‘All things are born of being, Being is born of non-being.’ 2 ‘Something substantial can be beneficial while the emptiness of void is what can be utilised.’ 3 — Lao Tzu, Tao . Te King
yuxin qiu the uninscribed surface Suzhou Gardens of China Eileen Gray’s E1027 in Roquebrune Le Corbusier’s murals in E1027 to start Several assumptions underlying the present paper need be clarified. 1 Essentialism versus cultural relevance: garden practice has plural meanings. The classical Chinese garden came to prominence through the expansion of garden culture in the latter half of Ming Dynasty (sixteenth to seventeenth centuries). I inherit the historical consensus and situate Suzhou gardens under a broader framework of classical Chinese thought — meaning is imbricated in specific material appearance. I draw on literature from both east and west to avoid the pitfalls of essentialism and cultural segregation. 2 Archeological recovery versus status quo analysis: investigation of the present garden condition is a different task from the archeological recovery of its historic layouts and transformations. What one sees today in Suzhou gardens includes a great deal of Qing and even more recent alternations, not the initial configurations. Instead of pointing out the design intentions for specific features in original garden making activities, I reveal the cognate sensibilities inherent in the classical Chinese garden as a practice pertinent to the modern discipline of architecture and landscape architecture. 3 Lived experience versus objectified images: photographs are the objectification of a subjective vision and are, ultimately, only the approximation of the lived experience. Keenly aware of the disjunction between the two, my work — theoretical articulation based on visual material — presents photographs with the advantage of pointing to nuanced details in concrete situations. As can be seen here, observation of the details of architecture has to cope with a mutable, shifting, ambiguous, weather-inflected environment. A photograph stills this moving complextiy for a moment, so that we can think about this moment deeply, visually, intellectually, and then return to the complexity that is any architectural space. Mostafavi, Mohsen, and David Leatherbarrow. On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993. Munakata, Kiyohiko. ‘Mysterious Heavens and Chinese Classical Gardens’ RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 15 (1988): 61-88. Pérez Gómez, Alberto, and Louise Pelletier. Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.
S uzhou gardens are the quintessence of the classical Chinese garden. Occupying fairly small spaces of no more than a few acres, Suzhou gardens unfold to display a profoundly sophisticated world – a labyrinth of layered arrangements in a succession of increasingly complex views creating a density of overwhelming experience. This is a place of the uninflected surface, never homogenous or repetitive, constituted by a diversity of concrete variances. White surfaces appear on walls, passageways, corridors, parapets, balustrades and other masonry works. Closely tied to its context, a white surface assumes a multiplicity of identities, each an irreplaceable singularity, caught up in a local and regional situation through a network of interrelations. As such, it opens new dimensions of experience without ascribing to any standardised category or normative tier. To observe a white wall is to study the materiality of its original uniqueness, to suspend all intellectual assumptions and to engage long strand senses. The role of whiteness in Suzhou gardens, so culturally embedded in the discourse of Chinese architecture and gardens, I apply to Eileen Gray’s E1027 house of 1926-29 in Roquebrune-Cap- Martin, France. It too reveals a sophisticated labyrinthine set of layered spaces held in tension by a series of white walls. Whiteness is a hinge that embodies both trans-cultural continuity and differentiated intentions. From this I observe how material substance leads to cultural, spatial and visual meaning. readings Ames, Roger T., ‘Meaning as Imaging: Prolegomena to a Confucian Epistemology’ in Cultural and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives , 227-244. Edited by Elliot Deutsch. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. —-, ‘The Meaning of Body in Classical Chinese Thought’ International Philosophical Quarterly 24, no. 1 (1984): 39-54. Fung, Stanislaus. ‘The Interdisciplinary Prospects of Reading Yuan ye’ Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes 18, no. 3 (1998): 211-31. Fung, Stanislaus, Liu, Shida, Sun Yu. ‘Aperspectival effects in the Liu Yuan, Suzhou’ Architectural Journal no. 568 (2016): 36-39. Graham, A. C., ‘Conceptual Schemes and Linguistic Relativism in Relation to Chinese’ in in Cultural and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives , 193-212. Edited by Elliot Deutsch. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. Hay, John, Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art . New York: China House Gallery, 1985. Keswick, Maggie, and Charles Jencks. The Chinese Garden: History, Art & Architecture . London: Academy Editions, 1978. Liu, Dunzhen. Suzhou gudian yuanlin . Beijing : Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1979. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The World of Perception . London; New York: Routledge, 2004. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, and Donald A. Landes. Phenomenology of Perception . Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2012.
rock Rock as an aesthetic artefact is of unique importance to Suzhou gardens. Despite the presence of gigantic and complex assemblages of rocks known as jia shan (false mountain), it is the single boulder, small but sophisticated, known as Taihu shi (the rock of the Great Lake) that deserves particular attention here. Taihu shi , taken from deep riverbeds, bears little trace of human craft and is revered for its primitive presence. Years of attrition and corrosion in water have chiselled it to be porous and foraminate. Then it is shaped to be even more grotesque, more tortured. Appearing dull, blunt and artless, Taihu shi are nowhere near a piece of art, however, in the cramped space of Suzhou gardens, Taihu shi usually occupies a dominant place, disproportionate to its clumsy appearance. Its particular setting is against a whitewashed wall. (Figure 1) To understand this primal rock’s aesthetic importance one must consider its combinative appearance with the colour white. It is apparent that a white wall accentuates a rock’s presence – a typical figure-ground relation.The mute white wall is the context and precondition for the emergence of the rock which obtrudes itself as a single piece with object-like visibility. The white wall sets up a stage, provides a clear field where one’s gaze, patrolling in freedom, searching
On Site review 35 : the material culture of architecture
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