Study On Art Characteristics Of Huizhou Classical Academy Gardens

The classical academy is the place for ancient Confucian scholars to gather, give lectures, collect books, improve skills and recreate, which is a new type of academic place different from official school and private school. In the background of 'Hui Culture', Huizhou forms a dense atmosphere of study even in the small villages with only a dozen families. The classical academy is well developed. The classical academy gardens in Huizhou, based on Literati's Garden (Wenren Yuan), inherit local ancient customs and cultures, and are with unique artistic charms.The classical academy garden is the academy space with garden characters. The ancient classical academy gardens in Huizhou attach importance to the environment outside the academy, which includes two factors of natural environment and humanity environment. The academy pays much attention to the choice of its location and makes the most of natural geographic conditions. The construction of the academy is adjusted to these conditions, and thus the cultural landscape with local features is formed. Following the commonness of academy space, Huizhou academy emphasizes the space feature of ceremony, regularization and a combination of introversion and extroversion. The alternation and transformation of the academy's functional areas are realized by the interlude and alternation of architecture space and garden space, which makes the academy an integration of architecture and garden with contradictory and unification. The design of the academy garden not only takes the fitness and properness of elements inside the bounding wall into consideration, but also emphasizes the harmonization between the academy and environment as well as the flexible control measures of utilizing local conditions. Thus, an ideal space effect is acquired. The ancient academy garden in Huizhou adopts various skills to enrich its space content. These skills mainly include space contrast, scenery-borrowing, scenery-pointing, scenery-opposite, scenery-framing, scenery-missing, etc. and express the pursuit to a quiet and elegant artistic concept through the contrast between black tiles and white walls. The plant arrangement of the academy follows the classical style of Chinese garden. Not only the seasonal characteristics and visual effects of the plants are considered, but the concept that the noble men should appreciate natural beauties by comparing to moral standard is also emphasized.As a spiritual symbol with particular meanings of life, Huizhou Classical Academy not only exhibits the lifestyle and ethic standards of the people in Huizhou, but also shows the inner cultural spirit that the historical cultural relic contains. Base on Confucianism and theories of Zhu Xi, the social ethic value system of Huizhou has a profound influence on the design concept of Huizhou Classical Academy. This is shown through the concept of 'Harmony with Nature', the layout principle of 'Ceremony and joy unite as one, while joy undertakes ceremony' and the widely accepted culture of geomancy. The Chinese ancient scholars are always with historical and social responsibilities, which lead the unique aesthetic orientation of academy gardens. This is shown in the following three aspects: the concept of "Goodness equals beauty", anchoretic thoughts and artistic interests of calligraphy and painting. Since Qing Dynasty, the academy has been gradually officialized, which leads to the introjecting of scholar spirits and custom culture.As a representative of Confucian culture, the designing concepts of Huizhou ancient classical academy garden contain many incisive opinions and logical properties which are worth researching. The features of Huizhou ancient classical academy garden, such as the interaction between nature and people and the blending of space and culture, should be explored by further research for future reference. In additional to be the prompt expression of human's new technology-which is one of the common missions of architecture-culture architecture is also an important bearer of culture with traditional features. The contemporary university campus, as the representative of cultural building, should use Huizhou ancient classical academy for reference in term of location choice, general layout, architecture designing, gardening and so on. Nevertheless, Huizhou ancient classical academy is an outcome of feudalism, which perishes along with the fading of feudalistic society. Therefore, the judgment and inheriting of the academy should be carried out on dual levels with it excellence adopted and disadvantage abandoned.