The Temporality of Building: European and Chinese Perspectives on Architecture and Heritage

Yun Gao, Nicholas Temple, Jing Xiao

Research output: Book/ReportBookpeer-review

Abstract

This book examines the role that time plays in the life of buildings, adopting a comparative study of this influence between European and Chinese traditions. Whilst issues of time in architecture have attracted increasing interest by academics in the West, challenging the dominant modernist precepts of space, there is little understanding of the subject in China and how these compare to historical and contemporary perspectives in Europe. A guiding premise of the investigation is that notions of building time require insight into how cultural habits commingle with natural rhythms, or what David Leatherbarrow calls “concurrency”.
Rather than examining specific buildings, the first three chapters apply three key themes (language, ritual and heritage) as cultural lenses to reveal differences and similarities between the two traditions. Through these lenses, buildings, interiors and their exterior spaces (churches/ cathedrals, temples, palaces, gardens and courtyard houses) are explored to demonstrate how building time involves particular situations/ settings and their correlating relationships to past traditions. In the final chapter we consider notions of time in the context of contemporary buildings in Europe and China, drawing on the earlier historical investigations and addressing globalising influences.
This book would be of interest to architects, architectural theorists, historians, philosophers, sociologists and anthropologists.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationLondon and New York
PublisherRoutledge, Taylor & Francis Group
Number of pages230
Volume1
ISBN (Electronic)9781315561042
ISBN (Print)9781138674851, 9781041017981
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 12 Nov 2024

Publication series

NameRoutledge: Research in Architecture History
PublisherRoutledge

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