Chinese Gardens as a Nativity Scene: Matteo Ripa’s Description of the Kangxi Emperor’s Changchun Garden in Beijing

This article examines the description of the Changchun Garden in eighteenth-century Beijing, featured in Matteo Ripa’s Storia della Fondazione della Congregazione e del Collegio de’ Cinesi. An Italian missionary at the court of the Kangxi Emperor, Ripa had a chance to see and describe both the imperial parks and the intricacies of Chinese court etiquette. His detailed account, a precious source of information on the Changchun park, was accompanied by commentaries aimed at explaining the differences between “European” and “Chinese” aesthetic values. Therefore, this article offers a critical analysis of the account as a historical source, discussing the accuracy of some of the details described by Ripa, and subsequently provides an interpretation of the way he perceived Chinese parks, with an emphasis on his explanations of the “Chinese style” of laying out gardens. Finally, the last part of the article is dedicated to a comparison between a Neapolitan nativity scene (presepio) and the Qing gardens as drawn by Ripa at the end of his description, in order to demonstrate the “artificial naturalness” of Chinese parks.

Reinterpreting Chinese Cultural Imperatives Within the Contemporary Urban Context Through the Integration of Natural Elements

<p>As Chinese contemporary architecture is entering into a new era along with rapid economic development, this is an opportunity for young Chinese designers to start to translate their own Chinese cultural perspectives into contemporary architecture. This thesis uses an iconic Chinese architectural symbol, the ‘Chinese Garden’, as a vehicle to explore this opportunity to re-interpret the traditional Chinese garden in relation to contemporary Chinese urban culture. The challenge is to investigate how a contemporary garden could be inspired by the philosophy and principles of traditional Chinese gardens within a contemporary Western contextual environment. This thesis explores four major Chinese garden types and their architectural characteristics, how their imperative cultural reflections of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Fengshui Principles, Chinese landscape Painting and legend of ‘Round Heaven and Square Earth’ influence the traditional Chinese garden making. This thesis analyzes the qualities of the existing site, Frank Kitts Park, and it discusses the important ‘positives’ and potential ‘negatives’ that exists on the site. This design thesis will take the ‘negatives’ and translate them into positives through Chinese garden making theories and philosophies. While the Dunedin Chinese garden decided to hide the western urban context with a surrounding wall, this design thesis seeks to embrace the surrounding western urban context and incorporate it into the garden as a means of demonstrating how traditional gardens can flourish within contemporary times. This thesis challenges how a contemporary and western context can be incorporated with the principles of a traditional Chinese garden and how existing urban elements can be interpreted as landscape elements by translating traditionally soft plant elements into architectural elements. Just as solid walls are used to enclose the perimeter of traditional style gardens (both imperial gardens and private gardens), the contemporary garden should also consider the application of physical walls in order to divide space (both exterior and interior) and thus create multiple discreet spaces which may be considered as an inner and outer world with a garden boundary at ground level; a spiritual inner world is found within the garden and a literal outer world remains outside of the garden walls.</p>

Reinterpreting Chinese Cultural Imperatives Within the Contemporary Urban Context Through the Integration of Natural Elements

<p>As Chinese contemporary architecture is entering into a new era along with rapid economic development, this is an opportunity for young Chinese designers to start to translate their own Chinese cultural perspectives into contemporary architecture. This thesis uses an iconic Chinese architectural symbol, the ‘Chinese Garden’, as a vehicle to explore this opportunity to re-interpret the traditional Chinese garden in relation to contemporary Chinese urban culture. The challenge is to investigate how a contemporary garden could be inspired by the philosophy and principles of traditional Chinese gardens within a contemporary Western contextual environment. This thesis explores four major Chinese garden types and their architectural characteristics, how their imperative cultural reflections of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Fengshui Principles, Chinese landscape Painting and legend of ‘Round Heaven and Square Earth’ influence the traditional Chinese garden making. This thesis analyzes the qualities of the existing site, Frank Kitts Park, and it discusses the important ‘positives’ and potential ‘negatives’ that exists on the site. This design thesis will take the ‘negatives’ and translate them into positives through Chinese garden making theories and philosophies. While the Dunedin Chinese garden decided to hide the western urban context with a surrounding wall, this design thesis seeks to embrace the surrounding western urban context and incorporate it into the garden as a means of demonstrating how traditional gardens can flourish within contemporary times. This thesis challenges how a contemporary and western context can be incorporated with the principles of a traditional Chinese garden and how existing urban elements can be interpreted as landscape elements by translating traditionally soft plant elements into architectural elements. Just as solid walls are used to enclose the perimeter of traditional style gardens (both imperial gardens and private gardens), the contemporary garden should also consider the application of physical walls in order to divide space (both exterior and interior) and thus create multiple discreet spaces which may be considered as an inner and outer world with a garden boundary at ground level; a spiritual inner world is found within the garden and a literal outer world remains outside of the garden walls.</p>

Correlations between Spatial Attributes and Visitor Stay in Chinese Gardens: A Case Study of the Ningbo Tianyige Museum Gardens

Despite the growing popularity of Chinese gardens, few studies have explored Chinese garden tourism and the relationship between garden space and visitor behavior. Addressing this gap, this study examines the correlations between spatial attributes and visitor stay distribution in the Ningbo Tianyige Museum gardens. This study divided the garden space into twenty units across four types—water, architecture, veranda, and rockery—and identified spatial attributes using measurements and configurational calculations. Visitor stay data was comprised of 1061 cases with a stay interval of more than 30 s in three investigation periods. Results produced three primary findings. First, architecture and water spaces had the highest visitor stay density, followed by veranda space and then rockery space. Second, there is a correlation between visitor stay density and six spatial attributes: integration, choice, width, length, enclosure ratio, and seating. Third, although each type has distinctive attributes, they can be divided into two groups: (1) spacious and highly accessible open spaces (water and architecture types); (2) long narrow spaces with low accessibility and abundant seating facilities (veranda and rockery types). By exploring the relationship between Chinese gardens and modern tourism, this study provides valuable insights and suggestions for the planning and management of Chinese garden tourism.

Ordination of Selected Traditional Japanese Gardens, Traditional Chinese Gardens, and Modern Chinese Gardens

Designers and academics are interested in the characteristics, differences, and similarities between built environments such as garden types. This investigation aims to examine the ordination of traditional Japanese gardens in Kyoto, the classical Chinese gardens in Suzhou and the modern Chinese gardens in Xiamen. A hundred and thirty-four variables were selected for the ordination. According to a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) ordination, the first three principal components covered 70.77 percent of the sample variance: the first principal component (traditional Asian values to non-Asian dimension) and second principal component (a complexity to simplicity dimension) divides the gardens into three identifiable groups; the first and the third principal component (a hardscape to softscape dimension) indicates the similarities of traditional Japanese gardens and classical Chinese gardens; the second and third principal component implies the similarities of traditional Japanese gardens and modern Chinese gardens.

A Brief Analysis Of "Wild and Exquisite" British Natural Landscape Garden

Thanks for the opportunity that sent students to attend the short-term academic class at University of Wales Trinity Saint David at the end of 2019, the author took this opportunity to deeply experience the local customs, cultural customs and landscape of Britain. At the same time, as a landscape design researcher, the author elaborated the design methods and elements of the British natural landscape garden. Through literature reviewing and field feeling, and compared with classical Chinese gardens, the author analyzed their similarities and differences. "Wild and exquisite" means "natural and worth thinking". The author analyzed the characteristics of several modern natural landscape garden visited and found out the moment of "wild and exquisite" in British natural landscape garden.