|
STATEMENT
Clue 1 Everlasting
The primacy of fulfilling a use has to be replaced by beauty as the central objective of architectural design, because beauty is the quality which leads to the social and cultural acceptance of a building. Social and cultural acceptance are the most important premises for a building’s longevity.
– Dietmar Eberle
-the Parthenon, Athens
Through all the times, human beings are constantly admiring a building which could stand by for thousands and hundreds of year, and endeavor to build something everlasting, which means indeed anti-destruction.
But will an ephemeral build be permanent as well?
Ise Grand Shrine
The shrine buildings at Naikū and Gekū, as well as the Uji Bridge, are rebuilt every 20 years as a part of the Shinto belief of the death and renewal of nature and the impermanence of all things — wabi-sabi — and as a way of passing building techniques from one generation to the next.
Physically, the rebuild Ise Grand Shrine is a series of new constructions. However, the building techniques and spirit of the architecture could date back to about 1500 years ago, in AD 685, and will pass on in future.
Clue 2 Lost in modernism
-The traditional venue of Tujia worship ceremony.
-The original Tujia house.
There is a minority called Tujia occupied the border area among Hunan, Hubei and guizhou Province, Mainland China. As their orthodox lifestyle, hosting worship and ceremonies in a high frequency is an essential part of their life.
However, the inevitable modernism sweeping all over the world pushed people into concrete boxes and those events were replaced by ordinary activities as Han people or general urban residents.
The date of event was specify by government in the whole country, while the aboriginal calendar was abandoned.
Clue 3 Tourism Exploding
La Vraie vie est absente.Nous ne sommes pas au monde.”
(The true life is absent.We are not in the world.)
– Arthur Rimbaud
People always have a feeling of memorize something, which faded out from common life or far away from current days. I would like to call it as nostalgia, and the beauty of nostalgia is the detachment from the reality. Therefore the site, Zhangjiajie in northwest part of Hunan Province, will attract millions of tourists annually. The charm of Zhangjiajie is not only the natural beauty but also the feeling of surreal.
-The natural scenery of mountains in Zhangjiajie.
They come and they go.
No matter how they enjoy the trip or the places of interests, almost every visitor understand clearly that the travel would get over, they have to leave and go back to their daily life, which might be unimpressed or even boring.
DESCTRIPTION OF PROJECT
Traditional life is displaced by modern life as well as the general holidays was hosted regularly instead of orthodox events. People rushed into this area in a specific date defined by government rather than gathering as their original schedule which was carried out for thousand years.
Since the main industry of Zhangjiajie is based on tourism, the intensive flow of tourists will evoke a enormous demand of facilities. Therefore the facilities will not merely for local residents but for tourists, whose amount is discontinuous and varied by time.
 
-The crowded tourists during the Golden Week in Zhangjiajie.
As the memorial is for something going to be disappeared, the requirements of the facilities are varied and the fading out of the traditional civilization is what precious, then, there is a potential to develop a structure which could respond to the cultural context and the large amount of facilities demand from tourism.
At the same time, the structure itself would be destructed by tourists during the gathering events, or even be taken away piece by piece by tourists. At the end of the events, the construction will be disappeared as well.
It’s an temporary building since it is only stand during the period of the event, but there is a potential to be permanent since the prototype and key structure element would be recycled.
METHODOLOGY
The thesis project will study on the following aspects:
A. the aboriginal civilization to find a form
B. the demand of tourists to find a program
C. the technologies in order to develop a prototype which could be built efficiently and smoothly, meanwhile be dismantled by hand. Maybe part of the construction material could be built as recycle.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Takaharu & Yui Tezuka: Nostalgic Future, Paul Andreas & Peter Cach
Go Hasegawa, Thinking,Making Architecture,Living
LU Qun, The original religion culture of Minorities in the district of Western Hunan,
ZHANG Ziwei, The votive of Tujia in the district of Western Hunan
Tom Mallory,Is Nostalgia Dead? Retro-Futurism, Architecture & Film
Baird, George, and Jencks, Charles (editors), Meaning in Architecture
|
