The Multidisciplinary Origin,Exploration And Interpretation Of Chinese Modern Landscape Architecture Theory

The Republican era was a critical period for the transformation of Chinese society,economy and culture from tradition to modernity.It was also the key beginning for the emergence of landscape architecture education,practice,theory and the germination of its disciplinary prototype.Since landscape architecture did not form an independent profession or discipline then,relevant theoretical discussions were scattered among horticulture,forestry,municipalities,architecture and other fields.To trace the theoretical origins of Chinese landscape architecture and to improve and consolidate its academic system,it is necessary to explore the academic beginnings of its early theory,and comprehensively analyze the origin and development of relevant cognitive concepts and theoretical contents.It will contribute to deeply understanding the mechanism of the role of multiple disciplines in the evolution of landscape architecture theory and to summarize and learn from the historical experience of theoretical development at the beginning of the disciplinary process of Chinese landscape architecture.This study adopts a "multidisciplinary" perspective to explore the dispersed theories of landscape architecture in the Republican era.It adopts interdisciplinary analysis with the methods of literature research,comparative research,case studies and transnational history.The thesis also summarizes the unique contributions of each discipline to Chinese landscape architecture theory.Specifically,it focuses first on three scholars with Landscape Architecture backgrounds.They made outstanding contributions to the introduction,construction and expansion of the discipline of landscape architecture by combining their knowledge,introduction and analysis of LA and attempts at localization.Secondly,it focuses on horticulture.With "landscape gardening" integration into horticulture,horticultural scholars took "gardens" as the core.They explored the design in terms of morphology and principle and applied it to new practices such as public parks and residential gardens.Thirdly,it focuses on forestry.Taking the new ecological and recreational value of forestry as a conceptual basis,forestry scholars expanded the types and spatial scales of landscape architecture practice around "urban greening" and "national greening".It fourthly focuses on the municipality.With the social background of urbanization and municipal reform,municipal scholars explored and improved the theoretical content of landscape architecture combined with urban planning,construction and management,bringing in new academic perspectives to landscape architecture.At last,it focuses on architecture.Based on common aesthetic and engineering characteristics,architecture scholars enriched the research methods and achievements in the history of gardening within the framework of architectural historiography.They also integrated relevant practice types,strengthening landscape architecture’s academic and professional aspects.In light of the above,it next discusses the motivation,integration mechanism and historical evaluation of the multidisciplinary landscape architecture theory in the Republican era.First,internal social factors and globalized academic shaped the "multidisciplinary" character of early Chinese landscape architecture theory exploration.Second,the differences among multidisciplinarity promoted the expansion of the primary knowledge field of landscape architecture.At the same time the commonality contributed to the superposition and aggregation of the same contents.They were two basic modes of the evolution of modern landscape architecture theory under the role of multidisciplinarity.Finally,under the combined force of multidisciplinarity,the first theoretical wave of Chinese landscape architecture emerged.On one hand,landscape architecture constantly stored the potential to evolve into an independent profession or discipline along with the consensus and knowledge basis gradually forming.On the other hand,the profound contradiction between landscape architecture’s expansiveness and convergence also foreshadow the tortuous development of Chinese landscape architecture.In conclusion,by systematically tracing the origin and evolution of modern garden theory from a multidisciplinary perspective,this study systematically explains the multidisciplinary content and characteristics of landscape architecture theory in the Republic era,reveals the breadth and thickness of it under the interaction of "local" and "foreign".It also reveals the far-reaching influence of the "synthesis" of multiple disciplines on both sides.The innovation of the study is mainly reflected in three aspects: firstly,it is the first time that the content and origins of modern Chinese landscape architecture theory have been systematically sorted out based on multiple disciplines,deepening the overall understanding;secondly,it presents the consciousness and spontaneous exploration of local traditional garden making experience under the historical background of Sino-Western cultural dialogue and exchange with new historical materials and unknown professional pioneers,enriching the understanding of academic transformation of traditional experience;thirdly,on the basis of the existing studies that have focused on the international spread and influence of foreign academic theories,a comprehensive analysis of their locally interpretation and transformation under the guidance of social needs is presented,which enhances a new understanding of the development of modern landscape architecture theories.