Idealizing a Chinese Style: Rethinking Early Writings on Chinese Architecture and the Design of the National Central Museum in Nanjing

摘要

In 1946, Liang Sicheng (1901-72), the most distinguished architectural historian of twentieth-century China, wrote: The Chinese building is a highly "organic" structure. It is an indigenous growth that was conceived and born in the remote prehistoric past, reached its "adolescence" in the Han dynasty (around the beginning of the Christian era), matured into full glory and vigor in the Tang dynasty (seventh and eighth centuries), mellowed with grace and elegance in the Sung (Song) dynasty (eleventh and twelfth centuries), then started to show signs of old age, feebleness, and rigidity, from the beginning of the Ming dynasty (fifteenth century). Now, with the coming of reinforced concrete and steel framing, Chinese architecture faces a grave situation. Indeed, there is a basic similarity between the ancient Chinese and the ultramodern. But can they be combined? Can the traditional Chinese structural system find a new expression in these new materials? Possibly. But it must not be the blind imitation of "periods." Something new must come out of it, or Chinese architecture will become extinct.