Dualism and Polarism
structures of architectural and landscape architectural discourse in China and the West
Stanislaus Fung and Mark Jackson
In the present paper, we propose to offer a number of reflections on a possible approach to cultural difference in the study of Chinese architecture and landscape architecture. The modern study of these cultural fields comes to us within a double framework in which the modern disciplinary division of labour is overlaid by cultural divisions that have separated the understanding of traditional Chinese materials from contemporary debates of these fields, conceived as international in character but commonly narrated as descended from the Anglo-European tradition. In both these fields, contemporary professionals have negotiated their daily practice across a divide between their specific cultural traditions, on the one hand, and the general debates of their profession, on the other. In addressing the problem of cultural difference in architecture and landscape architecture, we believe that theoretical and philosophical resources are quite crucial, for new visions of cultural possibilities in architectural thinking are not secured by (a Eurocentric) ÒcommonsenseÓ but require intellectual tools of some degree of sophistication. In the present paper, we will have occasion to draw on recent work in comparative philosophy and poststructuralist theory as well as works in architectural theory that might be more familiar to our immediate audience. In view of the broad range of sources that we have found pertinent to our concerns, and the restrictions of space under which we are presenting this discussion, we will limit our purpose to indicating relevance between different bodies of scholarly work. This attempt to relate diverse bodies of materials is in part related to our rejection of the idea of ÔrecognisingÕ ethnic minorities in an implicitly sentimental and humanistic fashion. The usual institutional measures, that it inspires - for instance, in terms of curriculum reform - often reinforce and consolidate rather than challenge the cultural division that segregates the ÔChineseÕ and the ÔcontemporaryÕ in architectural discourse. A serious challenge to this cultural division, it would appear, ineluctably calls for different resources gathered across a range of disciplines, and the cross-cultural work that it entails would involve a ÔriskingÕ or ÔtransformationÕ of important issues of current concern to the Western architectural world.
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