A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future

Book info: A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future (Paperback, 226 pages) – Routledge, 2016. Language: English.

A Philosophy of Chinese Architecture: Past, Present, Future examines the impact of Chinese philosophy on China’s historic structures, as well as on modern Chinese urban aesthetics and architectural forms. For architecture in China moving forward, author David Wang posits a theory, the New Virtualism, which links current trends in computational design with long-standing Chinese philosophical themes. The book also assesses twentieth-century Chinese architecture through the lenses of positivism, consciousness (phenomenology), and linguistics (structuralism and poststructuralism). Illustrated with over 70 black-and-white images, this book establishes philosophical baselines for assessing architectural developments in China, past, present and future.

David Wang is a Professor of Architecture at Washington State University. He holds BA and MArch degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MS Arch and PhD from the University of Michigan. Dr. Wang has lectured widely on design research methods in China and the Scandinavian countries. This current book comes out of many years of teaching a comparative course in European and Chinese philosophies and their impact on architecture and material culture.