Mo-Zi’s Equality Theory And The Bottom-up Urban Public Space

The Mohism is one of the Pre-Qin Philosophy. It takes Equality as the coreconcept, which against the social hierarchy concept emphasized by the Confucianism.This thesis concludes humanity’s equality from Mohists’ writing MoZi and otherscholars’ researches of Mohism, and re-interprets it through the architectural point ofview. In this way, forming a guiding theory which could be used into contemporaryurban public space design could be possible.The Mohism produced in the late Spring and Autumn Period. It is the timearistocratic hierarchy was collapsing, which is the resulting controversy overthe hierarchy of identity for people between Confucianism and Mohism.Confucian advocates the order of Rites, that is, the distinction between statusfrom top to bottom; and Mohist stands directly onto non-Confucian stance,against the distinction between the levels of the people, and raise anon-hierarchy order. Mohism decline to Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, with thenew feudal hierarchy had been perfected. Until the collapse of the feudalsystem period, and only have scholars reintroduced Mohism, the Mohism hasbeen revived and put forward direction for the establishment of a new socialorder.Corresponding the changing of Mohism, the hierarchy characteristics ofurban public space shows an anti-correlation. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, thepublic space was used to embody aristocratic status. When the aristocracy wascollapsing, there has been a lot of space transgression. With the new feudalsystem’s establishment, public space began to last Zhou Dynasty’s system ofhierarchy, and on this basis, continued improvement. Ultimately thehierarchical characteristics of China’s traditional urban space had been formed.Until the period of the disintegration of the feudal society, with the removal oflevel differences between people, the equal status has been achieved. Also thelevel characteristics of urban public space have a spontaneous collapse.Relations between the Sinology and the order of urban public space areinevitable, because the Sinology influence of the ideology of a period of intuitive human behavior would affect the space form directly.To Mohism, its equality ideology is the antithesis of mainstreamConfucianism, so showing speculation and criticism upon mainstream spaceform. However, this speculation is precisely suitable for today’s social system.Therefore, in the practice of contemporary urban public space, the equalitythinking from Mohism could be a creative perspective, to promote a person’sbehavior needs of urban space design method, that is, the bottom-up urbanpublic space.