other. Their interaction and interconnection are integrated intoa promotion to the livable dwelling for human. Therefore, urban architectural cultureis kind of reciprocal.After the comparison of the urban history in the long direction, the essay goes onwith the city image and chooses three pairs of cities which can represent differentgroups of city images for a horizontal comparison. Beijing is compared withWashington for they are capitals and they both have central axis. But theinterpretation of their city locations and their axis designings are completely different.Beijing is an example to apply traditional urban architectural view such as Fengshuiand Kaogongji to the city, and Washington is an example planned by measurement ofthe land in the idea of business economy because in America priority is always givento business not to the tradition. Shanghai is compared with New York mainly in theirmodern and international aspects. And Shanghai’s Haipai culture and New York’smosaic culture is another manifestation of how China and America have differentvalues of “self”. Shenzhen is compared with San Francisco to illustrate how a modernimmigrant city rises and has its own culture. In the whole comparison of city images,city planning, building construction, city spirit and city memory are physically and thespiritually involved to give an overall view of the city image..The urban space is another comparative point. Space decides the city pattern.The essay is further developed to elaborate private space and public space and spiritspace. Courtyard space is the main private space which is the basic pattern of all theother spaces. It embodies many of views of nature such as group or individual,hierarchy or equality, the harmony of man with nature or conquest of man over nature.In public space the essay picks out block, square and garden that are the chief parts ofthe city. The spirit space is the extension of the living space, where all the humanliving views of nature are strictly applied and thus the different religions buildingcultures and different tomb cultures come into being.In the end, the essay makes the comparison in urban color and urban names,which are the two symbols chosen from all urban symbols. They can better illustratehow the urban symbols are formed under the views of nature than any other symbol like the animal symbol or the number symbol, and how the symbol culture is reflectedin the city and the building. Color symbols are more obviously seen at first sight andname symbols can remain longer after other symbols disappear. Their implication isrooted in the views such as hierarchy order or equality or the value of “self”, etc.The essay’s purpose is to explore the root cause of the different cultures in Chinaand America and find out an approach to build a livable home for the mankind.