Classical Chinese gardens: landscapes for self-cultivation

Teaching Environment and Behaviour in schools of architecture is still needed but innovative ways of teaching are required. Devised to explore the design of classical Chinese gardens, The Garden of the Cool Change is a project for a garden in suburban Melbourne on Chinese principles. The paper introduces the project and considers it against each of the topics in a course in Environment and Behaviour. This is not to make a case for the course but to demonstrate the utility of the approach and the richness of possible directions in which educative exploration might proceed.

These Notes and the Lecture they accompany aim to show that there are rich lessons for contemporary architectural design in classical Chinese gardens. The Notes concentrate first on some sources of the ideas that inform the design of classical Chinese gardens – from painting, calligraphy and poetry, and note a number of criteria for judging good work. In these Notes, my contention is that if, in China, painting, calligraphy, poetry and garden design are, in a profound sense, the same, then criteria for judging good work ought to be the same. To illustrate lessons we might draw for contemporary architectural design from classical Chinese gardens, the Lecture discusses the principles employed in their design and illustrates what are considered the main design variables.

Square-bracketed references at the end of an entry indicates the source of the reference. I have been attempting, ultimately, to cover all sources in English. A major present specific lack is anything that treats sources of design ideas in the private or scholar gardens deriving from family cemeteries. (The lead is provided in, for example, Clunas 1996. 1) Further, explicit treatment of the differences between temple gardens and other types of Chinese gardens is rare-particularly from the point of view of the act of designing. I know only of what is implied in Miller (2004). And, something in English on the relationship between the operas of Suzhou and the gardens they were written for would be good. Finally, there is much of a general nature on feng shui but little that is scholarly that directly deals with the details of its use in garden design. 2 Surely it cannot simply be the result of Ji Cheng's opinion of feng shui practitioners in Yuan Ye? For me, that reads as professional rivalry.

In the realm of ideas, cross-culturally there are those who take or borrow and those who offer or give. There are those who act with knowledge of actualities and sources and those to whom it doesn’t occur to care. And, there are those who tailor ideas to be used according to views they construct of their audience or clients. All positions in the matrix of possibilities suggested in these oppositions have been occupied over the history of Chinese-style gardens and garden ideas outside China. The ignorant, the knowledgeable and the cunning have each been active both as borrowers and as donors. Concentrating on the development of now publicly-accessible gardens, this paper considers first the history of Chinese-style garden ideas – initially in Japan and South-East Asia, then in Western Europe and, after a considerable hiatus (just before which the favour was briefly returned), now all over the world. But, that history is balanced with consideration of the future: through focusing on three of the problems with wider dissemination and further development of Chinese-style garden ideas – their architectural quality, Chinese taste in rocks, and the already deep entanglement of Japanese-style garden ideas with Modernist landscape aesthetics.

Garden History 44, no.2 (2016): 292-3.

Teaching of Environment and Behaviour materials in Australian schools of architecture had its 'heyday' from the 1970s into the 1980s. It is still needed. But, now that the focus in architecture increasingly moves toward the professional application of research findings in such situations as old town renewal, innovative ways of teaching from pertinent examples are required. The paper begins by setting out the structure of a model course in Environment-Behaviour under eight headings and then considers a particular case study. Originally devised as a means of exploring the design methods and approaches used in the design of classical Chinese scholar gardens, The Garden of the Cool Change is a project for a garden in suburban Melbourne, designed on Chinese principles – though it is NOT a classical Chinese garden.

The idea that the garden might be a place and an inspiration for an ideal human life is perhaps almost as old as garden making itself. One recurrent and influential thought has been that of the garden as a place especially suited to the exercise of the virtues. Epicurus' garden was designed to encourage diligence and effort, but also enjoyment of the simple and Angst-free life valued by the philosopher. The purpose of the landscaped scenic sites (bajing) in Song dynasty China was as much a moral as an aesthetic one. As an official in Huzhou put it, enjoyment of a pavilion, its surroundings and a nearby lake will 'moralise people' more effectively than 'preaching to them'.

2024

Thus far, human development has been achieved at the cost of the destruction of cultural landscapes. With advent of industrial civilization, people have gained happiness and conveniences, but also confronted various cultural landscape predicaments. Environmental philosophy, a contemporary philosophy that regards the relationship between humans and nature as a fundamental issue, has focused on the protection of cultural landscapes. An analysis of ancient Chinese environmental philosophy demonstrates that ancient thinkers cared about everything in heaven and earth, and explored issues, such as a harmonious development between humans and nature, offering a novel approach to the preservation of Chinese cultural landscapes. Using Taoist environmental philosophy as an exemplar, this article provides a preliminary analysis of the definition of cultural landscapes, development of environmental philosophy and Taoist environmental philosophy. Building upon this foundation, it explores the role of environmental philosophies, such as "unity of heaven and man" in construction of ecological civilization, providing fresh perspectives for cultural landscape conservation.

Neither art, nor philosophy, nor politics, gardens have been relegated to the status of a specialised, even minor, subject somewhat apart from the key themes of mainstream historical analysis. This chapter aims to correct that bias and demonstrate that the study of gardens can offer insights into all these areas and even suggest an alternative perspective that challenges the accepted understanding of the Early Modern period. It will question the widely held view that English taste became more sinophobic in the course of the eighteenth century as radical democratic sensibilities emerged. Rather than seeing the English response to Chinese gardens as an alien idea, superficially understood and badly executed, it will be suggested that it is more productive to understand the process as a series of related and interlinked responses to the expansion and greater integration of the global market in both England and China.

Environmental Values, 2017

The ancient aesthetics of yijing has played a crucial role in traditional Chinese philosophy, literature and art since the eighth century CE. Defined variously by early and contemporary writers, yijing links an artist's emotional domain to objects in the world. This article conceptualises yijing as an ecological aesthetics and distinguishes it from an environmental aesthetics. In particular, two aspects of yijing render it an eco-aesthetics: subject-object correspondence (or 'engagement'); and empathic identification with the environment (or 'bio-empathy'). Three brief case studies from urban planning, environmental conservation and the creative arts demonstrate the contemporary importance of yijing to ecological issues.