Architecture Salon| From the Other’s Gaze to Self-Reflection: Diverse Expressions of Modern Palace-Style Architecture in Early Modern China and Postwar Taiwan

2024-08-03

Sat

15:00

17:00

Speaker

Ya-Chun Chiang Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, Chung Yuan Christian University

Location

DH Café (No. 153, Section 3, Zhongshan North Road, Zhongshan District, Taipei City)

Fee

1. Purchase the new book An Illustrated History of Palace-style Architecture in Taiwan 1949-1975 ($580), which includes a free drink voucher and free entry for the lecture.
2. Without purchasing the book, the admission fee is $200.
*Choose from Option 1 or 2

Introduction

Traditional architectural forms have been interpreted and reinterpreted through diverse lenses by Western missionaries, architects, and later architects influenced by modern nationalism. By exploring these varied perspectives, one can reflect on the construction of traditional culture and its modern dimensions. The Winsing Arts Foundation has invited Associate Professor Ya-Chun Chiang from the Department of Architecture at Chung Yuan Christian University for a special event. Through her latest publication, An Illustrated History of Palace-style Architecture in Taiwan 1949-1975, Chiang focuses on case studies such as the National Museum of History, the Nanhai Academy, the National Palace Museum, and Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, examining how these cases shaped narratives around historical origins, inspired historical research and doctrinal traditions, governmental and cultural legitimacy, and the formation of deep-seated national cultural spaces throughout the Chinese cultural revival movement.

Event Recap

Ya-Chun Chiang launched a compelling discussion on the context of palace-style architecture, drawing from her latest work, An Illustrated History of Palace-style Architecture in Taiwan 1949-1975. Drawing on over two decades of collected materials and her own overseas research experiences, the lecture focused on how 19th-century foreign missionaries and architects facilitated the emergence of palace-style architecture, how the Nationalist government nationalized it, and how modern people shaped their self-identity through it.

Early foreign missionaries in China, responding to religious needs, blended Western and local architectural styles while utilizing local materials to construct localized church buildings. Henry K. Murphy’s 1920s treatise The Adaptation of Chinese Architecture further catalyzed the emergence of modern palace-style architecture. Employing the concept of “new wine in old bottles,” they used Western techniques to construct Chinese-style buildings. Later, China’s first generation of architects, trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, returned home. Confronted with the international situation of the time, they embarked on a path of eclectic revivalism—the “Chinese Architectural Renaissance.” Years later, this movement evolved into the Chinese Cultural Revival Movement in Taiwan, extending the modernization of Chinese architecture to Taipei at that time.

Addressing how different architects shaped tradition at the time, Chiang cited Wang Da-Hong’s work, the National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, as an example. This project marks a significant turning point in Wang’s design of large-scale architecture. The design features clear structural elements and the inherent qualities of materials, embodying structural rationalism, while integrating these with local cultural symbols in an abstract manner. Through the initial design of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, Wang not only created a paradigm for modern Chinese cultural spaces but also articulated his allegory for the new era. Furthermore, Wang’s private residence on Jianguo South Road was influenced by Mies van der Rohe’s “Core House.” Its streamlined, modular floor plan later accommodated family expansions, embodying Wang’sprototype for Chinese cultural space, which evolved from the courtyard house. He transformed Mies’s “form-space” into a “cultural form-space.”

The Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall took its present form through a mix of theoretical ideas and practical compromises, and Wang ceased experimenting with modern architectural forms in large-scale public buildings after this project; instead, he addressed urbanity through other means. However, within this historical trajectory, we glimpse how “hybridity” and “discontinuity” guided attention toward “transplanted modernity.” Reflecting on the history of palace-style architecture, extending through the development of postwar modern architecture in Taiwan, we can piece together the fragmented mirror image and reconstruct the reflection of our own cultural space.