Cheng Taining, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, gave a lecture at the Luojia Forum on June 18th, where he shared his thoughts on cultural consciousness and architectural innovation.
A recent prevalent phenomenon when it comes to the architecture of many Chinese cities is their perfect resemblance that lacks own features. Cheng deemed it a challenge towards cultural imagination, ascribing its underlying reason to homogenization and westernization of architectural value orientation and evaluation criteria. He thought the intuition and confidence of Chinese architects as well as the involvement and consideration of the entire society are very important.
Cheng held the view that cultural consciousness and confidence are the premises of architectural innovation. Only when we possess an in-depth understanding of the Chinese and the western culture can we realize innovation in the contemporary Chinese constructions. He pointed out that having a strong basis is not the ultimate strength towards pushing innovation, but under the circumstances of globalization, comparing and reflecting upon the Chinese and the western cultures in a comprehensive manner and absorbing the respective advantages will lead to improvement in our building style aesthetics, allowing the Chinese architects to accomplish innovation in both theory and practice.
Cheng listed three key aspects: : firstly, understanding contemporary western architecture from the architecture themselves; secondly, understanding convention from the perspective of globalization and modernization; last but not least, realizing that convention is not synonym to China, and that the Chinese contemporary life is not identical to that in the west.
Cheng Taining is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Graduating from the Architecture Department of Southeast University in 1956, he is now Director of the Architectural Design and Theory Research Center of Southeast University and chief architect in China United Engineering Company. He once participated in the design of the People’s Great Hall in Beijing and the Nanjing Yangtze Bridge. He was granted the Liang Sicheng Architecture Award in 2004.
(Rewritten by Shiying Xu, edited by Diana & Sijia Hu)
