The Notion Of ’function’ In Chinese Architecture(1950s-1990s)

This thesis studies the history of the discourse of the concept of‘function’in the Chinese architectural context from the 1950 s to the 1990 s and its translation,and compares with the connotation and development of ‘function’ in the European and American architectural context.It expounds the unique historical role of the word ‘function’ in Chinese architectural discourse and its significance,and points out the reasons and problems of this concept being questioned in contemporary architecture.Function is an important abstract concept in architectural context.With the demand to generating specific shape,it aims to express utility of practical purposes,and to integrate the materiality and spirituality of architecture and translate this synthesis into a physical form.In European and American architecture discourse,‘function’ went through a process from introducing from mathematics and biology into architecture.In Chinese context,‘function’is a concept firstly translated indirectly from Japanese and science.Due to economic effects,the connotation of ‘function’ gradually gets enlarged and is questioned.The process shows that the aim of all the discourse of ‘function’is to find a way to give birth to a reasonable form.However,as revealed by architectural discourse in China,the weakness of the concept of ‘function’ is hard to make a connection to intuitive feeling and thus is difficult to make a vivid link between social issues,users and material forms of buildings.This thesis shows the concept of ‘function’ in Chinese discourse uncovers a universal problem of architecture,and indicate that a possible way of making ‘function’ more useful is to construct a new kind of discourse system.Total 39,000 words,42 pictures and charts.