Key Words-
John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, Crafts, Chinese Painting, Geometry, Ritual, Symbol, Monument, Utopian, Living, Housing, Inhabitation, Future, Escapism, Manufacture, Fabrication, Garden of Perfect Brightness, Summer Palace, Rebecca Horn, Chinese Perspective
John Ruskin’s philosophy on architecture has brought the importance of crafts in art and design. The “truest” architecture should never be forgotten but embraced by the innovative technology in today’s architecture.
Beijing, a mega city as the capital of China today which embedded abundant culture, history and architecture as an profound vessel for human race. The ruins of its old summer palace brings romantic ideology for people’s pleasure and escapism. The megacity is now exploded with people, and “distorted” buildings filled with greed and pollution, crowded and hard to breathe.
The project will deal with historical problems- with the past and, a function of the past, with the future. The project will also look to the past to imagine a future, studying an earlier architecture not to replicate it but to understand and transform it.
The project investigates a place together with masterplan consists of living spaces and gardens that is manufactured through Ruskin’s idea of craftsmanship, today’s innovative technology in architecture and inspiration from regional art and cultural influence, situated at outer edge of Beijing to serve as place for escape and pleasure. Louise Kahn recalled the Renaissance analogy of a house and a city to characterise the house as the smallest social institution, stating that “ every building is a house, regardless of whether it is a Senate, or whether it is just a house.” My project is the design of a escape-house with pleasure gardens for Beijingers1, it is a place to escape from city, to live, to work and to meditate has a private and a public life.
UNIT 17_DE HE 