Two Ways of Meaning in Architecture

– “Conceptual Meaning” and “Pragmatic Meaning”

Xi Ye

A thesis submitted for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

Faculty of Humanities and Social Science

Newcastle University

September 2018
 Abstract

What makes a building meaningful seems indeterminate. The major aim of this thesis is to
discuss two different ways to have meaning in architecture and how the two ways of meaning
are related, in order to clarify the significant roles they play in the design.

There is a way that a building can be imbued with the meaning intended for it by the architect,
as a result of his/her effort to find a design concept by encountering multiple problems – the
function of the building, the complex circumstances of the site, the culture, and the political
force, in interaction with his/her personal philosophies and aesthetic preferences. This kind of
meaning that comes from the architect’s mind will be referred to as “conceptual meaning” in
this thesis. However, once a building has been constructed and people get to use the space,
these users come to have their own understandings of the building, and this is another way in
which the meaning could arrive. This way of meaning that grows out of the experience in
actual spaces will be referred to as “pragmatic meaning” in this thesis.

The first chapter of the thesis tries to clarify the definition of “conceptual meaning” and
“pragmatic meaning”. This is followed by case studies of the culture-led iconic building in
chapter 2, aiming to explain that the two ways of meaning are inter-filtrated to each other, so
that “pragmatic meaning” also plays an important role. Chapter 3 goes further in exploring
how the two ways of meaning are associated and reconfirms the significance of “pragmatic
meaning”, by looking at a deconstructive project, attempting to clarify the way in which
“pragmatic meaning” is contained in “conceptual meaning” in this case. Chapters 4 focuses
more on the design concepts where pragmatic aesthetics is embodied, thus attempting to
provide architects alternative ways of approaching the design. It sees traditional Chinese
philosophies are connected with pragmatic aesthetics, and discusses the ways of finding
concepts from the encounter with traditional culture with the exemplification of two Chinese
projects. Finally, the concluding chapter reclaims the design attitude this research advocates –
that architecture is not only about written concepts, and concepts should not only refer to
visual effect or symbolic meaning, but rather “pragmatic meaning” is the thing that makes a
building essentially meaningful.

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 Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my main supervisor Professor Andrew

Ballantyne for his continuous support for my PhD study and related research. His guidance not
only helped me in researching and writing up this thesis, but will also have considerable
influence on my future study. My sincere thanks also go to my second supervisor Professor
John Pendlebury, who offered me constructive suggestions in identifying research orientations
and structuring the thesis.

Besides my supervisors, I would like to thank the HaSS faculty, which organised valuable
research training programmes that inspired and encouraged me all the way in my PhD study. I
am also grateful for the theory workshops arranged by Dr Andy Law, which had an essential
influence in expanding my outlook in the initial stages of my research career.

My particular gratitude is also owed to Professor Dong Yugan at Peking University for his
generous interview. He shared with me not only his experience in designing the Red Brick Art
Museum, but also his critical concerns in relation to contemporary architectural design, which
greatly helped me in setting the scene for my thesis.

Finally, I would also like to thank my family and my beloved, who supported me spiritually
throughout my PhD life.

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 Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….1

I.1 Stepping into the Context – The Two Ways to Have Meaning in Architecture…..………….……1

I.2 Identifying Research Questions and Case Studies………………………………………….…………………8

I.2.1 The doubt on the domination of “conceptual meaning”………………………………………….……….9

I.2.2 The way of dealing with “the fall of public man”……………………………………………………………14

I.2.3 Seeking alternative design approaches from traditional philosophies…………………………...16

I.3 Thesis Structure…………………………………………………………………………………………………..………...19

Chapter 1. Definition of the Two Ways of Meaning – “Conceptual Meaning” and “Pragmatic
Meaning”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………..21

1.1 What Is “Conceptual Meaning”?.......................................................................................21

1.1.1 Generated by the architect………………………………………………………………………………….………22

1.1.2 Concept is an iconic sign………………………………………………………………………………………..…….32

1.1.3 The reason architects like making concepts from a “fine art” perspective …………………....42

1.2 What Is “Pragmatic Meaning”?.........................................................................................55

1.2.1 Emerges from actual experience……………………………………………………………………………..…..55

1.2.2 The space with “pragmatic meaning” is a symbolic sign……………………………………………...61

1.2.3 The prerequisite of being a “thing”………………………………………………………………………..…….67

Chapter 2. Cultural Liberation: The Permeation of “Conceptual meaning” and “Pragmatic

Meaning” ……………………………………………………………….……………………………………………..…………71

2.1 Cultural Liberation…………………………………………………………………………………………………...……72

2.1.1 The rise of mass culture……………………………………………………………………….………………….…..72

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2.1.2 Social engagement in reinforcing cultural liberation…………………………………………………….76

2.2 Cultural Liberation in Design: Where “Conceptual Meaning” and “Pragmatic Meaning”
Meet.…………………………………………………………………………………………………..…………………..…………82
2.2.1 Design concept…………………………………………………………………………..………………………….…...83

2.2.2 Everyday life at Centre Pompidou…………………………………………………………………………….….96

2.2.3 Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..113

Chapter 3. Deconstruction: The Containment Relationship of “Conceptual Meaning” and

“Pragmatic Meaning”…………………………………………………………………………………………………….…116

3.1 Deconstruction………………………………………………………………………………………………………..….117

3.1.1 The brief of deconstruction……………………………………………………………………………………..…118

3.1.2 Tschumi’s discovery of an alternative order of architecture…………………………………………128

3.2 Deconstruction in Design: Where “Pragmatic Meaning” Is Contained in “Conceptual

Meaning”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….139

3.2.1 Design concept………………………………………………………………………………………………………….139

3.2.2 Everyday life in Parc de la Villette………………………………………………………………………………152

3.2.3 Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..179

Chapter 4. Traditional Chinese Philosophies: Pragmatic Aesthetics is embodied in

“Conceptual Meaning”………..................................................................................................182

4.1 Traditional Chinese Philosophies…………………………………………………..……………………….….184

4.1.1 I-Ching: Origins in the intuitive understanding of daily phenomena…………………………….185

4.1.2 Ambiguity in dualism………………………………………………………………………………………………...188

4.1.3 A Secular culture……………………………………………………………………………………………………….193

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4.1.4 The affinity between pragmatic aesthetics and traditional Chinese philosophies………..203

4.2 Traditional Chinese Philosophies in Design: Following rather than Altering the Object’s
Original Features.……………..………………………………………………………………………………………….…..209

4.2.1 The principle in art creation…………………………………………………………………………………..…..210

4.2.2 The principle in architectural design………………………………………………………………………..…213

4.2.3 Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………....….……..233

4.3 Traditional Chinese Philosophies in Design: Creating the Poetry……………………………..…236

4.3.1 Concerns about the body……………………………………………………………………………………………237

4.3.2 The poetry in architectural design…………………………………………………………………………….243

4.3.3 Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….260

4.4 How Architectural Designs Respond to Traditional Chinese Philosophies and Pragmatic
Aesthetics …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….….263

Chapter 5. Conclusion: Architecture Is Not a Written Concept Only……………………………..….268

5.1 Distinctions between “Conceptual Meaning” and “Pragmatic Meaning”………………..….268

5.2 The Gap between Written Concepts and Actual Perceptions……………………………………….275

5.3 Form Is Not the Purpose but the Consequence of a Dynamic Process of Creation ……….282

5.4 Architecture Is the Dynamic Process of Everyday Experience ………….………………………….287

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………294

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 List of Figures

Figure 1. Bernard Tschumi’s conceptual drawings in Architectural Concepts: Red Is Not a Colour. 2

Figure 2. Guangzhou Opera House, Zaha Hadid, Guangzhou, 2010. 8

Figure 3. Royal Ontario Museum Extension, Danial Libeskind, Toronto, 2007. 8

Figure 4. Floating School, Kunlé Adeyemi, Makoko, 2013.13

Figure 5. The shaping of the concept for the Jewish Museum (extension project): Libeskind’s sketch of

the parallel lines of Jewish and German histories. 23

Figure 6. The extension project of the Jewish Museum, Danial Libeskind, Berlin, 2001. 24

Figure 7. The Reichstag renovation project: exterior view, Foster + Partners, Berlin, 1999. 24

Figure 8. The Reichstag renovation project: interior view, Foster + Partners, Berlin, 1999. 24

Figure 9. Bruder Klaus Field Chapel – the attempt to find meaning in the building’s sensuous

connections to life, Peter Zumthor, Mechernich, 2007. 29

Figure 10. The construction techniques of the wall of Bruder Klaus Field Chapel. 30

Figure 12. Three of the lamp settings from “Eight Unliveable Houses”, Wang Shu, Hangzhou, late 1990s.

41

Figure 13. Tate Modern, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, London, 2000. 79

Figure 14. British Museum, the core of the building was designed by Robert Smirke, London, 1852.

79

Figure 29. Aerial view of Centre Pompidou and surroundings. 84

Figure 30. The urban context with which Centre Pompidou engages. 85

Figure 31. Draft design of Centre Pompidou: innovative, lively, flexible, fun and accessible to all. 89

Figure 32. Draft section of Centre Pompidou: The Piazza in continuity with the open ground floor of the

Centre and the idea of an exposed structural system. 89

Figure 33. Masterplan of Centre Pompidou. 91

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Figure 34. Section diagram of Centre Pompidou. 98

Figure 35. Large public space in front of the Centre Pompidou building. 99

Figure 36. Stall on the ground of Piazza. 100

Figure 37. Street artist in Piazza. 100

Figure 38. Glass wall between Forum and Piazza.101

Figure 39. “Le Grand Mobile”, Xavier Veilhan, displayed in Centre Pompidou from October 2004 to

January 2005. 102

Figure 40. Bookstore and cafe in Centre Pompidou. 104

Figure 41. Children’s Gallery on mezzanine floor in Centre Pompidou. 104

Figure 42. Shop underneath Children’s Gallery in Centre Pompidou. 105

Figure 43. The Public Information Library in Centre Pompidou. 107

Figure 44. Inside the escalator tube of Centre Pompidou.109

Figure 45. Viewing corridor on the top floor of Centre Pompidou. 109

Figure 46. Plan of the exhibition modules (the fourth floor of Centre Pompidou). 111

Figure 47. Exhibition modules arranged in a linear order connected by a wide corridor. 112

Figure 48. Room for collections of films and other media on the fourth floor of Centre Pompidou. 112

Figure 49. The top-floor restaurant in Centre Pompidou. 113

Figure 50. Key buildings on the site of Parc de la Villette and transport links. 141

Figure 51. Three systems of lines, points and surfaces of Parc de la Villette at the conceptual level.

145

Figure 52. Conceptual design of neutral red folies on the system of points. 148

Figure 53. System of points: programmed and unprogrammed folies. 156

Figure 54. Events incidentally observed on the system of points. 157

Figure 55. The folie (P8) has been used as an office. 159

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Figure 56. The folie (L9) has been used as an information centre at the south entrance. 160

Figure 57. The closed first-aid centre (N7). 160

Figure 58. The folie (L1) acts as a pavilion for short rests. 161

Figure 59. People are sitting on the upper level of the folie (N1). 162

Figure 60. System of lines. 164

Figure 61. Events incidentally observed on the system of lines (pathways). 165

Figure 62. Events incidentally observed on the system of lines (thematic gardens). 166

Figure 63. North–south coordinated pathway. 167

Figure 64. Football on the rough pavement of the pedestrian coordinates. 167

Figure 65. Children cycling on the smooth pavement of the linear pedestrian path while people walking

on the rough pavement.169

Figure 66. Music/dance show on the curvilinear pathway. 170

Figure 67. Thematic garden 2: children’s playground. 171

Figure 68. Thematic garden 10: children’s playground. 171

Figure 69. Folk music show in garden 6. 172

Figure 70. System of surfaces. 174

Figure 71. Events incidentally observed on the system of surfaces. 175

Figure 72. Sunbathing on the surface in the centre of the park. 176

Figure 73. Kung-fu display on the surface in the centre of the park. 177

Figure 74. Resting and picnics on the surface in the centre of the park. 177

Figure 75. Schooling on the surface where the two canals intersect. 178

Figure 76. Lingering Garden, Suzhou, 1593 onwards. 200

Figure 77. Standardised spatial form of traditional Chinese building. 202

Figure 78. Ground-floor plan of Red Brick Art Museum and the garden. 214
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Figure 79. Old abandoned factory. 215

Figure 80. Idea of the transformation of exterior walls. 218

Figure 81. Exterior wall of Red Brick Art Museum. 218

Figure 82. Circular Hall in Red Brick Art Museum. 222

Figure 83. Circular Hall and Square Hall in Red Brick Art Museum. 222

Figure 84. Square Hall in Red Brick Art Museum. 223

Figure 85. Cross wall of the church courtyard. 225

Figure 86. Church courtyard. 225

Figure 87. Transformed church courtyard: a small lecture hall. 228

Figure 88. Newly-built V-shaped roof above the lecture hall. 228

Figure 89. Bridge connecting the museum and the roof of the previous church courtyard. 229

Figure 90. The second, elephant-like rock. 230

Figure 91. The fifth, three-peak rock. 231

Figure 92. The seventh, cloud-like rock. 232

Figure 93. The eighth, island rock. 232

Figure 94. “Picture of literary garden”, Zhou Wenju, 10th century. 241

Figure 95. Tang Bohu’s painting, early 16th century. 242

Figure 96. Chou Ying’s painting, 16th century. 243

Figure 97. Masterplan of Xiangshan Campus. 246

Figure 98. Courtyard (Building No. 4). 248

Figure 99. Courtyard: aerial view (Buildings No. 6, No. 5 and No. 4). 248

Figure 100. “Mountain house” (Building No. 18). 250

Figure 101. “Water house” a (Building No. 14). 250

Figure 102. “Water house” b (Building No. 14). 251

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Figure 103. Viewing from inside. 252

Figure 104. Viewing from outside. 252

Figure 105. Rock-like independent buildings (Building No. 19). 253

Figure 106. Rock-like holes in the wall (Building No. 15). 254

Figure 107. Rock-like accessory body (Building No. 20). 254

Figure 108. Passages around exterior walls (Building No. 18). 254

Figure 109. Passage on the roof (Expert building). 255

Figure 110. Cedar wood boards used for courtyard façade (Building No. 5). 257

Figure 111. Cedar wood windows on courtyard façade (Building No. 5). 258

Figure 112. Abandoned materials reused in the new building (Building No. 16). 259

Figure 113. Bamboo is used for rail boards (Expert building). 260

Figure 114. Social housing project, Elemental, Iquique, Chile, 2003. 286

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 Introduction

I.1 Stepping into the Context – The Two Ways to Have Meaning in Architecture

What makes a building meaningful? When we are reading an architect’s explanatory texts to
a design, looking at an image of a building in a magazine, or actually visiting a building, the
building might give us some impression, it might induce in us some sort of feeling for or
understanding of its meaning, or it might even induce us to take some action. We might grasp
the architect’s ideas by reading his/her texts; we might recognise the symbolic meaning that
the building in the magazine implies; we might have a sense that the building is lively and
welcoming, that it is somewhere we would like spend time. These sorts of understandings are
the meanings that we find in buildings. As we find them, the building will become a meaningful
thing to us. But the meanings of a building to us are not consistent; they vary between
individuals and at different times, as we understand the building from different perspectives.
A building which might impart a sense of belonging to some, such as the library where they
always study might for students, could hold a different meaning for others – some might regard
the library as a cultural symbol, for example. It seems people attach meanings to a building in
various ways, but whether these ways have something in common, and whether they are
coherent with the meanings that the architect was trying to inscribe in the building, is a
complex question.

It seems there are different ways to have meaning in architecture. It would be interesting to
find out where these meanings come from, how they develop, and how the different ways of
meaning are related to each other. There seems to be one way of understanding a building
that is dominated by the architect. The architect usually attempts to have articulated design
ideas; as we can easily see in any design competition, the winning project always aims to have
some sort of shining “concept” that helps to describe the central spirit of the design, and the
concept is supposed to have considerable influence on the winning of the competition.
Architects are, at times, in favour of creating recognisable personalised identities for
themselves in the architectural field by constructing distinctive design philosophies. These
philosophies might evolve and become increasingly distinct over the course of years of

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thinking and experience. As we think of any particular architect, such as Peter Zumthor or
Bernard Tschumi, his distinctive thoughts about design will emerge immediately in our minds.
This kind of distinctiveness is what the architect tries to achieve. Design philosophies, mainly
with visionary drawings, are usually reflected in the architect’s design projects, but many
architects like to further emphasise their ideas by producing publications. These publications
always aim to explain the design concepts behind individual projects as well to provide a
description of the architect’s overall philosophies. Peter Zumthor’s Atmospheres indicates
something of what concerns and fascinates him during a design, and the things that help him
to begin to engage with the design – the sensuous connections between space and the body,
such as light, temperature, level of intimacy and the like. 1 Bernard Tschumi’s Architecture
Concepts: Red Is Not a Colour includes most of his writings and conceptual drawings about
theories and projects from the 1970s to recent years, comprehensively clarifying his concepts,
especially deconstructive thoughts, and how they are embodied in design.2 There are other
producers who help to reproduce architects’ design philosophies in the form of publications.
We can find plenty of books, magazines, essays and films introducing the design projects and
design philosophies of a specific architect.

Figure 1. Bernard Tschumi’s conceptual drawings in Architectural Concepts: Red Is Not a Colour.

1
Peter Zumthor (2006), Atmospheres: Architectural Environments – Surrounding Objects, Basel, Boston
& Berlin: Birkhäuser.
2
Bernard Tschumi (2012), Architecture Concepts: Red Is Not a Color, New York: Rizzoli.
2
Architects may feel honoured if their philosophies are disseminated throughout the
professional field, because that probably means that the meaning they are intending to build
has a greater chance of being recognised and accepted by more people. Therefore, there is a
way that a building can be imbued with the meaning intended for it by the architect, as a result
of his/her effort to find a design concept throughout the design process; this kind of meaning
that comes from the architect’s mind will be referred to as “conceptual meaning” in this thesis.
The way in which an architect tries to find a design concept and the reason why architects are
in favour of design ideas and drawings will be looked at in the following chapters. Some
architects may approach their concepts in light of their encounters with multiple relevant
problems, while others might arbitrarily consider only their personal philosophies and try to
apply these to every project. But a good architect is supposed to approach “conceptual
meaning” with the intention of finding out the function of the building, the complex
circumstances of the site, the spatial experience, the culture, and the economic or political
force behind the building, and then to work out a design that tries to deal with all of those
things, in interaction with their personal philosophies and aesthetic preferences, at that point
a design concept might arrive. So it seems that usually the concept grows out of the designer’s
subjectivity and the complexities of the project.

Once a building has been constructed and people get to use the space, these users come to
have their own understandings of the building, and this is another way in which the meaning
could arrive. For example, when students use the university library, they get know that this is
a welcoming place for study and social activities, and the longer they are engaged with the
library, the closer they might find that they are connected with it, since there might be a
relationship established between students’ daily life and the library. The library is no longer a
physical object; it has become a place where life emerges. Martin Heidegger thought that once
an object practically interacted with daily life, it would be recognised as a “thing”. When we
find something is a “thing”, we feel that something is near to us.3 Sometimes when we have
just bought a new item – a coat or a pair of shoes, for example – we know that object belongs
to us, but we might not feel that is part of us, because it is not that close to us. After we have

3
Adam Sharr (2007), Heidegger for Architects, London & New York : Routledge, p. 29.
3
worn the coat or the pair of shoes for some weeks, we might gradually find that it is getting
closer to us, more attached to us, and we can now recognise that it is ours in a deeper sense.
Similarly, once a building is actually interacted with in our lives, like the library is for students,
we may find the building becomes a daily “thing” that is near to us. Therefore, there seems to
be a way of meaning that grows out of the experience in actual spaces. This kind of meaning
will be referred to as “pragmatic meaning” in this thesis. The time when the building begins to
interact with daily life, when there are actual events happening in the building, is the time
when this sort of “pragmatic meaning” emerges from the space. “Pragmatic meaning”, in this
thesis, refers to a way of meaning that is produced through the body’s understanding of and
the practical use of the space. This way of meaning depends on users’ understanding,
perceptions and activities in actual spaces, instead of architects’ intentional creation from
their mind. It does not aim for any particular end; it looks at facts in the moment, as users’
experience is always varied, dynamic and unpredictable.

Pragmatic aesthetics sees architecture as a living art to serve everyday needs, rather than a
self-sufficient matter of pure art transcending living realms. John Dewey is seen as a pioneer
of pragmatic aesthetics. “Living in the fact” is where Dewey’s philosophy was oriented. Dewey
thought that aesthetic value could never be fixed by theory or criticism but should be tested
in experience.4 Dewey’s “somatic naturalism” articulates his idea that aesthetics is rooted in
the everyday needs and practical activities of life.5 It is through everyday life that we can realise
aesthetics; similarly, it is through actual experience of a building that we might understand the
building – in a kind of “pragmatic meaning” that emerges from experience. Richard
Shusterman is also known as an influential pragmatist. Shusterman’s pragmatism sees that
there is a world based on common sense, which directs us to act and identify things. 6 One’s
common sense might come from one’s culture, social ideologies, family, education and
previous practice. When one is about to act, one needs firstly to consider the circumstances in
which one is situated; then one takes this understanding of the circumstances and works out

4
Richard Shusterman (1992), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Oxford, Oxon, &
Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, p. 46.
5
Ibid., p. 6.
6
Ibid., pp. 81–82.
4
how to act according to common sense. Therefore, “pragmatic meaning” grows, in a way, on
the basis of common sense.

As “conceptual meaning” is produced from the architect’s mind, from his/her encounter with
multiple territories, with his/her own creativity, once the design is finished the concept cannot
be changed, so this way of meaning is generative and unchangeable. The “conceptual meaning”
cannot be varied by future users: it is fixed in the design. On the contrary, “pragmatic meaning”
can emerge and vary at any time as activities occur in a space. This way of meaning is emergent
and dynamically changeable. The architect can never anticipate how future users will use the
space and how diverse the “pragmatic meaning” might be.

Since these meanings can be produced through different approaches, I want to consider
whether these two sorts of meaning are coherent or conflicting, whether they echo each other
or are irrelevant to each other. I have often had the experience that when I intentionally visit
a building which is known as having an adorable design concept, it disappoints me, as the
actual situation does not match up for me with what the architectural media has led me to
expect. The disappearance of this aureole around the building often comes from the lack of
consideration of construction techniques, material endurance or the sustainable management
of the building. These factors have a significant impact on exactly what we feel in the real space,
but the architectural media is always more concerned with the architect’s conceptual ideas,
leaving aside the things that actually happen. Some architects’ design concepts are inclined to
divorce from daily life, especially those of a few of the “star architects” such as Zaha Hadid and
Daniel Libeskind; they prefer to set out to achieve a design from a visual art perspective, so
that how a building actually works comes second to how the building looks. The beauty of
architecture, to them, turns out to exist in abstract forms rather than the pleasure of life.
Seeing architecture as an art work is perhaps a social and financial necessity, since art works
are considered superior to everyday life – an idea reinforced by plenty of cultural and social
codes in contemporary societies, and perhaps it has historical reasons that categorising
architecture as a fine art and the cult of artistic genius since Renaissance. So, being a work of
art means being superior, while being associated with everyday needs and habits seems

5
inferior in comparison.7 In this conception, architecture is seen as contaminated and hence
demeaned by its association with pragmatic thoughts, so that users are often regarded as a
threat to the authority of architects, especially that of the global stars among them.

When people actually experience the spaces, they will generate “pragmatic meaning” which
might not be the same as the meaning that the architect has supposed will be experienced.
Even though some architects try to find concepts from daily life, such as Norman Foster’s
concept of making the Sage Gateshead music centre an “Urban Living Room”, it is hard to
predict whether users will understand it in the same way. In this case, I suggest that there
might at times be a misalignment between architects’ conceptual ideas and users’ actual
perceptions of buildings. That is, the two ways of meaning generated through two different
approaches might be indifferent to each other, even conflicting. However, these two ways to
have meaning might sometimes coincide, if an architect designs a building with pragmatic
concerns in mind, and then users perceive and experience the building, and act in response to
it, as the architect had expected.

In conclusion, architecture sometimes considers itself an arrogant subject. Professionals

usually protect their authority of knowledge by “deriding incursions from ‘outside’ as ignorant
or mistaken”, manifesting the view that there is a correct interpretation of architecture that is
accessible only to them. Two intrusions that architects always attempt to prevent are that of
“illegal” architects 8 and that of users occupying architectural spaces. 9 However, as Mark
Cousin states, architecture is a “weak” discipline: the inside and outside are always confused.
Unlike natural science that is purely concerned with objects, in its discourse architecture ought
to take account of the effect of an object on a subject. The subject of architecture is the people
who experience that architecture.10

7
Jonathan Hill (1998), “An Other Architect”, in Occupying Architecture: Between the Architect and the
User, London & New York: Routledge, pp. 135–159, p. 144.
8
The illegal architect is not simply a person who produces architecture without a professional
qualification, but also includes a registered architect who questions and subverts the conventions, fixed
codes and laws of architecture (Hill, “An Other Architect”, p. 147).
9
Hill, “An Other Architect”, pp. 137, 146.
10
Mark Cousins (1998), “Building an Architect”, in Hill, J. (eds.), Occupying Architecture: Between the
Architect and the User, London & New York: Routledge, pp. 13–21, p. 17.
6
To some architects, concepts and buildings’ appearances have greater value than the things
which actually happen in their buildings. But we do not expect to have buildings with shining
“conceptual meaning”, but that cannot function well. We need something that could move us
in everyday circumstances. This kind of quality of a building can be approached through
Christopher Alexander’s “timeless way of building”, a way that transcends styles, concepts and
the fixed architectural knowledge and languages, a way that is concerned with life, experience,
needs and desires, aiming for the liveliest buildings that are most appropriate in that context.
This way tries to approach a design from a more pragmatic aspect, so that a design concept
will incorporate pragmatic concerns, and thus buildings will be seen as more honest, realistic,
useful and touching.

This thesis attempts to be carried out on the basis of the framework of the two ways of
meaning, trying to explore how these two ways of meaning work and are associated in specific
cases, and then look at some particular examples whose design approaches are seen to be
connected to pragmatic aesthetics, which could offer architects alternative ways of designing.
More essentially, this research attempts to confirm a positive approach to design which sees
architecture neither as written concepts nor as visual symbols, intending to turn designers’
attention to what actually exists and what practically happens in the spaces they create.
Architectural meaning cannot be fulfilled by concepts or symbols; it is fulfilled as events
dynamically occur in the architectural space. Since events are not predictable, architectural
meaning is never fixed and is constantly changing.

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Figure 2. Guangzhou Opera House, Zaha Hadid, Guangzhou, 2010.

Figure 3. Royal Ontario Museum Extension, Danial Libeskind, Toronto, 2007.

I.2 Identifying Research Questions and Case Studies

Relying on the fundamental framework, it sets out to identify the specific research questions
that have to be addressed and analysed in the research. These questions are taken as both
motivations for and the basis of the significance of this research.

8
I.2.1 The doubt on the domination of “conceptual meaning”

One question can be identified here is about the attitude towards design in the present global
architectural field. We can find plenty of conceptual designs in architectural magazines, books
and exhibitions and on websites. They try to outline beautiful blueprints by demonstrating
how the buildings will change the world. These designs are well presented in the form of texts,
drawings, diagrams, images, videos and models. These design concepts appear sound, if
looked at from a “fine art” perspective. But it is questionable whether these beautiful concepts
could be practically transferred into actual spaces and could work well with users in a
pragmatic way. In architectural schools, presentation training is important. Every design
project ends with the exhibition of students’ work. How well designed the concept is and how
well it is presented are closely related to the result of a student’s design work. This might
convey a sense to students that architectural design is about finding concepts and that it ends
as these design concepts are presented in exhibitions. This seems almost like telling students
that an architect can act as an arrogant inventor, working alone within an imaginary field,
whose role is to invent something which looks novel with the “truthful” forms of
representations, but may omit a fact that actual actions and events that take place in the future
can also define a space.

Some architects might consider themselves as the sole producers of meaning, if they are doing
design with this sort of mindset, then they will be caught in an extreme situation of what
Nelson Goodman calls “absolutism”.11 This mind suggests that the correct interpretation of a
building is unique, without any alternatives, and the rightness of that is judged by its sole
producer, the architect. The absolutism attempts to avoid any engagement of outsiders who
would bring different interpretations to the design that might contaminate the rightness of
the architect’s intended meaning. However, this mind oversimplifies architectural meaning, as
the interpretations of a building should be identified from various aspects – the spatial form,
the function, the views at different angles, the immediate experience and feelings, the events
happening in it, the memories, the drawings of the building and so on. A building is “a

11
Nelson Goodman (1985), “How Buildings Mean”, Critical Inquiry, vol. 11 (4), pp. 642–653, pp.649–650.
9
heterogeneous assortment of visual and kinaesthetic experience”12, the meaning of which is
neither unique nor fixed, but growing as the building evolves with the efforts taken on it by its
architects, builders and users.

Moreover, it is quite often to see that architects are fascinated with art-like buildings and
regard themselves as artists, so for them “conceptual meaning” is more likely to be connected
with the visual appearance of architecture. We might find a great number of flawless images
on a project’s website showing the project from a perfect perspective without any people in
the space. The concepts behind such projects are sometimes a sort of visual metaphor. For
example, the repeated zigzagging form of Daniel Liberskind’s Jewish Museum attempts to
respond to the conflicting history of German and Jewish communities, and the two big
volumes of Zaha Hadid’s Guangzhou Opera House try to represent themselves as two wild
stones rising out of Zhujiang River next to which the building stands. 13 Thinking “from the
outside in” is one way of starting a design, but there is a risk in that as such a design may
become all about visual appearance, leaving pragmatic problems far behind. Guangzhou
Opera House is a case in which visual effect takes priority; the novel shape of the building
requires that each of the structures is different from the others, which considerably increases
the construction difficulties. Just one year after the construction was finished, practical
problems started to emerge, such as leaking and walls cracking and falling. We usually attribute
such problems to the quality of construction, holding contractors responsible. Contractors
should indeed take responsibility for their mistakes in building. But if architects take pragmatic
building issues into consideration during the design stage, the likelihood of disappointing
practical results could be reduced.

There are some designers who appear to be mainly interested in creating a concept for the
sake of a concept. Sometimes this concept may seem to be concerned with the daily lives of
local people and/or may have been developed through encounters with the local context, and
yet the resultant design may not always be that pragmatic. In such cases, the real aim of the
design is probably not to improve local people’s lives, but rather it uses the appearance of this

12
Ibid., p. 650.
13
Jewish Museum: see figure 8; Guangzhou Opera House: see figure 2.
10
as a way to get the design noticed and recognised. A Nigerian architect, Kunlé
Adeyemi, was awarded the Silver Lion for bringing his Floating School to the Venice Biennale,
as part of his ongoing research into building for flood-prone regions.14 This Floating School was
completed in 2013. It was constructed to provide teaching facilities for the slum district of
Makoko, a former fishing village on Lagos Lagoon in Nigeria, where over 100,000 people live
in houses on stilts. The Floating School boasted of itself as a prototype structure that
addressed physical and social needs in light of the growing challenges of climate change in an
urbanising African context – a response to rising sea levels and a shortage of development
sites.15 However, though it served well for the community in the first half-year, this award-
winning structure was claimed to be a “danger to the kids” by the headmaster, and pupils were
evacuated because of safety concerns three months before it completely collapsed. 16 This
accident was a serious blow to the much-lauded concept behind the school, and makes us
rethink the architectural awards system – perhaps it hinges too much on photographs and
written concepts. Though the concept might originate in a response to social problems, there
may not be enough effort made to investigate the features of the environment and building
structures thoroughly. Awards system, like the Venice Biennale, is in a way pushing designers
to think more about how to develop a concept, how to present it in front of reviewers and how
to produce publications, rather than to really struggle to improve public facilities. In the
Makoko context, if a project considers all the environmental conditions and has a high design
quality, if the designers worked closely with the community of Makoko in the long term, to do
something useful and sustainable for the local people, then the project could work well in the
local situation, the people would understand the project as something related to their daily
lives, and their lives would have actually been changed to some extent. In such a case, the

14
The Silver Lion is one of the awards given at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. The Biennale
provides an opportunity for architects and designers to showcase new projects. Only those projects
that have higher achievements – the best research or the best national participation – will be awarded.
15
Amy Frearson (2014), NLE's Floating School Casts Anchor in Lagos Lagoon [Online], available at:
https://www.dezeen.com/2014/03/25/makoko-floating-school-nigeria-nle/ (Accessed: 25 December
2016).
16
Marcus Fairs (2016), Kunlé Adeyemi's Floating School Posed "Danger to the Kids," Headmaster Claims
[Online], available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2016/06/11/kunle-adeyemis-floating-school-posed-
danger-to-the-kids-headmaster-claims/ (Accessed: 25 December 2016).
11
project would be truly admirable.

The Floating School case, conceptual exhibitions, lifeless perspective images, visual skills
training in architectural schools and other things alike all point to one tendency – architecture
might be more concerned with “conceptual meaning” than with “pragmatic meaning”. It is
questionable whether a concept is truly meaningful in actual use, and whether the way that a
building works is a response to the way in which it was conceived. This thesis does not mean
to disparage the idea of having a design concept. But that concept does not have to be made,
it needs to be found out through an understanding of ordinary, everyday life and ought to be
sustainably meaningful to future users. The way in which a designer finds a concept is what
shapes the eventual design. Finding a concept can act as a motivation to get on with a design.
The concept ought not to be seen as a tool for showing off, or gaining fame through exhibitions.
It is better seen as a practical design method, or the result of an investigation of existing
context, and as aiming to provide a possibility that it might change the way we live. The
meaning of a design ought not to end with the concept, or with the dissemination of the
concept. The meaning of a design should emerge from people’s perceptions and use of a space,
and at that point sometimes the “pragmatic meaning” may reflect the concept, if the architect
has taken pragmatic concerns into account in the design. If a concept has boasted of being
attached to everyday life but could not practically work, it has to be seen as a “fake” concept.
If a concept primarily attempts to deal with visual symbolism, like most projects designed by
Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid, instead of fully encountering pragmatic territories, the design
will lose the possibility of being connected to the most intuitive and sensuous aspects of life.

12
Figure 4. Floating School, Kunlé Adeyemi, Makoko, 2013.

Therefore, the first question queries the contemporary design attitude which prioritises
“conceptual meaning”. The design attitude this research advocates is one in which architecture
is not a written concept only, is about neither slogans nor visionary drawings; architecture
ought to be about the dynamic process of creating and experiencing, to be something from
which “pragmatic meaning” can emerge and something that we recognise as a “thing” near to
us. The concept does not refer to building forms only, but also to the design method, the
means of creating the space, and the events that might take place in the building. Building
form should not always be the central concern of the design; rather, it ought to be the
consequence of dealing with pragmatic problems, such as a certain form of window opening
resulting from the need to deal with levels of exposure to the sun. Moreover, building form
ought not to be seen only as a symbolic object, conveying representative ideas; rather, it acts
like an intermediary between physical objects and the body, causing the body to experience
emotions and attempting to induce the body to explore the possibilities of “pragmatic
meaning”.

The design of Centre Pompidou is chosen as a positive example to discuss the association of
the two ways of meaning in order to clarify the position that architecture can have a strong
concept and at the same time practically work – neither of these is dominant. The design of
Centre Pompidou is an example in which the two kinds of meaning are mutually permeated in

13
a relatively independent relationship. It was designed in the context of cultural liberation,
where popular culture is highlighted and high culture is no longer superior. In this context, the
design concept is concerned with public interests, and the thinking behind concept is about
individuals and diversity, thus rendering the two ways of meaning associated. The design
concept will be analysed, and the programmes and events happening in the building will be
investigated and compared with the concept, so as to identify whether the conceptual ideas
have been transferred into the actual spaces and responded to through live events.

The design of Parc de la Villette is also chosen as a positive example demonstrating the
association of the two ways of meaning, so as to confirm that the project can be both
conceptual and practical. The design of Parc de la Villette is very conceptual, as it follows the
idea of deconstruction, but the deconstructive idea causes the “pragmatic meaning” to be
contained in “conceptual meaning”. Deconstruction is a linguistic concept that asserts that an
object has no essential meaning, and that meaning needs to be generated by users according
to their individual situations when they use the object. Therefore, in the deconstructive view,
the whole meaning of an object has to be fulfilled in practice. In Parc de la Villette, only after
“pragmatic meaning” is achieved in actual spaces will the “conceptual meaning”, the idea of
deconstruction, be proved to have been accomplished – the “pragmatic meaning” determines
the fulfilment of the “conceptual meaning”. Thus, Parc de la Villette is selected as an example
to clarify this containment relationship. Therefore, the design concept will be studied and the
actual events happening in the park will be investigated and analysed by comparing them with
the concept, so as to identify the nature of their association.

I.2.2 The way of dealing with “the fall of public man”

There is another question that will be addressed in this research, which is about how the
problems of present-day life become at some point associated with the pragmatic aspect of
architectural meaning. As Richard Sennett points out in the book The Fall of Public Man, cities
no longer provide places where people can focus on their social experience, as they used to:
they are losing their “public realm” because of the impact of secularisation and industrial

14
capitalism.17 In the past, cities were more public probably because people shared in one belief
system or the same civic culture. In today’s societies, the loss of religion and the rise of
individualism leave people apart and social cohesion sundered. People are moving away from
the idea of “public man”. A city should be a place where strangers meet, but as the public
realm has been destroyed, the city has become less sociable. The loss of the public realm has
spread in the Western context, but Sennett believes the public realm could be reinstated if the
“public man” can be resurrected. A possible way in which this could happen depends on the
spatial settings in which people are situated. Spatial settings in public spaces could have
catalytic effects on social contact, if these settings are deliberately designed and managed. In
a carefully designed public space, people can behave in accordance with their own intentions
but also have the chance to understand and experience their spaces in relation to others, so
that social interaction is generated and the public realm reawakened.

The urban public realm does not refer only to open-air spaces: public life can also take place
in publicly used buildings. Buildings such as galleries, museums, concert halls and community
centres can all serve as important generators of social engagement. In this situation, it is
necessary to take a rethink of today’s architecture, to consider whether it is the design of
public buildings that aggravates “the fall of public man”, whether a public building can be
practically regarded as “public” that provides people with places for social encounter, and
whether public buildings could play a role in promoting social contact so as to relieve the
problem of the loss of public realm. If the design concept of a public building seeks to explore
the “pragmatic meaning” of what might actually make the spaces “public”, then the “public
man” will survive when people engage with the building.

Many iconic buildings have public roles. Usually, culture-led iconic buildings function as
galleries, museums or music centres, which serve as good communal spaces for public
gathering and encounters. The iconic role of these buildings helps them to attract the public
gaze, but the visual attraction is insufficient to approach the “public” role of the building. How
the building will function next, after it has attracted people, to generate “pragmatic meaning”

17
Richard Sennett (2003), The Fall of Public Man, London: Penguin UK, pp. xvi–xxi.
15
is what the design concept ought to be concerned with, rather than focusing entirely on iconic
appearance. In this case, iconic buildings can play good roles in promoting public life with their
compelling appearances, if at the same time the space is properly designed and managed and
thus it works well.

There are too many “flashy” things in contemporary architectural practice. Many “star
architects” who see buildings as artistic works can have a great influence on the mainstream
attitude towards design, and thus other designers might think that it is fashionable to follow
this approach. Though at times a building has to be designed from a visual point of view, such
as an iconic building so as to be responsible for a city’s image and development fortunes, the
building could at the same time take public life into consideration in its design concept, and
thus the building will be both symbolically and pragmatically meaningful.

Therefore, there is another reason for choosing Centre Pompidou: the intention to explain the
pragmatic role of iconic buildings in enhancing public life and liberating culture. Iconic
buildings are always used to represent a certain political or cultural hegemony with their
distinctive building images. Centre Pompidou is not an iconic building only in the sense of the
visual image that it presents; it also has a pragmatic role – the architect pays attention towards
social engagement issues and how the building will function to accommodate those issues.
Thus, ongoing events and programmes in the building will be investigated, in order to identify
the nature of the public life there, the building’s pragmatic role, and whether and how the
highly social involvement will reinforce the idea of cultural liberation.

I.2.3 Seeking alternative design approaches from traditional philosophies

The third point addressed here is whether we could find design concepts – those associated
with pragmatic aesthetics – within traditional culture, as to provide architects alternative
approaches of design. There is a deep affinity between pragmatic aesthetics and traditional
Chinese philosophies. The traditional Chinese ideas are influential to both John Dewey and
Richard Shusterman. Chinese tradition’s emphasis on humanism, bodily experience, plurality,
everyday life, flexibility and changes rather than stability, which are shared with pragmatic

16
aesthetics.

This research takes a retrospective look at Chinese traditional philosophies, attempting to

consider whether we could find some sorts of design ideas in traditional ways of thinking and
creation. There are several representative criteria in relation to art and design in Chinese
tradition, concerning empirical experience, environmental conditions and bodily senses.
Chinese architecture traditionally has an ambiguity in theory and practice. There is no pure
conceptual aesthetics in Chinese architecture. Chinese architectural theory is more about
constructional conventions which have evolved through long-term building experience in
everyday life. The traditional buildings are not designed from an aesthetic concept, but rather
the existence of the building is basically for the sake of living. Chinese philosophy originates in
the observation of daily phenomena and the experience of real life. All understandings of the
world in The Book of Changes (the I-Ching), the oldest Chinese classic, come from the body’s
perceptions and feelings of the surrounding environment. Chinese philosophy has always been
concerned with the role of the body, bodily sensation and an understanding of the surrounding
world, and a sort of “aesthetic sense” that comes from the body’s sensations has for a long
time been the highest pursuit for Chinese “men of letters” in art creation. Therefore, Chinese
traditions have always been rooted in pragmatism.

Therefore, this research intends to explore the ways in which we could find a design concept
linked with pragmatic aesthetics through the encounter with Chinese traditional culture. In
fact, there is a Chinese tendency in contemporary architectural practice: a group of literary
architects who are in favour of Chinese traditional culture attempt to apply the traditional way
of thinking to contemporary architectural practice. Leland M. Roth has suggested that cultures
in the less developed countries “have recently experienced a resurgence of vigorous
architecture” whose forms are shaped by traditional cultural patterns, probably in response to
“the symbolic emptiness of imported Western architectural forms”.18 Roth is partly right, but
he does not recognise that the resurgence of architecture does not only lie in forms, but is also
about a revival of traditional way of living, at least in Chinese contemporary practice. The

18
Leland M. Roth (1994), Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History and Meaning, London:
Herbert Press & Westview Press, p. 516.
17
design concepts approached in this way are often associated with existing circumstances,
everyday demands, building process and tectonics, and the most sensuous aspects of life; the
concepts of those practices are very much engaged with pragmatic aesthetics. In this sense, it
is necessary to take a look back at traditions and at the contemporary practice of these literary
architects, in an attempt to see how they have found ideas by encountering traditional culture,
how their design concepts are implying sorts of pragmatic aesthetics and what we could learn
from their design approaches.

Pragmatic aesthetics emphasises a sort of dynamic aesthetic experience, which means that art
exists not only in static artefacts displayed in galleries, but also in the dynamic way in which it
is created and the dynamic experience of responding sensually to it. Red Brick Art Museum
could be a good example of a building that reflects the idea that aesthetic value exists in the
dynamic way in which that building is created. The design concept of the building is neither
about the intended visual effect, nor does it aim for any supposed particular result in advance:
it is about a design method, a dynamic process of creating meaningful spaces. The architect
found the concept through the encounter with the traditional way of painting and making art
works that is embodied in the traditional thinking of pragmatic aesthetics. The design of
Xiangshan Campus could also be a good example of a site that reflects the idea of pragmatic
aesthetics. Its aesthetic value lies in the dynamic way in which its spaces are experienced and
perceived the spaces. What the architect attempted to create was a kind of living atmosphere,
an “aesthetic sense”. The “aesthetic sense” can only be gained when one fully exposes one’s
body in actual experience; in this way, pragmatic aesthetics are engaged with the concept.

The two Chinese examples here concentrate more on design concepts in which pragmatic
aesthetics is embodied, thus attempting to provide architects with alternative ways of
approaching the design. The design concepts of the two projects are studied, the projects are
visited, and I was fortunate to be able to interview the designer of Red Brick Art Museum. As
a contemporary literary architect, he is interested in traditional philosophies and literatures,
and in favour of searching for design concepts among traditional ideas; thus, he not only
introduced me to the design concept of the museum but shared with me a broader view on
traditional Chinese philosophies, pragmatic aesthetics and his general design philosophies.
18
The studies on design concepts, the field investigations and the interview provided
considerable evidence of how architects search for design concepts in an encounter with
traditional philosophies, and how these philosophies are connected with pragmatic aesthetics,
which offers a different way of making design concepts that can be learnt by architects who
are interested in pragmatic aesthetics and traditional Chinese philosophies.

I.3 Thesis Structure

The thesis is structured according to the main topic, research questions and specific case
studies identified above. The first chapter of the thesis clarifies the definition of “conceptual
meaning” and “pragmatic meaning” – what the two ways of meaning are, how they are
generated (or emerge) in various ways and why they are labelled “conceptual” and “pragmatic”.

This is followed by case studies in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, on Centre Pompidou and Parc de
la Villette respectively, aiming to explain how the two ways of meaning associate, and
particularly seeking to claim the importance of the “pragmatic meaning” of the space.
Chapter 2 discusses the culture-led iconic building Centre Pompidou, which is considered as
being successful in achieving “pragmatic meaning”. This chapter explores the ways in which
the two kinds of meaning are mutually permeated – how design concepts are developed
through thinking about pragmatic issues, and how they are realised practically through the
everyday use of the spaces – and thereby hopes to stress the pragmatic role of iconic buildings
in promoting social engagement and liberating culture. Chapter 3 goes further in exploring the
association of the two ways of meaning and the significance of “pragmatic meaning”. It looks
at the case of a deconstructive project, Parc de la Villette, attempting to clarify how “pragmatic
meaning” is contained in “conceptual meaning” in this case. Deconstruction sees an object as
having no inherent meaning: meaning instead needs to be generated by users according to
their individual situations when they are using the object. Therefore, in this deconstructive
project, the design concept realises that it cannot have complete meaning: it has to leave room
for “pragmatic meaning” to complete the “conceptual meaning” as actual events happen in
the park. Thus, Parc de la Villette is selected as an example which clarifies a containment

19
relationship between these two ways of meaning, in which “pragmatic meaning” determines
the fulfilment of “conceptual meaning”. Chapters 2 and 3 try to respond to one question, the
doubt about the domination of “conceptual meaning”, by finding out the significant role of
“pragmatic meaning” in actual spaces and in the design concept, while Chapter 2 also
responds to the question of finding a way to deal with “the fall of public man” by addressing
the pragmatic role of iconic buildings in enhancing social engagement.

Chapter 4 responds to the question of seeking within traditional philosophies alternative

design approaches that are associated with pragmatic aesthetics. It sees that traditional
Chinese philosophies are rooted in pragmatism, and it goes on to discuss ways of finding
concepts for contemporary architectural design from the encounter with traditional culture,
as exemplified in two Chinese projects. The purpose of the two examples is to clarify the
specific design approaches applied to the projects, which could offer architects alternative
ways of design, and also to demonstrate the connections between traditional Chinese
philosophies and pragmatic aesthetics, and how they are embodied in the projects. Red Brick
Art Museum demonstrates a design concept that is based in a pragmatic design method rather
than envisaging a building form at the beginning. The design of Xiangshan Campus, China
Academy of Art, means to present a concept that is concerned with bodily perceptions,
“aesthetic sense” and everyday life, which is also derived from traditional ideologies
concerning the body.

Finally, the concluding chapter provides a comparison between the two ways of meaning;
discusses why there is, at times, a gap between concepts and actual perceptions; and stresses
that architecture is a dynamic process of creation, so that form is not the purpose but the
consequence of the design and also the dynamic process of everyday experience from which
“aesthetic sense” can emerge. The chapter reclaims the design attitude which this research
advocates – that architecture is not only about written concepts, and concepts should not only
refer to visual effect or symbolic meaning, but rather, “pragmatic meaning” is the thing that
makes a building essentially meaningful.

20
 Chapter 1. Definition of the Two Ways of Meaning – “Conceptual Meaning”

and “Pragmatic Meaning”

This chapter intends to explain what the two ways of meaning are, how they are generated (or
emerge) in various ways and why they are labelled “conceptual” and “pragmatic”. This will
then form the basis for further case studies, in which the two kinds of meaning and the
associations between them will be considered in relation to particular architectural designs.

1.1 What Is “Conceptual Meaning”?

It seems there is a rule in contemporary design competitions that each design proposal needs
a concept, since a brilliant concept makes it more likely that the design will win the
competition. Therefore, finding a concept is crucial for the architect in working out a
competition proposal. Concepts such as the Jewish Museum’s “Between the Lines” in Berlin
and Centre Pompidou’s “Cultural Liberation” both stand out as having developed appropriate
ideas out of cultural circumstances and social desires, in contemporary times and in particular
places, all of which contributed to the directions that the projects took.19 Architects usually
start to search for a concept at the beginning of the design, drawing on their thoughts, the
brief and the circumstances of the site. The designing of the building is the way of searching
for concepts. Concepts usually evolve out of the design and are confirmed at the end of the
design work. Physical forms are produced based on the concept, such as the transparent
facade of Centre Pompidou, which was designed to promote the information exchange, as to
approach the idea of cultural liberation.

19
See details of Jewish Museum, especially “Between the Lines”, in this Chapter, and details of Centre
Pompidou in Chapter 2.

21
1.1.1 Generated by the architect

“Conceptual meaning” is the meaning that develops from the architect’s mind – from the
synthetic process integrating the architect’s personal preferences, the circumstances of the
site and the complexities of the brief. This way of meaning as a creation of the architect’s
thought processes is usually developed at the design concept stage, presented in the form of
design statements, diagrams, models, images or video films. Usually there is a description for
each design proposal illustrating the innovations of the project, accompanied by a series of
analytic diagrams and models for a better understanding of the concept. The presentation of
the architect’s final concept usually results from a long process of deliberation. During this
time, the architect sets out to find the right ideas. There should be some preconditions that
inspire him/her to initiate conceptual ideas, and those preconditions might come from his/her
personal aesthetics; the demands of building functions, materials and techniques; social needs;
and the analysis of the surrounding environment. A comprehensive consideration of these
multiple conditions makes it possible for the architect to produce a concept, and the concept
will keep evolving until the end of the design. Once the “conceptual meaning” has finally been
established and inscribed in building forms, the architect’s mission will have been
accomplished. This conceptual way to have meaning is therefore achieved by virtue of the
architect’s mental creativity, based on a balanced evaluation of multiple factors. However,
once the “conceptual meaning” has been worked out, it will not be able to be changed: the
“conceptual meaning” is a fixed product of design ideas, rather than something that comes
about through “emergent” events that could randomly happen in a space at any time.

Concepts seem a necessary component for the type of buildings that tend to achieve
recognition as having cultural significance, because having articulated concepts enables those
buildings to gain more public attention, so that their cultural significance will be better
recognised. For example, Centre Pompidou, a conceptually innovative “hi-tech” project which
meant to overturn the domination of elite culture and bring arts to the public, marked the
start of a movement of cultural liberation, and consequently it has become a favourite place

22
of tourists and has attracted millions of visitors each year.20 Moreover, eye-catching concepts
can bring architects more chances to be noticed, therefore standing out in competitions, so
the concept also seems to be an important selling point for the architect in seeking to win
competitions, and is therefore beneficial for architects’ personal development. Concepts
sometimes also serve as selling points for cultural institutions to achieve success in the cultural
market. In order to restore Paris’s cultural place and to be in competition with New York,
Centre Pompidou decided to offer a new tool for disseminating culture; the cultural identity
of Paris has thus been rescued with the assistance of this innovative project Centre Pompidou.

Figure 5. The shaping of the concept for the Jewish Museum (extension project): Libeskind’s
sketch of the parallel lines of Jewish and German histories.

20
Philippe Bidaine (2011), Centre Pompidou – Creation in the Heart of Paris, Paris: Centre Pompidou,
p. 7.

23
Figure 6. The extension project of the Jewish Museum, Danial Libeskind, Berlin, 2001.

Figure 7. The Reichstag renovation project: exterior view, Foster + Partners, Berlin, 1999.

Figure 8. The Reichstag renovation project: interior view, Foster + Partners, Berlin, 1999.

24
“Conceptual meaning” is sometimes created in response to ideas from a broader field
according to architect’s aesthetic preferences and social will and the requirements of the brief.
Those ideas that the architect echoes are either from social, cultural and political values, or
from aesthetics, theories and philosophies. These contextual values are identified and then
transferred into architectural concepts as a means to present ambitious visions for a design,
thus making the design more justified, more distinctive, or more likely to win competitions or
gain public attention. Social-cultural value is often employed in architectural concepts to
memorialise historic events or manifest a cultural identity. Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum
extended upon the old Berlin German Museum, one of the foremost iconic projects of the
1990s, is one building which is responding to social-cultural values. The concept Libeskind
proposed is known as “Between the Lines”, hoping to represent the connection between the
Germans and Jews. The generated “conceptual meaning” was transplanted to and is strongly
reflected by building forms. 21 This meaning is represented in building forms through
Libeskind’s design of a range of features, including slight misalignment of walls, sloping floors,
play of dark and light, and angular slashes of window. The zigzag pattern throughout the
museum is repeatedly confronted by the voids. The voids are closed-off spaces which visitors
can see but have no access to, designed to represent trauma and loss. Also, the design for the
scar-like windows has been described as representing “linkages of sites of significance for
Jewish cultural figures – such as Walter Benjamin and Mies van der Rohe - drawn across a pre-
war map of Berlin”, and the crosses on the zinc façade as intended to compel visitors to think
about the links between the cross and the persecution suffered by Jewish people.22

Political attitudes can at times be considered in architectural design. This is because

architecture has the power to present political values. Deyan Sudjic sees architecture as a
political art.23 Political authorities like to search and exercise an aesthetic control, which can
represent their political values in a symbolic way. Architectural form has sometimes been

21
Daniel Libeskind (2001), Daniel Libeskind: The Space of Encounter, London: Thames & Hudson, p. 23.
22
Paul Jones (2011), The Sociology of Architecture, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pp. 38–40.
23
Deyan Sudjic (1986), Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, James Stirling: New Directions in British
Architecture, London: Thames & Hudson, p. 63.

25
employed by political authorities in a “scapegoat” role as a way of representing political power.
Transparency and openness are the most widespread themes in the design community that
contemporary parliaments prefer to embody, as these are considered as the symbols of
democracy. One example is the Reichstag renovation project in Berlin, where “a great,
democratic light-bulb sits in triumph over the past”, opposed to its classicism. The original
Reichstag reminded the nation of Hitler’s power and the “dark side of imperial bombast”. 24
Germans decided to keep these signs of their past, but at the same time to transform them.
They chose Norman Foster, who was thought to be the ideal in designing icons of “lightness,
technological supremacy” and “openness”. Since the reconstruction of the building was
completed, people have been welcome to access it. The public can stroll to the top along a
walkway, look out at the vistas of the city and watch their representatives debating in the main
chamber below. 25 The Reichstag renovation is not the only parliament seeking to show a
welcome and transparency to the public: also open and accessible are London City Hall, the
National Assembly for Wales and the Scottish parliament.

Social changes can also be reflected in architectural design. The design of Centre Pompidou
explores the ideas of social inclusiveness. This exploration reflects social change in the
contemporary age, when mass culture and public engagement are taken as greater concerns.
Instead of serving elites only, the arts have become public. Arts are accessible for all and
cultural buildings become places where all social groups encounter each other.

Besides bringing social values into “conceptual meaning”, some architects prefer to find types
of meaning from existing theories or philosophies. The realisation of a certain theory in an
actual project can be seen as the success of the architect’s experimental practice. One example
is the realisation of deconstruction in the project Parc de la Villette. 26 Deconstruction was
originally a theory of linguistic analysis in the 1960s that overturned all previous ideas of

24
Charles Jencks (2005), The Iconic Building: The Power of Enigma, London: Frances Lincoln Ltd, pp. 50-
51.

25
Ibid.
26
See details of Parc de la Villette in Chapter 3.

26
structuralism and logocentrism by demonstrating the instability of meaning in the text, and
often the self-contradiction.27 Bernard Tschumi promptly caught this philosophical turn and
strived to apply the theory to architectural practice. Thus, Parc de la Villette, taking the
deconstructive ideas of disjunction, superimposition and dissociation into its spatial design,
could be seen as the architect’s trial response to linguistic theories in architecture.

Design concepts can also come from the technical rather than the symbolic aspects of
construction, the meaning of the building being found in its fundamental structure, materials
and constructional techniques. Mies van der Rohe could be seen as a representative architect,
whose work is nothing less than the exploration of aesthetic propositions, but with results that
are always tectonically expressed. He did not like the word “design”. He believed that architects
should rather use the word “building” and that the best results would come from the “art of
building”.28 His stress on the tactility of materials, as revealed under light, is found throughout
his projects. Mies’ glass skyscrapers may well allow us to recognise his capacity to treat the
glass as if it were a kind of transparent stone: the Seagram Building may be the one that most
perfectly shows this. Though it seems like Mies was paying close attention to the visual
performance of building forms, yet he still based these forms on a tectonic point of view, rather
than pure aesthetic speculations; this can be supported by a piece of his aphoristic text:
“essentially our task is to free the practice of building from the control of the aesthetics
speculators and restore it to what it should be: building”.29

For architects such as Peter Zumthor, “conceptual meaning” can be discovered in a building’s
sensuous connections to life. To Zumthor, buildings can have a beautiful silence that is
associated with attributes such as “composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and
integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a
building, not representing anything, just being”. 30 The being of the building, as stated by

27
Jorge Glusberg (1991), Deconstruction: A Student Guide, London: Academy Editions, p. 7.
28
Kenneth Frampton (1995), Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and
Twentieth Century Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 159.
29
Ibid., p. 161.
30
Anca Mitrache (2012), “Ornamental Art and Architectural Decoration”, Social and Behavioural
27
Zumthor, can be sensitively perceived by the body. When one comes across a building, if one’s
body is actively and intuitively in contact with the space in which the body is situated, the body
will immediately realise the presence of the building; thus, at that point, one might perceive
the being of the building. In this sense, the body is linked to the materiality of the building,
since the sense of materiality depends on the body’s understanding of surroundings. One of
Zumthor’s smallest projects, the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, clearly shows the way that he
attempts to connect the sensuousness of the body with the materiality of the building. The
chapel lies in Germany’s landscape and was constructed by local farmers who wanted to
honour their patron saint, Bruder Klaus of the 15th century. What the body comes across
within this small chapel is a series of carefully designed spaces, structures and materials, which
come from unique construction methods. The construction began with a wigwam made of 112
tree trunks. Upon completion of the frame, layers of concrete were poured and rammed on
the top of the existing surface, each around 50 cm thick. When all 24 layers of concrete had
set, the wooden frame was set on fire, leaving behind a hollowed blackened cavity and charred
walls. When one enters the chapel through the triangular entrance, the obvious directionality
of the wall leads the eye upward to the point where the roof is open to the sky and, at night,
the stars. This opening controls the indoor climate in the chapel. Sunlight, air and rain
penetrate the opening and create a very specific micro-climate and experience based on time
of day and season. The exterior formwork was installed and fixed to the interior formwork of
logs by 350 steel pipes. After the interior logs were burnt and the all formwork was removed,
350 holes remained, linking the inside to the outside.31 Daylight enters the chapel through
these holes located in the concrete walls. These holes were later covered with small
hemispheres of blown glass that give a special sense to the point where light enters. A very
sombre and reflective feeling is aroused during one’s encounter with the chapel that makes
the building one of the most remarkable pieces of religious space.32

Sciences, vol. 51, pp. 567–572, p. 569.

31
The construction techniques of the wall see figure 10.
32
Megan Sveiven (2011), Bruder Klaus Field Chapel/Peter Zumthor [Online], available at:
http://www.archdaily.com/106352/bruder-klaus-field-chapel-peter-zumthor (Accessed: 21 December
28
Figure 9. Bruder Klaus Field Chapel – the attempt to find meaning in the building’s sensuous
connections to life, Peter Zumthor, Mechernich, 2007.

2016).

29
Figure 10. The construction techniques of the wall of Bruder Klaus Field Chapel.

Hence, “conceptual meaning” is a way of developing meaning from the architect’s mind, from
his/her personal creation of the theme of a design in response to his aesthetic interests; the
circumstances of the site; social, cultural and political necessities; and the requirements of the
brief. This way of meaning is generative and unchangeable. It is created or discovered by the
architect, and once the architect has accomplished the design the meaning will be completely
formed and will never be modified. The architect seeks to generate meanings by encountering
culture, social values, aesthetic theories, materials and techniques, and the sensuousness of
the body, and brings them into the designing of building forms, so that building forms become
the architect’s physical products of the “conceptual meaning”. In addition, architects are
interested in disseminating their concepts through public media such as publications, lectures
and exhibitions, as these are effective ways to gain more awareness in the field of architecture.
The meanings are disseminated through public media to audiences as design concepts in the
form of texts, diagrams, images, videos, models, etc. The project introduction for Sage
Gateshead music centre on Foster + Partners’ website, where plenty of drawings and diagrams
are presented indicating the concept behind the design, is one example that shows how the
architect tries to disseminate concepts through public media.

It is interesting to look at the architect’s search for a concept from the point of view of
Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production. This theory indicates that actors and institutions in
30
the architectural field construct arbitrary values with their particular capacities in order to
approach a kind of aesthetic distinction. As Bourdieu points out, “any act of cultural production
implies an affirmation of its claim to cultural legitimacy”, and architects struggle to reinforce
and improve their legitimate positions in the field of architecture, to define themselves as
distinctive, and to search for consecration.33 In the field of architectural practice, an architect
usually finds meaning from culture, social values, aesthetic theories, materials, techniques and
bodily perceptions, and dedicates those values to the shaping of the design concept, so that
the design becomes a sort of reflection of those values. Therefore, from Bourdieu’s perspective,
the architect’s effort to find meaning for a building might be also a way of making aesthetic
distinctions in the field of architecture.

Cultural buildings with articulated “concepts” are able to play a significant role in signifying the
cultural significance they are carrying, and for those cultural buildings with iconic status which
have a greater chance of being noticed, the “conceptual meaning” is more likely to be
disseminated. For example, the iconic status of Centre Pompidou brings these buildings more
public attention, so that more people will be attracted and come to visit. As more events and
activities take place in the buildings, the concepts of promoting social inclusion and cultural
liberation are more likely to be approached. High-profile architects are more interested in
obtaining iconic commissions, as these enable them to work in a more autonomous realm
where their personal thoughts about building forms can be expressed more freely.
Commissioners of iconic projects are also interested in having high-profile architects in charge,
since those architects are more sophisticated in meaning production and their reputation is
valuable and can be transferred to the reputation of the building.

Success in design competitions can bring success and personal development to unknown
architects. The competition for the design of Centre Pompidou was anonymous and was not
reserved for “invitees”. It was open to all architects, regardless of age, experience or nationality;

33
Helena Webster (2011), Bourdieu for Architects, Abingdon, Oxon, & New York: Routledge, p. 77.

31
talent and creativity would be the key criteria.34 When Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers were
awarded the commission for Centre Pompidou in the early 1970s, they were young and not so
famous internationally. However, after they were commissioned for this project, they soon
gained world-wide fame and started fruitful careers in architectural practice. Their best-known
buildings were mostly built in the 1980s and 1990s, and they are now both world-class
architects.35 The winning of Centre Pompidou opened up a new era in their works and initiated
an international dimension to their careers. Therefore, it is clear that architects can gain the
chance to improve their personal capital through the meaning production of iconic buildings,
and at the same time the cultural significance of the buildings can be reinforced by the
engagement of high-profile architects. Thus it seems the two parties can both gain benefits
from the development of iconic buildings.

1.1.2 Concept is an iconic sign

The understanding of a “sign” is based on the experience of what one knows and what one
observes. When one notices a dark cloud in the sky, the dark cloud is a sign of impending rain.
When one sees a bench, one will know it is a place to sit, and the provision of a place to sit
makes the bench a sign of welcome or ease; but when one has noticed that the bench looks
out over a field with a good view, the bench will become a sign of the recognised value of that
view. When one sees a large area of lawn on a sunny day, one will imagine it would be a
wonderful place for a picnic, a dancing party or a football game, so that the lawn might become
the sign of those particular events; and if one notices a rock of particular aesthetic interest

34
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 16.
35
Main projects of Renzo Piano: the Knasai International Airport in Osaka (1988–1994); the Jean-Marie
Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Noumea (1991–1998); the Potzdamer Platz in Berlin (1992–2000); the
auditorium of the Music Park in Rome (1994–2002); the Paul Klee Centre in Berns (1998–2005); and the
Cité Internatinale in Lyon (1998–2006).

Main projects of Richard Rogers: the Lloyd’s Building in London (1979–1986); the Tribunal de Grande
Instance of Bordeaux (1992–1998); the seat of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg
(1989–1995); the Millennium Dome in London (1999); Terminal 4 at Madrid-Barajas International
Airport (1997–2005); the new building for the National Assembly of Wales (1998–2005).

32
placed in a garden, one might find that the rock signifies “natural environment”, as it evokes
the mental image of a mountain. Thus, it seems a sign can sometimes point directly to
something which the sign stands for, while at other times a sign can make something happen
by interacting with a participant’s creativity.

There are three elements involved in a sign situation – in Charles Sanders Peirce’s terms, a
“sign”, an “object” which the sign stands for, and an effect, the idea in people’s minds, an
“interpretant”. A sign is, as Peirce points out, something which stands in such a triadic relation
to its object as to be capable of determining its interpretant.36 The object determines a sign,
and the sign determines an idea in people’s minds. The big lawn in the sunshine is a physical
object; when people see it and realise that it could be a lovely place for pleasure, the lawn
becomes a sign of this pleasure in their minds. The idea of doing something for pleasure is the
effect which the object (lawn) creates for people. However, not all signs have this completely
triadic relationship of object, sign and interpretant – the way in which these three elements
are bound together does not exist in any complex of dyadic relations. There are three types of
signs – icon, index and symbol. Only the symbol has a triadic relationship, whereas the other
two have incomplete triadic relationships. The reason a symbol is seen as having a complete
triadic relationship is that the relations between the symbolic sign and its object are
dependent on a knower’s creativity, while the relations between incomplete signs and their
objects are independent of their knower.

A symbolic sign occurs only when the way in which the sign is related to its object in
consequence of a knower’s mental association depends upon the previous experience or
habits of the knower. A symbolic sign occurs when something is used or understood, without
regard to the motives which originally governed the occurrence of the symbolic sign. 37
Therefore, the lawn is a symbol to the knower, because the lawn does not directly mean a
football field or a dancing place, but rather it is the user (knower) who associates the lawn

36
Charles S. Peirce (1932), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Volume 2), Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, p. 156.
37
Ibid., p. 172.

33
(object) with a place of pleasure (sign). Moreover, Peirce points out that some words are
examples of a symbol, – such as “marriage”, because the word supposes that we are able to
imagine actual events related to the idea of marriage.38

If one sign is called an index, the relation of the indexical sign to its objects does not depend
on the knower’s creativity either, but there should be a dynamic connection between the sign
and its object. A pointing finger is an indexical sign. There is a direct relation between the
finger and what the finger points at. The connection between the finger and the pointed-at
object already exists for the knower: the knower has to have previously learned that the
pointing finger is “pointing”, before he/she can recognise what the it points at. Thus, this
connection between the pointing finger and the pointed-at object is a cultural convention
which exists prior to the knower’s reaction to a pointing finger. Dark smoke coming from a
house could be an indexical sign that means the house might be on fire, as there is a causal
relation between smoke and fire which is already understood by the knower. When we
respond directly to surrounding facts, this is also when an indexical sign occurs. Peirce points
out that when we take action we are always “bumbling up against hard fact”. 39 When we come
across any given thing, we will have a sense of resistance or a sense of effort, so that we
passively experience it as something which forces our experience in a particular direction. If
we see something moving quickly towards us, we will unconsciously defend ourselves against
it in case it poses a threat. For example, if there is a car coming towards us, we will immediately
take action to avoid the car. So the car forces our experience and here we have a sense of
resistance. When we are tired and we find a bench by the path, we will be compelled to take
a seat. The bench too induces us to take action and here we have a sense of the effort used to
approach the bench. These things which are seen to force our experience are indexical signs.
Moreover, a long passage could be an indexical sign, which compels our bodies to go through
it; a bedroom could also be an indexical sign if we are passively aware that it is a place where

38
Ibid., p. 168.
39
Charles S. Peirce (1931), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Volume 1), Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, p. 162.

34
the most private aspects of life can take place.

If any particular sign is seen as an icon, the relationship between object and sign lies in their
similarity. If something is fit to be a substitute for an object that it resembles – for example, an
image of the object, or an idea of the object – that thing is an iconic sign.40 A drawing of a tree
is an iconic sign of the real tree. They are already similar in image without requiring any mental
creation on the part of the knower.

Therefore, the sign is completely triadic when the sign–object relationship depends on the
engagement of the knower/user, whereas the sign is incompletely triadic when the sign–object
relationship does not rely on the mental creativity of the knower/user. A triadic sign has to be
produced by the knower/user – when the knower attaches significance to something in the
actual world with references to their own life and experiences, a symbolic sign might be
created. In contrast, an incomplete triadic sign is something that is used by the knower/user;
in this case, if there is merely a relationship of resemblance between sign and object, the sign
is an icon, whereas if there is a direct physical connection between sign and object, the sign is
an index.41

The “conceptual meaning” generated by architects is an example of an iconic sign. The idea
generated from the architect’s mind is the interpretant, and the presentation of a design –
such as texts, diagrams, models, videos or images as well as actual building forms – is the
object where “conceptual meaning” resides. To understand an architect’s “conceptual
meaning”, it is not necessary for one to use one’s own creativity. For instance, in an exhibition
where an architectural design is on display, when viewers see or read the presentations of the
design (object), these presentations will become iconic signs and bring viewers an
understanding of the meaning of the design (interpretant). Viewers gain “conceptual meaning”
from these presentations without their own effort of creation. The relation between the
design and the concept (object and sign) lies in their resemblance. For example, when Bernard

40
Peirce, Collected Papers (Volume 2), p. 157.
41
John Joseph Fitzgerald (1966), Peirce's Theory of Signs as Foundation for Pragmatism, The Hague:
Mouton, pp. 39–44.

35
Tschumi was working on Parc de la Villette, he first came up with an image of three disjunctive
systems of points, lines and surfaces as the design concept. Based on this conceptual idea, the
physical space of the park was generated, and the spatial pattern of the park resembles the
imagined spatial system that Tschumi had originally conceived, so that Tschumi’s intended
“conceptual meaning” is embedded in the design of the park.

Peirce asserts that “the only way of directly communicating an idea is by means of an icon”. 42
In architecture, the “conceptual meaning” is able to be disseminated by means of architectural
presentations of design ideas. Usually the architect starts to have ideas (the interpretant of an
iconic sign) in mind at the beginning of a design. These ideas evolve as the design moves on,
and they are accomplished and are eventually known as the design concept, and this is where
“conceptual meaning” lies. The architect designs physical spaces based on the concept. After
the building has been constructed, hopefully people are able to apprehend the architect’s idea
according to the physical spaces they engage with, as well as having their own ways of using
the spaces. Physical spaces can be seen as indices when people use the space in accordance
with the architect’s definition of it beforehand, such as when people use a classroom for
lecturing, use stairs and passages for passing from one level or room in a building to another,
or use a bench for sitting. These places are seen as indices because the use of them has a direct
connection with the function defined by the architect, and does not depend on users’ own
creativity − the function and use of a certain place is defined prior to users’ actions.
Alternatively, physical spaces can be seen as symbols when people use them according to their
own wishes, derived from their own needs and creativity, such as using a lawn for a dancing
party, steps for sitting or a sloping ground for napping. Hence, the concept is an iconic sign; a
physical space can be an index when people follow the architect’s intentions, or a symbol when
people produce meanings in their own ways.

The “interpretant” can be divided into three categories – the immediate, the dynamical and
the final interpretant.43 Where the interpretant can be understood through the sign itself, this

42
Peirce, Collected Papers (Volume 2), p. 158.
43
The concept of the “immediate interpretant” is related to that of “conceptual meaning” and is
discussed here, while the terms “dynamical interpretant” and “final interpretant” refer to practical
36
is an immediate interpretant and this is where the iconic sign exists. This kind of interpretant
requires that each sign must have its own peculiar interpretability before it reaches any later
knower. So the knower does not need to make any effort to produce the interpretant in this
case, but rather takes the idea and uses it straight away. 44 The architectural concept is
proposed by the architect, so that the “conceptual meaning” exists prior to and independent
from the knower’s understanding of the concept and the building. The “conceptual meaning”
is therefore an immediate interpretant – it is interpretable before it reaches any later knower
and independent from the knower’s individual creativity. People can reach “conceptual
meaning” by viewing design statements, images, diagrams and photos of the building without
any active creation according to actual circumstances.

There are two kinds of meaning in a sign – the internal meaning and the external meaning.45
The internal meaning of an idea is seen as the achievement of its own purpose, prior to any
other ideas or actions, whereas the external meaning requires outer factors. Common sense
is the fundamental function of the external meaning. The feature of resemblance makes an
icon a sign that has internal meaning: an iconic sign does not rely on the effort of future
knowers/users to associate sign with object, and thus sign and object are related without any
external meaning derived from common sense or future developments. The design of a
building resembles the concept generated in the architect’s mind. The concept could only have
internal meaning, if it is subjectively produced by the architect, independent from any
common sense or creativity of later users. The concept is achieved by the architect’s finding of
“conceptual meaning”. This meaning will then be transferred into building forms and might be
disseminated through design competitions, exhibitions or publications. “Conceptual meaning”
is a form of meaning derived from the architect’s creativity; it always rejects any future
modification or development by users, as it always tends to be completely fulfilled by the

effects and so are more related to “pragmatic meaning”, which will be explained in the next section of
the chapter.

44
Fitzgerald, Peirce’s Theory, p. 76.
45
Fitzgerald, Peirce’s Theory, p. 85.

37
architect.

When an architect is working on a design, the intended ideas are usually described by the
architect in such formulations as “I would like to get people have a feeling of …”, “I want to
explore my design philosophy of … by doing experiments in this project”, “I want to make it a
place for the remembrance of …” and so on. These intended ideas are iconic signs, whereas
the final design scheme (the object) acts as the resemblance of those intentions. As stated
above, an iconic sign (concept) has a fixed interpretation independent from the knower/user.
After the concept has been transferred into building forms, the building forms become the
object of the concept, and the building forms and the concept exist in a relationship of
resemblance, such as the resemblance between the zigzag spatial pattern and scar-like
windows in the Jewish Museum and the conflictual history of relations between Jewish and
German people, or the opening in the roof of the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel being penetrable
by sunlight, rain and air in resemblance with the building’s intended sensuous connections to
life. This resemblance that links building forms and concepts usually only exists in the
architect’s mind, but we can sometimes be made aware of the resemblance and understand
the concepts from the architect’s interpretation as presented in architectural media.

However, as concepts can be interpreted by architects using texts, images, models, drawings
and photos of building forms without the engagement of future users, the independence of
the architect’s production of “conceptual meaning” can bring negatives to architecture. For
example, many abstract visual images can be found in architectural magazines interpreting
architects’ conceptual ideas. These images do not include any people or activity: they are
merely beautiful perspectives from chosen viewpoints, at times accessorised by some
illustrations of the design concepts. It is also interesting to note that there are architects in
favour of taking part in exhibitions with their conceptual design works. The Venice Biennale of
Architecture is one of the most influential world-wide exhibitions, held every two years.
Arranged in different pavilions with different individual themes, this is a good opportunity for
new concepts to be showcased. These are displays of architects’ categorised conceptual
meanings, and the exhibition acts as an exclusive space where architects play among
themselves. This evidence implies that some architects seem to prefer working in a more
38
autonomous field where they might generate arbitrary meanings without considering all
circumstances pragmatically. In contrast, a good architect might approach a commission with
the intention of finding out the function of the building, the place where it is to be built, the
culture, the community, the techniques and materials, and only then work out a concept and
a design that tries to deal with all of these things.

Concept and design are the two elements involved in the situation of an iconic sign – concept
is the sign and design is the object. The process of design is one of the building being given
form, but it is also the way in which “conceptual meaning” is created and materialised into
physical objects. Once a building has been accomplished, though the concept will be fixed, the
building forms will have dynamic effects on users. As a result, building forms act as something
intermediate between the ideas of the architects and the actual effects on users. Therefore, a
design is a process of searching for “conceptual meaning” and simultaneously a process of
giving form to a building, and the actual effects of the building on users will occur when the
building is in practical use. When users follow the architect’s definition of a space, the space
acts as an indexical sign, while when users produce their own meaning for a space, the space
becomes a symbolic sign to them.

The concept generated by the architect is an iconic sign, while the design of the building is the
physical object the iconic sign denotes. However, the iconic sign does not have any actual effect
in the practical dimension. Once the building has been constructed, “pragmatic meaning” will
be produced from the actual experience of users within the space. How the space functions
and how people perceive it are the actual effects a building creates, and this is where
“pragmatic meaning” develops. The ways in which meanings are produced are different:
“conceptual meaning” is generated in the architect’s mind while “pragmatic meaning”
emerges from users’ actual experience. It is in this sense that a building acts as something
intermediate: it is the physical outcome of “conceptual meaning” as well as the place in which
“pragmatic meaning” occurs – it is the product of the architect’s intention and the reception
of the user’s meaning exploration.

Since the concept and the process of designing a building are determined by the architect, but

39
the effect on users depends on users’ understandings, there is sometimes a mismatch between
the architect’s intentions and what users perceive, or between what the space was meant to
be and how it is actually used. The building can mean something different to users from that
to the architect. An architect achieves “conceptual meaning” in the process of designing a
building and the design implies the meaning the architect has sought for. To architects, the
meaning of a building is found in the ideas they have generated, but to users, meanings are
something emerging from their experience in actual spaces.

Users are at times able to apprehend the meaning the architect intended to express. For
example, people understand the plaza in front of Centre Pompidou as an urban space for
flexible use – resting, sitting, relaxing and playing. This lively picture is in line with the
architect’s idea of making an open urban space for the Les Halles area, though this plaza does
not mean the same to all users since people have different interpretations according to their
different roles and needs. However, at other times people find that it is harder to recognise an
architect’s “conceptual meaning” in their experience of actual spaces. An example is the
Chinese architect Wang Shu, whose texts sometimes seem to convey not a form of knowledge
that is available for all to understand, but only his own desire to play within his fantasy world.
Wang does not always explain his work but only interprets. Explanation is rational and
authoritative, and restrains possibility, whereas interpretation gives him room to discover
more possibility and deeper meaning in his work. But at the same time, this makes his ideas
obscure and unfathomable to others.

One interior design project, known as “Eight Unliveable Houses”, a series of lamp settings, is a
representation of Wang’s unfathomable design philosophy. “Eight Unliveable Houses” is a
small interior design at Wang Shu’s own flat. This is a small two-bedroom flat, 50 m2 in area.
In Wang’s opinion, living in a garden setting is a timeless necessity for Chinese “men of letters”,
as a garden can highlight the poetry of everyday life, thus inspiring them in aesthetic creation.
Thus, Wang decided to “landscape” his small living space. He did not borrow any piece from
traditional gardens straightforwardly, but rather he created a series of images representing the
poetic sense of traditional gardens. The creation of “Eight Unliveable Houses” aimed to
provide more poetic images for Wang’s personal “garden”. Eight wooden lamp settings,
40
representing the eight unliveable houses, are placed at every corner of the flat – roof, wall and
floor. Those wooden lamp settings represent the images of different forms of houses scattered
in a traditional garden. With all lamp settings in place, eight sorts of magical light that come
out from them provide a distinct sense of beauty to this interior “garden”. Both the interior
design project and “Eight Unliveable Houses” are included in one of Wang’s books, The
Beginning of Design. 46 This is not a book which merely explains his design projects; more
essentially, it states his aesthetic preferences, design philosophies and criticism on
contemporary architecture. One is hardly able to realise Wang’s concept of the interior
“garden” solely by visiting his flat, but one is possibly able to understand his poetic ideas, at
least in part, from his texts.

Figure 11. Three of the lamp settings from “Eight Unliveable Houses”, Wang Shu, Hangzhou,
late 1990s.

46
Shu Wang (2002), The Beginning of Design 设计的开始, Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press.

41
1.1.3 The reason architects like making concepts from a “fine art” perspective

The pursuit of concept could be attributed to the cult of individual thoughts in the architectural
field and the autonomy of architecture. It seems that architecture has long treated itself as an
arrogant profession, and the concept seems important for those architects who use it to assert
their individual philosophies. Especially those who are considered to be struggling in a more
autonomous design faction are more inclined to produce pure art works, concern themselves
with pure aesthetics and set codes of symbolic criteria, apart from daily life.47 These architects
attempt to set themselves up as the only judge of the design, exclude any interaction with
non-professional agency and tend to deliver to users perfectly finished art-like buildings which
primarily aim to satisfy the architect’s own personal aesthetic tastes. Indeed, perfectly finished
art-like architecture with well-packaged “conceptual meaning” might have considerable value
in the professional realm of architecture; however, it will be problematic if the concept is
concerned with visual image only, plays a dictatorial role in the design process, ignores basic
requirements and even goes against empirical values.

It is important to ask why some architects are fascinated with art-like buildings. Brand thinks
that the problem with these architects is that they are keen to treat themselves as artists, and
they see fine art as the aesthetic aspiration of architecture. 48 In the desire to make a building
more visually focused and attractive, it becomes more crucial to concentrate on its exterior,
and “conceptual meaning” is more likely to be connected with the visual appearance of
architecture, especially in the case of so-called iconic buildings. Iconic buildings are positioned
relative to visual consumers, not only the visitors to the buildings themselves but the viewers
of mediated images in press, television or film. Positioning architecture in relation to the visual
consumer means that buildings end up being designed from the outside in, from “the tourist
gaze”. 49 The surface appearance and visual effect of iconic buildings can contribute to

47
Garry Stevens (1998), The Favored Circle: The Social Foundations of Architectural Distinction,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 91–94.
48
Stewart Brand (1994), How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They're Built, New York: Viking, p. 54.
49
John Urry & Jonas Larsen (1990), The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies,
London & Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

42
constructing and reinforcing tourists’ visual preferences, so that iconic buildings become
incorporated into a broader consumption of culture. In recent times there has been a trend
towards attempting to embed iconic architecture in particular urban regeneration projects
with the collaboration of “star architects”.50

Furthermore, as Brand notes, the history of architecture is the history of the transformation
of facades and styles.51 Looking at recent architectural movements, it can be seen that they
are mostly about stylistic changes. The modernist movement was about the struggle to
overthrow the established Beaux-Arts architecture. Although it started as the solution to
house shortage problems after the world wars, it was soon aestheticised by the Bauhaus
movement and became an international style that architects played with.52 During the 1960s,
Venturi attacked the simplicity of modernism, and encouraged architects to be exterior
decorators. He took the easy path away from the complex responsibility of architecture and
back to the simple debate about style. By the 1980s, deconstruction had swept architecture
departments with its self-conscious approach of fragmenting itself into shards. By the early
1990s, architecture had gone through neo-modernism, neo-classicism and neo-rationalism,
but all of these changes are about debates on exterior forms, either borrowing traditional
decorated symbols and incorporating them into new functional building façades or adhering
to modern styles.53 Therefore, Brand concludes that the history of architecture is the history
of façades, and that all the efforts that push architecture to move on, to develop and to
transform are serving the wrong people – the viewers instead of the people who use a building.
Geoffrey Scott claims that this type of criticism in architecture, that focuses on forms and styles,
always lays down some “law” of architectural taste for the sake of simplicity; however, he
asserts that good design in architecture should express the function that the building is
intended to fulfil and the facts of its construction, or reflect the life of its particular civilisation.

50
Paul Jones (2011), The Sociology of Architecture, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, p. 116.
51
Brand, How Buildings Learn, p. 56.

52
Stevens, The Favored Circle, pp. 103–105.
53
Brand, How Buildings Learn, pp. 56–57.

43
There should in fact be complex reasons lying behind the shaping of any particular
architectural style, which should relate to the practical needs of structural principles and social
effects, rather than simply to aesthetic tastes and preferences. This is, as Scott states, the
architecture of humanism.54

It seems that the favouring of visual conception is one architectural habitus. Pierre Bourdieu’s
term “habitus” refers to the “durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations”
that produces practices which tend to reinforce the regularities of that generative principle.55
The favouring of visual conception and the possession of visual skills are the installed principles
that effect architectural practice which in turn reinforces the installed principles. Those
architects who possess architectural habitus are more likely to survive in architectural
competitions. Architectural photography in magazines and visual skills training at architectural
schools are the methods through which architecture’s habitus of visual conception is
maintained. In architectural award and competition systems, the virtual image is the only
factor to take into consideration before making a judgement on the winner. This requires
architects to produce good-looking images rather than designing a building that will be well
used. After a building has been constructed, photographic images of its architecture will be
published in magazines, but most of these photos will be perfectly composed shots statically
presenting the physical forms of the building. These lifeless pictures squeeze architectural
appreciation into a narrow and simple area of visual judgement. Architecture magazines
consist mainly of stylised colour photographs and newly built or designed buildings; they
seldom interview users or clients, or criticise buildings except from an artistic point of view.
The schools of architecture focus primarily on visual skills training, such as rendering,
modelling, drawing, stylistic analysis and expressions, and perspective photography; their
emphasis discourages inquiries about the everyday and specific living issues which arise in

54
Geoffrey Scott (1965), The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste, Gloucester, MA:
P. Smith, pp. 18–23.
55
Pierre Bourdieu (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, UK, & New York: Cambridge
University Press, p. 78.

44
actual spaces.56

The tradition of considering architecture as art is associated with the development of the
modern system of fine arts, originating from the Italian Renaissance. In the article “The
Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics”, Paul Oskar Kristeller clarifies
that the modern system of fine arts comprises five “nuclei” of fine arts: painting, sculpture,
architecture, music and poetry.57 This conception of fine arts won universal consensus in the
18th century and was subsequently adopted as established orthodoxy among historians and
philosophies of arts. In Kristeller’s reading the ancient, medieval and early Renaissance
thinkers did not group the fine arts in the same way as modern thinking does. For example,
neither Plato nor Aristotle thought that architecture counted as an art; nor did medieval
thinkers, although they did include in their conception of fine arts shoemaking, cooking,
juggling and grammar, along with painting, sculpture, poetry and music.58 We can regard crafts
or sciences as falling under the rubric of arts in ancient times. Since the Renaissance, artists’
status started to change; painters, sculptors and architects tended to distinguish themselves
from craftsmen, defining themselves as liberal artists whose art works were demonstrated
through ideas and contemplation rather than manual work. The autonomy of architecture can
be derived from this time, when apprentice-trained builders began to separate into two
professions – designers and builders – which offered the designers more freedom to engage
with visionary concepts, which could be easily presented in drawings. Architects gained new
and higher status as they were considered to be bound up more with intellectual than with
manual labour. This social value that appreciates intellectual labour more than manual labour
is closely associated with the neo-platonic ideas which grew during the Renaissance.

Kristeller argues that the modern system of fine arts was not complete until the mid-18th
century, in the work of Charles Batteux. Batteux identified three classes of arts: “those that

56
Brand, How Buildings Learn, pp. 70–71.
57
Paul Oskar Kristeller (1990), “The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics”, in
Renaissance Thought and the Arts: Collected Essays, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 163–
227, p. 165.
58
James O. Young (2015), “The Ancient and Modern System of the Arts”, British Journal of Aesthetics, vol.
55 (1), pp. 1–17, p. 1.
45
simply minister to our needs (the mechanical arts); those whose aim is pleasure (beaux-arts);
and those that combine utility and pleasure (eloquence and architecture)”. 59 Though
architecture is considered to have the purposes of both pleasure and utility, its involvement in
the system of fine arts gives it considerable influence on the recognition of architecture as an
art for visual pleasure, akin to painting and sculpture. The recognition of architecture as an art
isolates it from manual skills, the process of making, turning it into a process of conception,
such that architectural appreciation requires watching and contemplation rather than
experiencing.

Batteux did not create the modern system; it evolved over a period of time. One important
step towards the modern concept of fine arts is Giorgio Vasari’s conception of disegno in the
16th century.60 The term “design” originates from the Italian word disegno, which originally
means drawing. Disegno implies the connection between design, ideas and drawing. Design
can be seen as the realisation of intellectual ideas, while drawings can be the visual
presentations of the design. The ideas are immaterial, considered to be higher than material,
as the intellectual is superior to manual labour. This is the essence of platonic theories of
ancient Greece and it was revived in the Italian Renaissance. The key to a design is its
conceptual idea and the visual way in which this is expressed. Intellectual thinking and training
in drawing skills is essential for designers. Architecture is the only fine art that refers to design.
The consideration of architecture as design means to associate it with immaterial ideas, as
opposed to building or actual experience. Therefore, the architect’s pursuit of a design concept,
especially from a visual art perspective, is part of a tradition going back to the 16th century.
Since then, the architect has been moving away from the accumulated knowledge of a team
of anonymous craftspeople, instead becoming distinctively knowledgeable in the visual arts,
independent from the building trade, so that architecture is considered to be bound up more
with intellectual than with manual labour, and design has been narrowed down to a visual
expression and clarification of the concept that comes out of the architect’s mind. 61 Hence,

59
Larry Shiner (2003), The Invention of Art, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 83.
60
Young, “The Ancient and Modern System of the Arts”, p. 2.
61
Jonathan Hill (2006), Immaterial Architecture, London: Routledge, p. 33.
46
architects have learnt new means to practise architecture, drawing and writing, to affirm their
status.62

Before buildings are built, they have to be worked out, presented and judged in immaterial
mediums. Some buildings do not have chance to be built, but architects are eager to
demonstrate their concepts, and high-profile architects in particular are more inclined to
discuss and disseminate their creations through the immaterial means of lecturing, writing
and drawing. Peter Eisenman has claimed: “The ‘real architecture’ only exists in drawings. The
‘real building’ exists outside the drawings. The difference here is that ‘architecture’ and
‘building’ are not the same.”63 Here Eisenman equates architecture with drawings, meaning
that the design concept described by drawings can represent an architectural creation
regardless of whether it has been built and used. This claim shows Eisenman’s certainty about
the absolute distinction between designing and building, and implies his focus on the cognitive
creation rather than the actual affect or feeling of individuals experiencing the space. Japanese
architect Arata Isozaki wrote a book, Unbuilt, which includes representative conceptual
projects from throughout his 40-year professional career: sky-city in the 1960s, computer-city
in the 1970s, ruins-city in the 1980s and mirage-city in the 1990s.64 These projects are either
too abstractly ideal, or too advanced compared with the contemporary technology, to be built.
Thus, they can only exist in mediums such as this book. However, Arata Isozaki argues in the
book that the unbuilt projects are the same as those buildings that have been built and
demolished. This claim shows the architect’s ambition of approaching a higher cultural status
by demonstrating concepts through immaterial mediums, and also reflects the absolute
rejection of building in the world of architecture.

However, some contemporary architects and critics start to think of returning to “building”,
such as Peter Zumthor and Kenneth Frampton, who are interested in tectonics. The designer

62
Ibid., p. 37.
63
Iman Ansari (2013), Eisenman's Evolution: Architecture, Syntax, and New Subjectivity [Online], available
at: http://www.archdaily.com/429925/eisenman-s-evolution-architecture-syntax-and-new-subjectivity
(Accessed: 25 December 2016).
64
Arata Isozaki (2004), Unbuilt 未建成/反建筑史, Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press.
47
of Red Brick Art Museum, Yugan Dong, is also involved in building. His way of designing is not
starting from conception, the macro-scope imagination towards the form of the building, but
constructional methods for functional or pleasure purposes. The design of Xiangshan campus
also involves an approach to craftsmanship, the designer introduced a collective work of
handcrafted construction in the process of building production.

The great change of the architect’s status is also associated with the idea of artist-as-genius
that started with the Renaissance and further developed in Romanticism. The tendency
towards the cult of genius is still influential in modernism and contemporary architectural
practice; Le Corbusier and Rem Koolhaas are representatives considered as geniuses. Marsilio
Ficino’s radical interpretation, in the 15th century, of those who are outside of the mainstream,
who have unusual personalities and behaviour, as geniuses gives rise to the fanatical cult of
genius artists in the subsequent centuries. 65 Ficino was interested in platonic theories and
developed his own theory of Neo-Platonism. His theoretical system involves essential ideas of
Aristotle and Plato. 66 Ficino further interpreted one of Plato’s term, “divine madness”. In
Plato’s thinking, divine madness is a supernatural power; when one is passively filled with this
power, one will simultaneously fall into an enchanted state in which artistic inspiration will
arrive. 67 When one is a normal conscious state, one cannot achieve that enchanted state,
artistic inspiration will not arrive and one will not have creativity. Ficino reinterpreted
“madness”, believing that one could actively obtain it through one’s own effort – one’s soul
could be divorced from flesh through one’s contemplation, thus returning to its divine nature,
and creativity would thus arrive. 68 Ficino’s interpretation of madness has fundamental
influence on the recognition of artists as “divine creators”, one important step towards the cult

65
Walter Benjamin (1977), The Origin of German Tragic Drama, transl. John Osborne, London: NLB,
pp. 150–155.
66
Noel L. Brann (2002), The Debate over the Origin of Genius during the Italian Renaissance: The Theories
of Supernatural Frenzy and Natural Melancholy in Accord and in Conflict on the Threshold of the Scientific
Revolution, Leiden: Brill, p. 83.
67
Plato (1963), Collection of Plato’s Literary Dialogues, transl. Guangqian Zhu, Beijing: People’s Literature
Publishing House, p. 8.
68
Marsilio Ficino (1975), The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, vol. 1, transl. Language Department of the School
of Economic Science, London: Shepheard-Walwyn, pp. 42–48.
48
of genius artists.

Ficino’s artist-as-genius also refers to the interpretation of Aristotle’s idea of “depression”.

Depression was considered a negative feature of personality in ancient Greek medicine. The
depressed person is introverted, lonely, anxious and scared, but at the same time they are
extraordinarily creative, thus they can produce outstanding achievements. Ficino regarded the
term “depression” as a pronoun of genius.69 Depressed people are away from public life; they
are in favour of contemplation, curious about myth and immersed in exploration, even
forgetting daily life. Ficino’s idea of genius is, then, simply understood as one in which genius
is definitely unusual, a notion which is spread in the subsequent centuries and is influential in
shaping the architect’s status.

The completion of an architectural project requires teamwork, collaboration among a group

of architects, engineers, builders, clients and so on; however, a famous architectural work is
always considered the work of its architect. This architect is usually the chief of an architectural
studio. The idea of single authorship in architecture is important, as it confirms architecture’s
status as a liberal art, because art is traditionally considered the work of genius. The idea of
the “star architect” is shaped by the idea of artist-as-genius. “Star architect” usually refers to
an architect who has a high global reputation, but in practice there is no single architect who
can complete a project alone. There are diverse agencies involved in building production.
Therefore, “star architect” does not denote a real person; the term refers to a fictional persona
who is the symbol of a team of people working on a design together. The term “star architect”
ensures architecture’s single authorship. The single authorship of the “star architect” enables
the symbolic value of the star to be transferred to the whole team, whereas under the shared
authorship concept the symbolic value of the team might not be so readily recognised.

The construction of the “star architect” is about shaping the identity of genius through building
production. “Star architects” (studios) are in favour of producing radical concepts and unusual
forms of architecture, such as OMA in Netherland, MAD Architects in China and Zaha Hadid
Architects in Britain. The way in which they produce architecture is allied with the purpose of

69
Marsilio Ficino (1980), The Book of Life, transl. Charles Boer, Irving, TX: Spring Publications, pp. 7–8.
49
creating the image of genius. An architect can be considered as a genius if he/she produces
grand and unusual systems of concepts, creating something distinctively, radically, even madly.
If his/her work is rare and valuable, then he/she will be adored and seen as a genius.

The historical context that categorised architecture as a fine art, associating architecture with
drawings and ideas, the cult of artistic genius and the separation of architects from builders,
changed architecture’s identity. It reduced architecture’s duty, narrowing the range of its
jurisdiction and giving design more freedom, and thus architecture has turned to focus more
on written concepts, on stylish drawings and innovative expressions, than on how buildings
stand up and their real effects on individuals. Architects’ preference for advertising themselves
as conceptual artists, therefore, manifests architecture’s autonomy. 70 Due to the
independence of designers, the growing attention to the immaterial “conceptual meaning”
and art’s invasion of architecture, architecture has tended to become more impractical, more
in favour of visual fashion than of living experience, and thus has tended to move away from
ordinary life.

There are other reasons associated with the rise of the designer’s independence, namely the
decline of shared meaning and the rise of individualism. In the past, important public buildings,
such as cathedrals and city halls, expressed shared meaning and conveyed it from generation
to generation through conventions. As Heidegger states, architecture was once more involved
with shared meaningful traditions such as myths and religions.71 In Western culture before the
Enlightenment, all citizens, including architects, understood the same representative meaning
of their shared belief. Architects worked to explain these shared beliefs and to try to embody
them in building forms, and thus the meaning of their work could be easily understood by the
public within the same culture. However, with the decline of religions as unifying
metanarratives, meaningful codes have been rerouted from the stable to the random, from

70
Kevin L. Burr & Chad B. Jones (2010), “The Role of the Architect: Changes of the Past, Practices of the
Present, and Indications of the Future”, International Journal of Construction Education and Research,
vol. 6 (2), pp. 122–138, pp. 122–123.
71
Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, p. 101.

50
the public to the private realm, and are now scattered in individuals, so that an absence of
metanarrative has developed.72 Architectural concepts seek to justify themselves without any
solid and widely shared background. The void in belief drives architects to search for any
possible meaning and for ways to certify it as a widely accepted value. Therefore, after the
Enlightenment, eclecticism tried to find the meaning of its existence in already-known motifs,
and functionalism intended to set up a common basis for a rational approach of simplicity and
transparency. Since the 1960s, architecture has experienced an era of ever-growing diversity.73
The whole architectural scene seems to have exploded, and this has resulted in a multitude of
scattered individual approaches. Architects do not have to abide by a collective and uniform
value: they can encounter plural ideas and employ those which seem to offer possible
justification for their own personalised concepts. In the case of iconic buildings such as Centre
Pompidou, the concepts are created crucially from the architect’ personal wishes, through
their encounter with social values, culture and the context of the site. Even for those projects,
such as Red Brick Art Museum and Xiangshan Campus, which are more concerned with
pragmatism in everyday life, the architectural concepts are still proposed on the basis of the
architects’ individual preferences. City managers also have to discover what kind of symbolic
meaning should be created for city branding and then be represented in the form of
architecture. 74 For example, iconic buildings in urban regeneration projects are cultural
symbols created through the collaboration of city managers and architects aiming to brand
target areas. The symbol that is distinctive can then be considered as valuable for city branding.
Thus, the ambition of branding a city also in a way facilitates the architect’s individualism.

The tendency of architects’ pursuit of “find art” concept is interesting if looked at from the
perspective of Bourdieu’s theories of field and the distinction of taste. In Bourdieu’s view, there

72
Alan Colquhoun (1997), “The Concept of Regionalism”, in Nalbantoglu, G.B. & Thai, W.C. (eds.),
Postcolonial Space (2), New York: Princeton Architectural Press, pp. 13–23, p. 23.
73
Christian Norberg-Schulz (1980), Meaning in Western Architecture, London: Studio Vista, p. 203.

74
María A. Sainz (2012), “(Re)Building an Image for a City: Is A Landmark Enough? Bilbao and the
Guggenheim Museum, 10 Years Together”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 42 (1), pp. 100–
132, p. 116.
51
is a specific logic to the consumption of cultural goods. The tastes of cultural consumers
present different ways of appropriating cultural objects. 75 The different positions in social
space which are bound up with systems of dispositions (habitus) are homologically linked with
the different classes or class fractions. Thus, cultural consumption could be said to be
predisposed to fulfil a social stratification.76 In the field of cultural production, there are two
fractions – the sub-field of “restricted production” and the sub-field of “large-scale production”.
The former is about the production of disinterested artistic works, independent from practical
demands, while the latter refers to commercial and functional works meeting social demands
and economic purposes.77 The degree of autonomy and the degree of disinterestedness is
presumed to be related to the possession of cultural capital, and is a good measure, therefore,
of the position of the cultural player; this constitutes the law of the cultural field.78 Cultural
capital is the accumulation of manners, credentials, knowledge and skills that lends us the
capacity to act in a way that shows our position within a field: those who perform with higher
cultural capital are seen to be at a higher position in a field. Those who have more cultural
capital have more resources with which to take part in pure and disinterested symbolic games,
whereas those with less cultural capital have no choice but to respond to the taste of necessity.
Any aesthetic reading which requires the viewer to possess the correct “codes” to decipher
the symbolic meaning of a work is “codified” by cultural elites. Hence, Bourdieu thought that
cultural consumption was predisposed to create social division by matching different social
classes with their homological tastes, and that the Kantian notion that transcendent “pure”
aesthetics is superior was only an illusion constructed by cultural elites in order to reinforce

75
Pierre Bourdieu (2010), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London: Routledge,
p. 1.

76
Ibid., pp. 6–7.
77
Hélène Lipstadt (2010), “Can ‘Art Professions’ Be Bourdieuean Fields of Cultural Production? The
Case of the Architecture Competition”, Cultural Studies, vol. 17 (3–4), pp. 390–419, p. 400.
78
Pierre Bourdieu (1993), The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, Cambridge:
Polity Press, p. 39.

52
the structure of cultural distinction between elite and non-elite groups.79

In the field of architecture, “restricted production” is more likely to see architecture as an art
while “mass production” relates to the production of housing and industrial buildings which
focus on economic, functional criteria and other practical issues. Therefore, those who are in
the restricted production field have greater capacity and more autonomous conditions under
which to produce more disinterested and art-like designs, while the rest are constrained much
more by the intervention of clients, authorities and costs. Furthermore, any field of cultural
production, including architecture, is structured in a manner which sustains the authority of
those who dominate the field, those with higher cultural capital.80 So those who are in top
positions have more power to establish the principle of stratification, to legitimate judgement
and to dominate the field according to their own interests.81 Existing elite tastes are used by
high-status people to bound themselves together and defend against outsiders. One of the
mechanisms they use, according to Garry Stevens, is education, through the selection of those
whom the existing privileges favour and who also favour them, and certificating students
before allowing them to start professional careers. 82 It is interesting to see that there is a
linkage between the pursuit of visual concepts in architecture and the broadly adopted visual
skills training in schools of architecture. Only after students demonstrate that they possess
visual skills will they be accepted in the professional field, where the importance of visual
concepts will be further reinforced by these newly qualified joiners with their focus on the
visual. Architectural competition systems also facilitate the selection of people whose
approaches accord with the system’s expectations and filtering out of those who are seen to
be outsiders.

As a result, architects’ conceptual preferences and search for meaning production are the tools

79
Helena Webster (2011), Bourdieu for Architects, Abingdon, Oxon, & New York: Routledge, pp. 43–52.

80
Kim Dovey (2005), “The Silent Complicity of Architecture”, in Hillier, J. & Rooksby, E. (eds.), Habitus: A
Sense of Place, second edn, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, pp. 283–296, p. 283.
81
Stevens, The Favored Circle, p. 92.
82
Garry Stevens (1995), “Struggle in the Studio, a Bourdivin Look at Architectural Pedagogy”, Journal of
Architectural Education, vol. 49 (2), pp. 105–122, p. 113.

53
with which they increase their cultural capital in order to improve their positions in the
architectural field, according to Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production. How does this
increase of cultural capital take place? Architects should be interested in creating individual
distinctions, knowing subversive strategies, in order to set up distinct personal tastes as
effective means of coping with competitions in design battles. Hence, design concepts,
especially “fine art” concepts, at times seem to be the somewhat arbitrary result of architects
having to seek distinct positions for their own sake, rather than responses to common sense
and everyday life concerns. In some cases, concepts borrowed from some foreign field serve
as strategies for subversive groups to create an aesthetic rupture, such as deconstruction’s
rupturing of modernism. Some conceptual strategies can make designs seemingly outstanding
enough to win in competitions, such as the concept of “between the lines” of the Jewish
Museum and the “deconstruction” of Parc de la Villette. These strategies can help greatly in
maintaining or increasing the cultural capital of individual architects. For those architects with
higher cultural capital who are struggling in the restricted production faction, where there is
greater autonomy to produce pure art works and aesthetic philosophies are highly appreciated,
much more emphasis is placed on symbolic meaning, visual effects and concepts rather than
on pragmatic matters. These top architects’ designs are more implicit, because high-culture
producers tend to encipher their concepts to maintain the scarcity of artistic competence –
making it elusive, distinctive, and therefore valuable. Sometimes people cannot understand
the “conceptual meaning” through the body’s experience and common sense, without reading
the designer’s description; Wang Shu’s “Eight Unliveable Houses” is such an example.
Therefore, creating “conceptual meaning” is to some extent a means of maintaining
architecture’s autonomy: where there is higher autonomy, there is higher cultural capital, and
if architects have higher cultural capital, they will have more power to develop the principle of
stratification, to legitimate judgement, to dominate the field according to their personal
tastes.83 Consequently, in Bourdieu’s view, it is the capital-gaining intention and the internal
mechanism of the field of architecture that facilitate architects’ preferences for making
concepts, especially “find art” concepts. However, a good architect always sets out to find

83
Dovey, “The Silent Complicity of Architecture”, p. 283.

54
concepts from the context rather than making purely artistic concepts. A good architect ought
to approach a design not from a visual art perspective, but from the encounter with a diverse
range of pragmatic issues – site circumstances, function of the building, social and cultural
context, everyday life, building technologies and so on. This type of concept does not develop
solely for visual purposes, but from the attempt to find a way in which these pragmatic
concerns can be resolved.

1.2 What Is “Pragmatic Meaning”?

Different from the “conceptual meaning” that is generated by the architect – from his/her
deliberation about cultural-social values, philosophical aesthetics, building techniques, the
circumstances of the site and the complexity of the brief – “pragmatic meaning” is produced
as the body actually experiences a space. “Pragmatic meaning” emerges in spaces only when
the body interacts with the space, when an action or a practice takes place in an actual space,
in the light of common sense and habits arising from previous experience. “Pragmatic meaning”
is able to establish a physical relationship between space and everyday life, so that the space
where “pragmatic meaning” grows is not an object but a “thing” in Heidegger’s terms. 84
Producing “pragmatic meaning” is a process of converting an object into a “thing”.

1.2.1 Emerges from actual experience

Pragmatism goes against the Western tradition of ontology. It does not question the essence,
the truth, the ontological aspects of life; rather, it pays attention to what an object could bring
to us – what we perceive, how we are affected and how we can use the object, thus
pragmatism always reflects the empirical and practical aspects of life. Pragmatism tries to turn
away from “abstraction”, “verbal solutions”, “a priori reasons”, “fixed principles”, “closed

84
Adam Sharr (2007), Heidegger for Architects, Abingdon, London & New York : Routledge, pp. 101–
103.
55
systems”, “absolutes” and “origins”.85 It “tends towards concreteness”, “towards actions” and
“towards facts”. Pragmatism does not intend to provide us with “a solution”, but always
provides “an indication” of a framework in which people’s own work can be set.86

In architecture, “pragmatic meaning” is produced through the practical use of the space. This
way to have meaning does not aim for any particular result, but is more “an attitude of
orientation”: an attitude that always attempts to look away from “principles, categories,
supposed necessities”, and towards “fruits, consequences and facts”.87 “Pragmatic meaning”
is achieved as a result of what actually happens in a space. Individuals might generate different
kinds of meaning in the same space, as they take the space for different use; thus, “pragmatic
meaning” grows variedly and dynamically over time. Diverse activities might occur on the
same lawn. Some people might play football there, others might find it a good place for a picnic
and still others might use the space for a dancing party. The lawn means different things to
different people at different times.

There are two strands of debate in 20th-century Anglo-American aesthetics: analytic

philosophy and pragmatism.88 Analytic philosophy of art is the only mainstream tradition in
Anglo-American aesthetics, but it has sustained some changes because it is being challenged
by pragmatic theories. Analytic aesthetics follows the art tradition that reserves art’s
autonomy by identifying its concepts as high fine art. The Kantian notion of disinterestedness
is the key characteristic of this strand of thought, which asserts that aesthetics should express
a purely intrinsic, non-instrumental value for itself, but not for problems outside its defined
boundary. Thus this aesthetics limits itself in an isolated, autonomous realm and frees itself
from actual experience, sensuous feeling and bodily practice in everyday life. The notion that

85
Andrew Ballantyne (2005), Architecture Theory: A Reader in Philosophy and Culture, London & New
York: Continuum, p. 51.

86
Ibid., p. 52.
87
Ibid.
88
Richard Shusterman (1992), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Oxford, Oxon, &
Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, p. 3.

56
a judgement of taste cannot be based upon any empirical idea traps artists within narrow
rational boundaries and leads them to create rigid and lifeless works. However, associating art
with “high” taste which transcends the common sense of everyday life gives it a distinction
which enables socio-cultural elites to assert and reinforce their class superiority.89 This idea in
some way coincides with Bourdieu. Pierre Bourdieu’s book Distinction reveals that the Kantian
view is based in class domination. In Bourdieu’s view, Kantian art does not aim to offer any
pleasure or interest and escapes from human sense to a higher “truth” – a disinterested value.
But this universal truth, to Bourdieu, is “a paradigm case of ideology”: it conflates “taste” with
“truth”, and this conflation has been socially misperceived as natural.90 As a result, it could be
concluded here that “theories which isolate art and its appreciation by placing them in a realm
of their own, disconnected from other modes of experiencing” are embedded in social
institutions and thinking habits.91

The reason analytic aesthetics disparages experience is that it follows the aesthetic tradition
of Greek thinkers who were in favour of something more theoretic and rational, while it treats
bodily experience as “a realization of [the] inferior portion of nature”.92 Science and theory
exhibit “necessities and universalities”, but experience reflects “contingencies and partialities”.
Thus, the traditional aesthetics places practical activities below theoretical activity, thinking
the former dependent, deficient and always an “arbitrary addition to nature”, while the latter
is independent, free and self-sufficient, and is the only “authentic expression of nature”. 93
Therefore, the sensorial and empirical part of things has always been depreciated, considered
as not able to subsist independently for itself, but dependent upon the “truth” of things.
Fortunately, turning away from traditional thinking which ranks experience as secondary to
analytic aesthetics, the modern tendency tries to re-evaluate the sensorial and empirical part

89
Ibid., p. 19.

90
Kim Dovey (2005), “The Silent Complicity of Architecture”, in Hillier, J. & Rooksby, E. (eds.), Habitus: A
Sense of Place, second edn, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, pp. 283–296, pp. 288–289.
91
Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 12.

92
John Dewey (1929), Experience and Nature, London: G. Allen & Unwin, pp. 354–355.
93
Ibid., p. 355.

57
of culture and put experience ahead of rationality. As a result, the distinction is no longer
between theoretic judgement and practical judgement of beauty, but “between those modes
of practice that are not intelligent, and those which are full of enjoyed meanings”.94

John Dewey was the main contributor to this turn of aesthetics from the analytic to the
pragmatic. One of Dewey’s most important ideas is his insistence that “philosophy should
begin and end with experience taken in the richest, deepest sense”. He claims the quality of
an experience is the key to philosophical understanding. The quality is inherent in the fact that
we can perceive, value and act – we can perceive “the fresh, soft, translucent greens of leaves”
as referring to the quality of early spring while we can notice the “the hardened, fatigued,
desiccated greens” as indicating the quality of early autumn. 95 Living in the fact is what
Dewey’s philosophical orientation is based on. There is no pure reason that is prior to and
beyond life and that we have to endeavour to approach. Knowledge and philosophical thinking
come from the sensuous experience of everyday life. On the question “Who determines art’s
value?”, a compartmentalised definition asserts that this value is to be determined by internal
standards and procedures separated from practical meaning, but according to Dewey aesthetic
value can never be fixed by theory or criticism but should be tested in experience.96

One of the most central features of Dewey’s aesthetics is its “somatic naturalism”. This idea
aims to root aesthetics in the everyday needs and practical activities, in order to reach the
continuity of aesthetic experience with normal processes of living.97 Art is a consequence of
the interaction between a living organism and its environment – a product presenting human
actions, efforts and materials. Kant’s error is to assume art should be defended as escaping
from experience but having pure intrinsic value, and this view is accompanied by an idea that
pragmatic value is something opposed to intrinsic value. However, Dewey argues that art’s

94
Ballantyne, Architecture Theory, pp. 62–63.

95
Mark Johnson (2013), “Dewey's Big Idea for Aesthetics”, in Bhatt, R. (ed.), Rethinking Aesthetics: The
Role of Body in Design, London: Routledge, pp. 36–50, pp. 38–39.

96
Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 46.
97
Ibid., pp. 6–16.

58
value lies in reflecting pragmatic value and in satisfying everyday life in a more practical way.

Another term explained in Dewey’s writing is “organic unity”.98 As the theories which isolate
art and its empirical appreciation by placing them in a realm of their own are disconnected
from other modes of experiencing, he was keen to connect sensorial parts of culture to
ideological theories to create an organic unity. This unity is dynamic, the parts evolving and
unfolding into the whole they form. There is no dogma to guide these parts in a particular
direction, no isolated authentic significance; there is only a seeking to relate things, which will
in turn generate plurality in interpretations and experience.99 Therefore, pragmatic aesthetics
is neither a static abstraction nor a universal truth from which everything else follows, but
rather it attempts to be a dynamic accumulation of the interaction between existing
circumstances and living intentions in everyday life. Take the lawn example again: the lawn
offers certain circumstances, its own features along with weather, its location and
surroundings. When people come across it, it makes them imagine what they could do with
this space according to their personal needs – their intentions in everyday life. When the
conditions of the lawn match with people’s personal intentions, the interaction between the
two will happen, and “pragmatic meaning” will be dynamically generated.

Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction shows a most radical attempt to overthrow analytic

aesthetics by challenging the idea that structure is centred, having a definite beginning, middle
and end, and having parts integrated firmly.100 The concept of Derrida’s deconstruction is to
show that things, including texts, institutions, traditions, societies, beliefs and practices, do
not have definable meanings and determinable missions, but always encompass more than
any one meaning would impose and always attempt to go beyond their boundaries. A
“meaning” is a way to contain and compact things into a unity, but deconstruction intends to

98
Ibid., p. 33.

99
Ballantyne, Architecture Theory, p. 34.
100
Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 63.

59
transgress these confines and interrupt the gathering together of such unity. 101 Derrida’s
decentred understanding brings unrestrained freedom, which rests on the term “différance”.
Différance is about a system of differences, the distinction between things, by which each item
separates from others. It also refers to a process of deferral or postponing – that is, the
meaning of an item can only be grasped after being interpreted by the knower, but the signifier
itself has no function. It also means differing, disagreeing and dissembling. 102 Nothing can be
self-sufficient, existing or being signified by itself, in the light of deconstruction.
Deconstruction shows a radical resistance to the concept of everlasting fundamental meaning
in which analytic aesthetics is rooted.

However, differing from deconstruction’s radical challenge to analytic aesthetics, Richard

Shusterman’s pragmatic aesthetics sees pragmatism as a mediator between analytic aesthetics
and deconstruction. In Shusterman’s view, things can be multiple-interpretive to some degree,
but the interpretations will have something in common. Shusterman’s pragmatism agrees with
the idea of “common sense”, which deconstruction opposes, but it is closer to deconstruction
in the sense that individual parts and things have their separated features and have
interpretable potentials. In other words, Shusterman’s pragmatism sees not an autonomous
realm existing beyond the real world, or one solely integrated whole with parts firmly
connected, but rather a world based on common sense in which things are partly joined and
partly separated, and things can be identified by practices and purposes. Shusterman’s
pragmatism does respect differences, but it does not advocate the radical anti-essentialism
which insists on absolute self-interpretation and particularity. 103 When there is activity
occurring on the lawn, and thus “pragmatic meaning” is produced, how the space is used
should depend first on the users’ imagination. This imagination comes from users’ common-
sense understanding about the interaction between space and activity, and this common

101
Jacques Derrida & John D. Caputo (1997), Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques
Derrida, New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 31–32.
102
Michael Benedikt (1991), Deconstructing the Kimbell: An Essay on Meaning and Architecture, New
York: Lumen, p. 10.
103
Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, pp. 81–82.

60
sense is built up through their previous experience of spatial practice. Since people will have
similar experience when they are living in the same social environment, they will have
something in common, such as habits of thinking and practising. Hence, it seems the meaning
of the lawn could be multiple-interpreted by users in different ways, but all users can share
the same common sense which informs these interpretations of use, such as sunny days being
suitable for sunbathing or a lawn of particular dimensions being suitable for a football game.

Shusterman points out that deconstruction does one thing wrong in that it believes in non-
foundational interpretations only, and overlooks that there is another thing, understanding,
which is un-interpreted but could also affect our way of interacting with the world. Shusterman
recognises understanding and considers the distinctions between understanding and
interpretation. Understanding implies the truth of actual experience, but interpretation is
merely partial explanation. Understanding comes from unthinking and unconscious processes,
while interpretation needs conscious and deliberate thoughts. Linguistic formulation is
necessary for interpretation, as this is used to translate one meaning into another, but
understanding does not require linguistic articulation. A proper action or gesture is enough to
imply the meaning behind something. There might be something that we experience and feel,
however, that is not necessary, or is unable, to be described by conscious language, but that
will still be part of a background of understanding when we set out to interpret objects.104

Pragmatic aesthetics sees architecture as a living art to serve everyday needs, rather than a
self-sufficient matter of pure art transcending living realms. Architecture is therefore the
consequence of attempts to understand living conditions using human beings’ common sense
as well as of struggles to cope with everyday life problems. Architecture creates places in which
everyday needs can be served, places which make events happen, places where the body
bonds with the physical environment, and thus places in which pragmatic meaning emerges
from actual experience.

104
Ibid., pp. 115–135.

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1.2.2 The space with “pragmatic meaning” is a symbolic sign

It has been discussed that concept acts as an iconic sign, as the relationship between concept
and design (sign and object) lies in resemblance. However, the iconic sign does not have a
completely triadic relationship, because the relationship between an iconic sign and its object
is independent of the knower. The indexical sign also has a degenerate triadic relationship, as
the relationship between indexical sign and object, such as that between smoke and fire, is
prior knowledge for the knower. Only the symbolic sign has a triadic relationship, because the
symbolic sign has to be produced by the knower, whereas the former two signs are something
used by knower. As has been stated, the process of design is one in which a building is given
form and is also the way in which the “conceptual meaning” proposed by the architect is
materialised and embodied in physical spaces. Once a building has been accomplished,
physical spaces will have actual effects on users, so that the building will be transferred from
being an iconic sign to the architect into being an indexical or symbolic sign to users. Some
spaces have already been well defined by the architect, and when users passively follow the
architect’s definition, the space will be an indexical sign. However, when users actively seek
the meaning of a space for themselves, the space will become a symbolic sign – one where the
completed “pragmatic meaning” is produced by users and attached to the space.

For a space to be a symbolic sign, certain conditions have to be satisfied in a certain context.
For example, for a particular space to signify the idea of a football field, the conditions are for
a certain amount of space, fair weather, open air, preferably covered with grass and so on.
After that, there should be a ball and a group of players. How all of these factors join together
to form a symbolic sign depends on people’s mental association of the specific context with
the expected activity, a football game, and this in turn depends on their common sense, and
on previous or common habits. Therefore, the conditions influence knowers’ thoughts and
direct their everyday practice in a particular context. Thus, pragmatic practice could be seen
as a conditional action. Hearing or seeing a potential symbolic sign will lead people to make
the association with an action which matches the conditions in that context, thereby
confirming the symbolic sign.

62
Peirce divides beliefs into practical and theoretical. The theoretical belief is simply the
knowledge of god’s truth, static and permanent; practical belief is the uses of life, a habit of
thinking or behaving based on common sense. However, every theoretical belief has to be
proved by practical belief, so theoretical belief is eventually a conceptualised practical belief.105
Pragmatism is a method of attempting to clarify the meaning of propositions, so in architecture
pragmatism is one of the methods aiming to define the meaning of a space.

As discussed before, in a sign situation, the object relates to the sign and the sign causes the
effect. The effect on the knower is the interpretant. Where the iconic sign exists is usually the
place where the immediate interpretant emerges. However, the immediate interpretant can
be understood from the sign itself without the actual effect on the knower. The actual effect
on the knower which the sign determines is known as the “dynamical interpretant” in Peirce’s
terms. There are three sub-divisions of dynamical interpretant. The first is the emotional
interpretant, which is about the feeling produced by a sign. When we see an image of a red
heart, we may feel warmth and love. The feeling of warmth and love is the effect (interpretant)
the red heart has on us. A similar process takes place when a place brings people a feeling,
such as a feeling of being involved in landscapes on the Xiangshan campus.106 With the same
effect as that of images, spaces also offer an emotional interpretant to viewers. The second
sub-division is the energetic interpretant, which involves effort. The effort could be a physical
one, but could also be an exertion of mental effort. Soldiers moving their bodies according to
commands could be one example in this case. There is a direct connection between the
command and its corresponding body movement. The third sub-division is a habit, or a habit-
change.107 This sign allows possibilities for future interpretations and future developments and
requires the participation of knowers’ understanding and practice, and the sign involved in this
interpretant is known as the symbolic sign. A straight trunk could be a symbol of a pillar or a
beam in a building, a lawn in sunlight could be a symbol of a place for a picnic, and a window

105
Fitzgerald, Peirce’s Theory, pp. 62–65.

106
See details of Xiangshan campus design in Chapter 4.
107
Fitzgerald, Peirce’s Theory, pp. 78–79.

63
seat in a bay window could be a symbol of a comfortable place for an afternoon respite or
reading.

A thing becomes a symbolic sign as people use it or understand it based on their habits,
exerting a sort of “self-control” over present or future actions.108 “A process of self-preparation”
always tends to lead to action. A “fixed character” is roughly imagined and measured by self-
reproach over the course of an action, so that “subsequent reflection” will take place, and this
reflection will form part of the “self-preparation” for action on the next occasion.109 As the
action is repeated again and again, it will hopefully approximate towards the perfection of that
“fixed character”. Using a straight trunk for a pillar or beam is a convention (habit) that results
from repeated building activities, with repeated self-preparation and reflection in the process
of approaching the most effective method of building.

The perfection of that “fixed character”, in Peirce’s term, is known as the “final interpretant”,
the ultimate result of a process of inquiry or habit change, which would be regarded as the
“true interpretation”, but is recognised as an ideal. This is the third type of interpretant. It is
not necessary that a wholly new habit be produced in response to a sign, but it is about the
modification of a sign, a change in a person’s tendencies towards particular actions, according
to the existing circumstance of the sign, one’s previous experience and one’s will. Peirce points
out that habit changes usually take place in one of three ways: they “result from experiences
that are forced upon us from without; from repeated muscular activities; or, finally, from
mental experiments in the inner world”.110 However, in fact there is no end to inquiry or habit
change, as they are always in process, so that the “final interpretant” is merely a theoretical
ideal.

The main point in which Peirce is interested here is the fact that it is possible to develop habits
relevant to the outer world as a result of mental experiment. Peirce concludes that as “we

108
Charles S. Peirce (1934), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Volume 5), Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, p. 279.

109
Ibid., p. 280.
110
Ibid., p. 146.

64
consider ways in which our conjectures could be modified, we are concerned about relatively
future tenses, with open possibilities. The species of future tense of the interpretant is that of
a conditional mood, the ‘would be’.”111 It seems that we are always in some way reforming our
habits according to the dynamic circumstances in which we are situated, and we need to be
open minded in order to embrace future possibilities that may fit our lives better. The exercise
of the habit is conditioned by the presence of the proper stimulus. If certain conditions are
given and if a certain result is desired, the habit will function and the habit change might take
place. The lawn and its surrounding factors are given conditions; when people come across a
lawn, if it induces in them, with the help of their common sense, a desire to act in a particular
way, their habits will function on the lawn and will in turn be changed according to the current
circumstances. The fact that in cooler climates people prefer sitting in sunlight, while in hotter
regions people often choose to stay in shadow, and in some places people move between the
two depending on the season, is an example demonstrating habit change in response to
varying circumstances.

Therefore, the effects of signs include iconic effect, emotional or energetic effect and habit.
Habit is the most effective. When a sign user is engaged in an inquiry, what he employs is his
habit. The habit determines what he intends and he does, so that the habit constitutes the
entire meaning of the sign he engages with – that is, the “pragmatic meaning”. “Pragmatic
meaning” is produced and accumulated through the use of habit and habit change. Although
there can also be iconic, emotional or energetic effect, these effects are not what are
ultimately sought in the pursuit of “pragmatic meaning”, which needs users’ mental and
practical engagement. If a sign represents its object by another sign, such as a certain
architectural form represents a historical event, the actual problem still remains unresolved
but passes to another locus. However, by pursuing the “ultimate logical interpretant”, the habit,
it will avoid passing a problem along without resolving it.112

“Pragmatic meaning” likes to attach itself to living problems which we can see, hear and

111
Ibid., p. 147.
112
Ibid., p. 170.

65
experience in everyday life. In order to resolve those problems, it needs to take given
conditions into consideration, including environmental conditions, the materials of objects,
usability and the like, in order to realise users’ intentions. The way to solve those problems is
through habit, or the ever-evolving habit change resulting from the rethinking and
modification of previous experience.

Pragmatist philosophers assert the importance of thinking things afresh, instead of pretending
to have arrived at the final truth.113 This idea seems to coincide with the idea of habit change.
When individuals come across a new experience that creates a problem for them, this is the
time at which they set out for new ideas. They may realise the internal contradictions of old
ideas or the incompatibility between old theories, or find that old values cannot satisfy the
current situation any longer; thus, from then on they begin to seek a modified opinion. The
ideas are never “true”, but are merely something gratifying a current desire to develop one’s
subjective beliefs. New ideas rest on old and develop them by adding new facts; the new idea
therefore seems the truest to us, as it provides the most apposite answer to our current
concerns. Therefore, thinking afresh means that rather than an end, there is a constant and
cumulative process of forward movement. There is never a terminal point, but there are
always developing meanings attaching to the present. Thus, habit is never a terminal point: it
is continuously changing as people are constantly encountering new experience and
foreseeing new consequence.

Therefore, habit is not a static and permanent truth, but it acts as a most appropriate answer
to the present concerns in a certain context. This answer is changeable from time to time and
place to place, according to the conditions in that time and place. The transformation of
vernacular architecture could be one example presenting habit change throughout history. The
building forms in vernacular architecture were temporary answers to their conditions. When
people improved their building technologies or changed living habits, or there were changes
in climate conditions, their answers in the form of buildings would be adjusted. Building forms
are signs implying those contextual changes. The interpretants of the signs lie in timely

113
Ballantyne, Architecture Theory, p. 33.

66
reactions to changed living conditions. When people have a desire to change the physical
world and they make an effort to achieve that, habit change will occur. In addition, it has to be
noted that not only are habits different at different times, they are also distinct between
different social contexts. Naked sunbathing on lawns or beaches is quite often seen in
European countries in summer, but it is rare in Eastern countries, and absolutely impossible in
Islamic countries. Habits are also determined by social consciousness.

1.2.3 The prerequisite of being a “thing”

In the past, architecture could have meaning by allowing people to understand it through
socially shared ideas. Myths and religious stories often played a role in shaping collective ideas,
and public buildings often reflected and reinforced these ideas. Since everybody in a given
social context had already had shared ideas in mind, people could understand what a building
meant in the same way. However, in the present day there is a loss of association with shared
codes in everyday life, as the increasing influence of technology diminishes the possibilities for
evoking real meanings in life. The disappearance of old “representations of shared meaning”
and the rise of contemporary “technical representations” bring a risk to architecture in that it
displaces “meaning in architecture from human experience to the visual qualities of surface
and appearance”.114 Therefore, this change gives rise to a transformation in the emphasis of
architecture from shared experience to the representation of visual appearance and
innovative technology. In the past architecture manifested and represented the values of its
builders, who understood themselves as part of the community as other people did. The
builders built their houses according to living requirements and conventional values, but now
architects and critics tend to see architecture from the perspective of visual aesthetics rather
than empirical perspectives. Architects today prefer architecture to be artistic installations,
and architecture magazines demonstrate that they are in favour of visual appreciation by
presenting a great many images of pure architectural spaces, without any people or activity.
In addition, architecture is keen on discussing styles of building forms; each style is associated

114
Sharr, Heidegger for Architects, pp. 101–103.

67
with a movement in architectural aesthetics, such as eclecticism, neo-classicism, romanticism
and modernism. However, to Heidegger, the priority of visual aesthetics in architecture should
be questioned, and experience should be emphasised. To do this involves not only the visual
sense; all bodily senses need to be engaged, as well as habits generated through repeated
interaction between body and space.

Heidegger sees a building more as a “thing” than as an object. Something becomes a “thing”
because it engages in everyday life and establishes a physical and intellectual relationship with
human sense. Visual aesthetic concepts are far from daily practice, so that they can only
remain as objects, but if something actually interacts with daily life, it will become a “thing”.115
Heidegger thinks that something we feel near to us is a “thing”. Nearness can be encountered
when we are experiencing a “thing” in everyday life rather than an object. Nowadays all
distances in time and space are shrinking because of new technologies. But the decrease of
distances in time and space brings no nearness, as the nearness does not consist in shortness
of distance. Nearness can only be reached by actively approaching an object through bodily
practice other than simply presenting the object in front of the eyes.116

When an object is trying to build up a relationship with everyday life, it needs the involvement
of the existing conditions of the object, common sense, people’s intentions and habits. When
an object interacts with daily life, then people feel nearness; this is also the point at which
“pragmatic meaning” attaches to the object, and thus the object becomes a “thing”. In other
words, whether or not an object can become a “thing” is determined by whether or not
“pragmatic meaning” is able to be attached to the object. “Pragmatic meaning” is a
prerequisite for making an object a “thing”. In Heidegger’s terms, “dwelling” refers to the place
where “pragmatic meaning” grows. Not all buildings are dwellings. We always view a building
as an art work or as a technical construction. But when we speak of a “dwelling” we usually
think of an activity, or several activities, happening within the space.117 To say “we dwell there”

115
Ibid., p. 29.
116
Ibid., p. 25.
117
Martin Heidegger (2001), “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”, in Poetry, Language, Thought, New York:
68
means to inhabit the space, to practise there, to attach ourselves to a place and engage in
everyday experience there; thus “pragmatic meaning” is generated in a space as we dwell in
it.

To clarify what a “thing” is and how an object establishes its relation to daily life and then
becomes a “thing”, Heidegger takes a jug as an example.118 The jug is a “thing”. As a vessel, it
is something self-sustained and self-supporting. This function of independence separates the
jug from an object, because this feature makes it useful to people in their everyday lives.
However, this self-sustained and self-supporting jug remains an object only, unless it is used.
Only when the jug is actually involved in people’s lives will it be seen as a “thing”. The capacity
of the jug to be a “thing” consists not in its being a represented object, but in the process of
producing the jug when people are thinking of the jug’s feature of self-support before they
make it. People think about the purpose of the jug. The aim is to make a vessel for daily use.
The “thing” cannot exist until people’s thinking has first reached the thing as a “thing”. From
start to finish, the potter takes hold of the impalpable void and brings it forth as a container in
the shape of a containing vessel, and finally the jug becomes a “thing” to use. So the relation
between the produced “thing” and daily life resides not in the jug’s outward appearance, but
in people’s intention to make something to meet their empirical needs, based on the
consideration of given conditions and the conduct of their common sense and habits, which is
the essence of “thingness”.

To Heidegger’s understanding, a building ought to act as a “thing”, associated with everyday

life, representing the sense of “thingness”. A building will become a “thing” only when it is
designed from a pragmatic standpoint. Before drawing up a scheme for a building, design
concepts need first to echo living demands, just as the void inside the jug, its impermeable
sides and bottom and its open top accord with the demand for a vessel for living use. Therefore,
following empirical ideas, after the building has been constructed, when people come to use

Perennial Classics, pp. 143–159, p. 45.

118
Martin Heidegger (2001), “The Thing”, in Poetry, Language, Thought, New York: Perennial Classics,
pp. 161–180, pp. 165–172.

69
it and when the spaces interact with activities, the building will become a “thing” which
contains a solid relationship between physical spaces and daily life.

In brief, the first chapter provided a detailed illustration of the two ways of meaning, labelled
“conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning”. It can be seen that there is a significant
distinction between these two ways of meaning – “conceptual meaning” is “generative”, a
product of the architect’s mental processes as he/she encounters the context of a project,
while “pragmatic meaning” is “emergent”, developing from the activities that actually happen
in spaces. The former is an iconic sign, the latter a symbolic sign. When “pragmatic meaning”
becomes attached to an object, it will be converted into a “thing”. However, this does not mean
these two kinds of meaning are completely separate. In fact, they are associated in various
ways in actual projects. The subsequent chapters will try to explain how these two kinds of
meaning are associated by looking at particular projects.

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Chapter 2. Cultural Liberation: The Permeation of “Conceptual meaning” and

“Pragmatic Meaning”

This chapter attempts to discuss the association of the two ways of meaning in order to clarify
the attitude that architecture can both have a strong concept and practically works – neither
of them is dominant. It sees these two ways of meaning as independent but mutually impacted
and reflected by each other. When an architect is producing “conceptual meaning” in a
building, pragmatic matters are usually taken into consideration in search of a design concept;
when buildings come into use, the architect’s concept might be realised if the events
happening in the space are in line with the architect’s intentions, so that the “pragmatic
meaning” emerging in actual spaces reflects the concept generated from the architect’s mind.
One reason of choosing Centre Pompidou as an example is to interpret that how the two kinds
of meaning mutually permeated in a relatively independent relationship – the pragmatic
matter is also significant for the making of the concept and the actual use of the building.
Centre Pompidou was designed in the context of cultural liberation where popular culture is
highlighted and high culture is no longer superior, so that the design concept is made in the
light of cultural liberation, it concerns public interests, and the thinking of concept is towards
individuals and diversity, thus rendering the two ways of meaning to be associated. Another
reason of choosing Centre Pompidou is intending to explain the pragmatic role of iconic
buildings in enhancing public life and liberating culture. Iconic buildings are always used to
represent certain political or cultural hegemony with their distinctive building images. Centre
Pompidou is not an iconic building only that presents its visual image, but it has pragmatic role
– the architect turns attention to social engagement issues and how the building would
function to accommodate those issues. The highly social involvement will then reinforce the
idea of cultural liberation. The purpose here is to claim the importance of social engagement
of iconic buildings in realising the concept of cultural liberation.

Before focusing on the design concept and programmes happening in the building, I will
discuss more broadly the cultural and social context in which the design of Centre Pompidou
was born.

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2.1 Cultural Liberation

Cultural liberation means to resist the distinction of high culture, to remove the cult of high
art, to offer the public a chance to access all forms of arts, and reidentify the value of arts. The
idea of cultural liberation links to the rise of mass culture or popular culture, which started
from the mid-20th century. Before that, artists and designers aimed to enhancing existing
institutions of culture and distinguished between elite and public culture. The rise of mass
culture gave rise to cultural secularisation and commercialisation, and the public became
cultural consumers within the movement. Therefore, the public becomes the main subject in
the realm of popular culture, moving from the edge to the centre of cultural authority. The
design concept of Centre Pompidou is generated exactly within this cultural movement: the
ideas such as public accessibility of art and information exchange are highlighted in the
concept. Richard Shusterman took great pains to assert that popular art has aesthetic value in
his book Pragmatist Aesthetics. Popular art is neither harmful to social life, nor degraded and
hopeless, but rather has positives and potentials to maintain a robust social life.

2.1.1 The rise of mass culture

As early as the 1840s, French political theorist de Tocqueville had commented on mass culture
and its effects on social culture. In the book Democracy in America he points out that high
culture is under threat from the monotony of daily life. Commercial culture moves to the
centre of the cultural realm. Culture is then perpetuated on the basis of how to satisfy public
taste, thus losing its aesthetic value.119 De Tocqueville, thinking from an elitist understanding,
sees mass culture as being opposite to high culture and threatening to the existing institution
of culture.

It was in the 1930s that mass culture was specifically defined and systematically discussed, by
the so-called Frankfurt School. 120 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, members of the

119
Alexis de Tocqueville (1988), Democracy in America, transl. Dong Guoliang, Beijing: The Commercial
Press, pp. 580–82.
120
Yang Lu (2000), Popular Culture and Media, Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company, p. 51.
72
Frankfurt School, coined the term “culture industry” and first presented it in the book Dialectic
Enlightenment. “Industrial culture” refers to the production system of popular culture that is
akin to a factory producing standardised cultural goods, such as films, videos, magazines, etc .121
The Frankfurt school always negatively criticised mass culture; especially after the mid-20th
century with the spread of the entertainment industry and the rise of mass media, the School
clearly realised the negative social impact of mass culture. So the Frankfurt School essentially
looks at mass culture from an elite viewpoint, regarding it as a non-culture or anti-culture,
lacking aesthetic value and creative power. The public become passive consumers, receiving
information without active consciousness, motivation or critical thought. Dwight Macdonald’s
ideas about mass culture follow those of the Frankfurt School, asserting that the aim of mass
culture is to amuse the public, and that seeking this amusement is the fundamental end for
public consumers.122 But when the value of culture is merely amusement, culture loses its
essential meaning, its distinction and innovation, becoming a standardised and superficial
programme, and the public lose their independent and plural minds – what is produced is a
homogeneous culture.

Since the 1950s, however, the opposite opinions towards mass culture have been become
more prominent. Some theorists have realised the importance of mass culture in people’s daily
lives and cultural tastes, and they have noted the artistic value and techniques of mass culture,
thus offering a more comprehensive and objective understanding of it. High culture is no
longer considered inherently superior to popular culture; everyday life has been taken into
cultural studies. Richard Hoggart, a British theorist of cultural studies, analysed British
working-class life in the book The Uses of Literacy, where he insists that working-class people
are not passive consumers of mass culture; on the contrary, they have personal interests and
tastes, and have the right and the ability to make choices and undertake critical thinking.123
There is no singular standard, and the public have not, as the Frankfurt School insists they have,

121
Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno (2002), Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments ,
ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, transl. Edmund Jephcott, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. p. 107.
122
Dwight Macdonald (1962), Against the American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture, London:
Gollancz, p. 12.
123
Richard Hoggart (1957), The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working Class Life, London: Penguin Classics.
73
lost independent consciousness, critical opinions or the ability to make choices. Hoggart’s view
focuses on living culture, regarding culture as a way of life, existing in social practice. This
echoes Shusterman’s pragmatics, which sees aesthetics as living beauty. Raymond Williams’
idea is parallel to Hoggart’s, in his claim that popular culture is a new cultural form that is
possessed and favoured by, and amuses, the public. Williams doesn’t see popular culture as
something harmful to social wellbeing, but rather holds the view that culture is about life – it
comes from life and serves life.124

Mass culture is considered as being constructed by the lower social classes. This idea can be
related to Pierre Bourdieu’s homology that indicates that cultural taste corresponds to social
class. John Fiske thinks that mass culture is created by the subordinated part of the social class
which aims to resist authoritative power and express distinctive identity and value.125 It seems
that mass culture resides in “representational spaces” – a living realm where people can create
things they favour dynamically according to direct images and available sources, and the things
that can actually be perceived or described in the space.126 He also claims that mass culture
originates from people who expect to create something that they need. It is part of social
culture, arising from the most essential and fundamental needs of life, not something imposed
on it from outside. Therefore, Fiske’s idea somewhat echoes Dewey’s insistence that aesthetics
is rooted in everyday needs and practical activities, and thus there is a continuity between
aesthetic experience and normal processes of living.127

As mass culture is considered as being constructed by the subordinated part of the social class,
mass culture is always less favoured by cultural theorists or aestheticians who would like to
present their elite social identity. The theorists who are interested in mass culture look at
culture from a more critical perspective. Richard Shusterman is an aesthetician who favours
studying mass culture. In the book Pragmatic Aesthetics, he employs much effort to justify the

124
Lu, Popular Culture and Media, p. 13.
125
John Fiske (2001), Understanding Popular Culture, transl. Xiaoyu Wang & Weijie Song, Beijing: Central
Compilation & Translation Press, p. 28.
126
Henri Lefebvre (1991), The Production of Space, Oxford, Oxon, & Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, p. 39.
127
Richard Shusterman (1992), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Oxford, Oxon, &
Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, p. 6.
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value of mass culture. Shusterman takes rock music as an example to show how people actively
interact with the music using their bodies’ vigorous movement and thus always gain plenty of
pleasure. Compared with this, when people listen to classical music, they usually have to be
serious and quiet, body movement is not allowed, so that at times they become bored. The
rock music listeners firstly associate their bodies with the music instead of judging the music
straightforwardly through mental perceptions. Aesthetics can be about sensual pleasure:
people may get little pleasure from contemplation, but much from bodily experience.128 In this
sense, for popular art like rock music, aesthetics takes on a broader dimension – namely, the
sense of beauty can be gained from bodily pleasure and the mind can be constructed through
bodily experience. The Kantian notion that art does not aim to offer any pleasure or interest
and escapes from human senses to offer a disinterested value cannot be justified, but is only
an illusion constructed by cultural elites in order to reinforce the structure of cultural
distinction between elite and non-elite groups.129

Centre Pompidou was designed during a time when mass culture was spreading and becoming
acceptable in aesthetic discourse. Art and culture no longer belonged to the higher classes
only, and mass culture was no longer considered inferior to high culture. In 1969 President
Georges Pompidou took a decision that he would revolutionise ways of thinking about culture:
culture needed to be democratised and be open to all. Information exchange would be
important in the building. Mass information needed to be transferred and reproduced among
different disciplines within the Centre, so that, instead of defining separations between
disciplines, Pompidou decided to blend artistic museum, library and contemporary creation
together in one location in the heart of Paris, accessible to all members of the public and to
artists.

The rise of mass culture means that culture is liberated to the public. In the movement of
cultural liberation, the design concept is found from public consciousness and interests, the
thinking behind the concept is inclined towards the public, towards individuals and diversity.
The public becomes the main subject of the design instead of any hegemony of knowledge.

128
Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics, p. 245.
129
Helena Webster (2011), Bourdieu for Architects, Abingdon, Oxon, & New York: Routledge, pp. 43–52.
75
The purpose of the design is to create a realm waiting for the public to be engaged and to
prove the value of the concept. When people are experiencing the building, they, as the
subject of meaning production, will realise the concept and reinforce the idea of cultural
liberation – art and culture can be dynamically created, transmitted and experienced in the
building. Therefore, designed in the light of cultural liberation, the “conceptual meaning” and
“pragmatic meaning” are permeated with each other. The case study of Centre Pompidou tries
to clarify how the two ways of meaning interact within the context of urban liberation.

2.1.2 Social engagement in reinforcing cultural liberation

Besides the main purpose of choosing Centre Pompidou – to try to identify the interaction of
the two ways of meaning in the light of cultural liberation – another reason is my intention to
explain the pragmatic role of iconic buildings in enhancing public life and liberating culture.
This idea comes from my first visit to Centre Pompidou five years ago. Before that, I had heard
that the building was iconic and had a strong concept. But when I was there, I found what
impressed me was not the image of the building, but the sense of liveliness of the spaces
around the building. Then I started thinking that it may be the symbolic identity of the building
that attracts people to come, but that spatial vitality and social involvement is increased with
the help of the programmes provided by the building, so that there is a pragmatic role to the
iconic building in addition to its symbolic role. This pragmatic role has an effect on social
engagement, and therefore it could contribute to enhancing the idea of cultural liberation.

There are usually two dimensions to iconic buildings – symbolic and functional. In urban iconic
buildings the symbolic image has been seen to be more important, because they have such a
prominent presence in the urban landscape. Appearance is a determining factor in how the
public to respond to their surroundings. Thus, architects sometimes focus more on how
buildings look than on how they are actually used. It is not only architects who are striving to
search for symbolic meanings and translate these meanings into the symbolic forms of the
building; city managers also have to decide what kinds of meaning could be linked to the city

76
as a brand in the form of iconic buildings.130

Therefore, iconic buildings are in a way considered as art works, because as Goodman points
out, a building is a work of art when it signifies, refers and symbolises something else.131 Iconic
buildings always try to link the images of other objects directly – Jorn Utzon’s Opera House in
Sydney is a literal depiction of sailboats, or imply something through devious paths, along
several chains of referential links – which can often be found in buildings that attempt to
present political meaning, such as Reichstag renovation project. Hence, for iconic buildings,
what the building signifies and the building appearance are always put in the first instance.
Hence, iconic buildings are more likely to be positioned in relation to visual consumers instead
of actual users.132 Surface appearance and visual effects are more important in this case, so
that buildings are often designed from the outside in, from the vantage point of the external
gaze.

There is a tendency for urban regeneration projects to have iconic buildings with socially or
culturally meaningful components as their central focus, because to promote a city as a
cultural hub seems to be an effective way of promoting economic growth, and, where the
iconic image tends to dominate, cultural consumption usually plays a particular role as the
most visible aspect of a symbolic economy.133 Therefore, producing iconic buildings for urban
regeneration projects becomes a model in re-imaging cities and in creating new tourist
destinations. The opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao marked a flagship of re-
imaging the city with a focusing on an iconic building for economic and cultural purposes and
achieved remarkable success, since named the “Bilbao effect”.134 After that, numerous iconic

130
María A. Sainz (2012), “(Re)Building an Image for a City: Is A Landmark Enough? Bilbao and the
Guggenheim Museum 10 Years Together”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, vol. 42 (1), pp. 100–
132, p. 115.
131
Nelson Goodman (1985), “How Buildings Mean”, Critical Inquiry, vol. 11 (4), pp. 642–653, p.643.
132
Paul Jones (2011), The Sociology of Architecture, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, p. 120.

133
Steven Miles & Malcolm Miles (2004), Consuming Cities, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 45.
134
Jones, The Sociology of Architecture, pp. 116–117.

77
buildings mushroomed all over the world. In the UK, Imperial War Museum North in
Manchester designed by Daniel Libeskind, Sage Gateshead music centre in Newcastle designed
by Norman Foster and Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff designed by Jonathan Adams are
typical examples. All of these projects were accomplished at the beginning of the 21st century,
each associated with larger-scale regeneration plans for declining industrial sites. The symbolic
features of these buildings bring visual distinctiveness to the declining sites, and their cultural
features accessible to the public generate new events and social life that enable obsolete sites
to be revived. The involvement of iconic buildings in urban regeneration projects reflects the
fact that political and economic institutions are seeking to present a culturally and socially
meaningful narrative of the transformation of local economics, and the increasing production
of iconic buildings which are expected to be visibly dominant implies a transnational approach
that contributes to city images through their visual effect.135

As cultural institutions are signs of urban affluence, cultural places are connected with capitals.
So cultural facilities, such as museums, art galleries or concert halls, can promote the iconic
status of a place in a conceptual way, as the cultural capital which was planted into a building
is helpful to the building’s reputation and thus the building will become a “mental icon” in
people’s minds instead of a visual icon. This is why culture-led iconic buildings are the main
components in regeneration projects. For some buildings, such as Centre Pompidou, the
symbolic image of the building and its cultural reputation are public attractions. There are
buildings, such as Tate Modern and British Museum, that have a symbolic role without their
building’s appearance being crucial to it. They act more as “mental icons”, since their visual
appearance is second to their cultural reputation.

135
Ibid., p. 118.

78
Figure 12. Tate Modern, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, London, 2000.

Figure 13. British Museum, the core of the building was designed by Robert Smirke, London,
1852.

Iconic buildings seem to be responsible for representing a city’s image and bringing
development opportunities through their symbolic purposes rather than through functional
purposes. However, these two dimensions of symbolism and functionalism are not
contradictory. The symbolic image of the building signifies its cultural status in the city, which
brings the building a reputation and benefits the city’s fortunes. In the meantime, an eye-
catching symbolic form can attract public attention, thus bringing more public life to a place
and generating a more vibrant and friendly urban atmosphere. If the interior space of the
building is organised well, it will become an attractive place for social contact, as can outdoor
spaces; hence, both the interior of an iconic building and its surroundings can play an
important role in improving public life. In this sense, the form of iconic buildings also has the
capacity to activate urban public life, and thus it performs a pragmatic role. People might be

79
attracted by the symbolic appearance of the building at first, but the building is then able to
demonstrate a pragmatic end. Therefore, when architects are developing their design
concepts, they can (and should) take actual use into consideration rather than being
concerned with symbolic appearance only. Their concepts could be created from the intention
to contribute to social inclusion, community life, public communication and the like.

According to Richard Sennett, cities have for centuries provided places where human beings
could focus their social aspirations, experience the interplay of interests and test the
possibilities of human life. 136 However, they are not serving that function now. Due to the
impacts of secularisation and industrial capitalism, people have slowly destroyed the “public
realm”. The public realm becomes more intense and less sociable. For Sennett, a city is a place
where strangers meet. It should be “the forum in which it becomes meaningful to join with
other persons without the compulsion to know them as persons”. Since the rise of
secularisation, the loss of the belief in gods, and the cult of personality, social change has
resulted in the loss of the public realm. However, Sennett believes it can be reinstated once
more, but only if “public man” can somehow be resurrected. A well-designed spatial setting
might in some way resurrect “public man”, as spatial settings can induce social contact
between people. Spatial settings have catalytic effects on social contact, not just targeted at
one or the same activity, but allowing everyone to behave in accordance with their own
intentions and movements and so be given opportunities to seek out their own spaces in
relation to others there. It is social contact that turns collective spaces into social spaces. What
needs to be found are spatial forms that are well organised so that they offer greater
opportunities and causes for social contact.

Urban public realms can be found wherever we live, work and interact, serving as the main
social contact generator. What we call public life is enacted not only in open-air urban space,
but also in publicly used buildings.137 So, as well as streets and squares, there are theatres,

136
Richard Sennett (2003), The Fall of Public Man, London: Penguin, pp. xvi–xxi.
137
Herman Hertzberger (2000), Space and the Architect: Lessons in Architecture 2, Rotterdam: 010
Publishers, p. 134.
80
museums, stadiums and stations that are used by large numbers of people. Usually culture-
led iconic buildings are functioning as galleries, museums or music centres, which are good
communal places for public gathering and encounter. These culture-led iconic buildings can
offer great chances of social encounter for strangers who see, are seen and share the same
activities. Those buildings which have iconic roles have greater potential to attract the public
visually. But, after the buildings have attracted people, what they should do next to function
well, thus generating and reinforcing a better social life, is a more essential matter. Although
visual forms play an important role in making a city’s identity, functional terms should always
be the essence of architecture since whether or not a public space is used well is related much
more to the quality of the space.

This chapter studies one iconic building Centre Pompidou, tending to look at the pragmatic
role of Centre Pompidou, namely, as an iconic building, what it provides to pubic besides
contributing its image to urban landscape, as to effect social engagement and thus reinforcing
cultural liberation. Architects can choose a certain social-cultural tendency according to
relevant contexts and transplant them into design concepts, through which buildings become
socially meaningful. The design concepts the architects created is based on the context of
cultural liberalism. Such concepts created by architects can be seen as iconic signs according
to Peirce’s semiotics terms. Architects aim to embody these concepts in physical spaces, and
building forms act as the object of the iconic sign to architects. However, after people begin to
use the space, “pragmatic meaning” will be produced and attached to buildings in people’s
actual experience. This “pragmatic meaning” might correspond with architects’ “conceptual
meaning” and it might also have extra dimensions practically explored by users themselves.

Architects seeking to embody social values in building forms is a key way in which particular
buildings are endowed with social meanings.138 Centre Pompidou, which are both attractive
for their noticeable forms and high-profile designers, convey a strong social meaning of
cultural liberation through the design of large public accessible spaces, transparent surfaces,
flexible spaces and structures, and various social engagement programmes. Thus, when

138
Jones, The Sociology of Architecture, p. 30.

81
people encounter these buildings and take part in programmes, they may realise the meaning
that the buildings are attempting to express. Designed in the context of cultural liberation, the
design concept is populist, the idea of diversity and individual experience are stressed, thus
the building presents a pragmatic role, though it is an iconic building.

The next section looks at architects’ production of “conceptual meaning”, users’ production of
“pragmatic meaning”, and the interactions of these two kinds of meaning. When concepts are
followed by the idea of cultural liberation instead of symbolic images, this gives rise to
associations with both kinds of meaning: the thinking of concept is towards public, towards
individuals and diversity. The purpose of the design is to create a realm waiting for public to
be engaged. When people are experiencing the building, people could realise the concept and
reinforce the idea of cultural liberation.

2.2 Cultural Liberation in Design: Where “Conceptual Meaning” and “Pragmatic Meaning”
Meet

Designed by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Centre Pompidou boasts a series of
innovations that make it a pioneering and emblematic building of the 20th century – the
inspiration and the prototype for a new generation of cultural centres. It marks a watershed in
the complex relationship between politics and culture in France, rethinks public life in the city,
and launches a new approach to cultural buildings that breaks down the monumental elitism
of former cultural institutions.139 With its use of steel and glass and the externalisation of its
load-bearing structure, together with circulation and services, Centre Pompidou is known as
the heir to the architectural utopias of the 1960s, reflecting ideas in the work of Archigram,
Cedric Price and Superstudio.140 The design concept of Centre Pompidou is not only focused

139
Kenneth Powell & Richard Rogers (1999), Richard Rogers: Complete Works Volume 1, London:
Phaidon, p. 120.
140
Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s based at the Architectural
Association, London. It was neo-futuristic, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from
technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects.
Committed to a “high tech”, lightweight, infrastructural approach that was focused towards survival
82
on visual symbolism; the idea of cultural liberation is engaged in the way that “conceptual
meaning” is found, and has been embodied in the design of its physical spaces. In actual use
of the building, this idea of cultural liberation is reflected in management proposals and the
proceeding programmes taking place in the Centre, through which “conceptual meaning” and
“pragmatic meaning” are associated. Therefore, the emphasis on a social tendency – cultural
liberation – enables “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning” to be linked, thus the
concern for a social value is seen as an interface where the two ways of meaning mutually
permeated.

2.2.1 Design concept

In 1969 President Georges Pompidou took a decision that he would revolutionise the way of
thinking about culture: culture needed to be democratised and be open to all, which was
proposed in the light of the idea of cultural liberation.

technology, the group experimented with modular technology, mobility through the environment,
space capsules and mass-consumer imagery.

Ceric Price was an English architect and influential teacher and writer on architecture. One of his
famous projects was the East London Fun Palace (1961), developed in association with theatrical
director Joan Littlewood. Fun Palace was based on a dream of creating a space where people in the
community could come together to celebrate arts, science and culture. Although it was never built, its
flexible space influenced other architects, notably Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, whose Centre
Pompidou in Paris extended many of Price's ideas.

Superstudio was an architecture firm founded in 1966 in Florence, Italy. It was a major part of
the Radical architecture movement of the late 1960s. It established three categories for future research:
the “architecture of the monument”, the “architecture of the image” and “technomorphic architecture”.
Superstudio soon became known for its conceptual architectural works, most notably the 1969
“Continuous Monument: An Architectural Model for Total Urbanization”. Their anti-architectural
proposals used grid systems as a way to mediate space.

83
Figure 14. Aerial view of Centre Pompidou and surroundings.

In the 1960s, traditional cultural facilities became no longer well adapted to the changing times.
Artists in the field of culture were demanding new places for exhibitions and creative activities,
while the public increasingly lost interest in contemporary art due to lack of comprehension,
as elites separated the arts from the public and set themselves up as the only players in the
field of art. Therefore, Pompidou thought, it was time to invent something new. Moreover,
since the 1950s Paris had gradually been supplanted by New York as the international cultural
centre. Georges Pompidou wished to restore France’s international influence in culture and
the creative arts and believed there was potential for France to remain a country for artists of
all nationalities and a chance to renew art structures.141 So a contemporary art centre would
be necessary, where artists could work together and connect with public. This was a new
model of what Pompidou struggled to create for disseminating culture, which had great
influence on the further design concept of the architecture.

141
Philippe Bidaine (2011), Centre Pompidou – Creation in the Heart of Paris, Paris: Centre Pompidou,
pp. 12–13.

84
Figure 15. The urban context with which Centre Pompidou engages.

Georges Pompidou chose a site for his new centre located in central Paris, Beaubourg Plateau.
This site lies north of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris and west of Marais, close to the
formerly magnificent 19th-century Les Halles markets which were moved out of central Paris,
leaving a void space that was eventually filled by a vast shopping centre and rail interchange.142
The site is one of the oldest areas in Paris: the road around the site is the original route of the
ancient Roman road. The houses were in poor condition and homeless people found refuge in
its dark and narrow alleys. When Haussmann was planning his major urban renewal project in
the second half of the 19th century, the poor living conditions led him to label Beaubourg
Plateau “unsanitary block no. 1”. 143 Buildings in Beaubourg Plateau were demolished in the
1930s, but nothing was proposed to be built in the following 30 years until Pompidou’s
decision of practicing his new culture model on the site.

Georges Pompidou’s vision for the new centre was something approaching a multi-disciplinary

142
Powell & Rogers, Complete Works Volume 1, p. 102.
143
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, pp. 14–15.

85
mega-machine. In this opinion, the architecture would not only include a vast gallery of
painting, structure and artistic installations, but there should be special facilities for music,
record albums, cinema and theatre experimentation, as well as a library offering the latest
books on the arts. 144 This multi-disciplinary project would go against traditional academic
compartmentalisation, which insisted that there should be definite separations between
disciplines. Wandering from music to creative art workshops, from library to theatre, from
cinema to museum would be easily achieved within one building.

Culture had been seen as capital which could only be employed among professionals and social
elites. However, the aim of Centre Pompidou was to liberate culture by resisting the distinction
of high culture rather than enhancing existing institutions. 145 So Pompidou envisaged that his
new centre would be a place where all people would feel free to enjoy cultural activities, and
no artist or professional would have the authority to separate themselves or their work from
the public, so that the public would regain an interest in the arts and social well-being would
be enhanced.

In overall, Georges Pompidou sought to create an open multi-disciplinary centre for the arts.
Pompidou’s ambition for this new cultural centre encompassed four key roles. First,
functionally, it would provide more spaces for more contemporary art exhibitions and creative
activities, so as to fill the gap in relation to demand at the time. Second, Centre Pompidou
would provide a great opportunity for Paris to rebuild its leading position in culture and the
arts, replacing New York. Third, Centre Pompidou would establish new institutional
approaches. Disciplines would not be compartmentalised rigidly, but could interact and be
mingled together. It would also resist elite culture and advocate a decentralisation of culture
that open it up to all. Fourth, Centre Pompidou would play an important role in regenerating
Beaubourg Plateau through its diverse cultural attractions and programmes. These visions

144
Ewan E. Branda (2012), The Architecture of Information at Plateau Beaubourg, PhD thesis, University
of California [Online], available at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0ww309s3 (Accessed: 2 March
2016), p. 33.
145
Kester Rattenbury & Samantha Hardingham (2011), Richard Rogers: The Centre Pompidou, London:
Routledge, pp. 16–17.
86
would then be taken into consideration in architectural concept making.

In architectural concept, Centre Pompidou was about creating a home for global artists, aiming
to achieve a mission of artistic globalisation and of establishing a storehouse of knowledge for
the public. Centre Pompidou would also be a laboratory for developing modern forms of
exhibitions. It was intended to be a machine for exhibition, with open-plan floors possessing
countless possibilities for temporary exhibition layouts according to the needs of artists and
their works.

The competition, held in November 1970, was unusual that it was anonymous and there were
no invitees; rather, it was open to all architects, regardless of their age, nationality, experience
and degree, which also reflected the idea of liberation. Moreover, the candidates were given
a “programme” which provided guidelines for the project. This programme was developed by
a team which included future users of Centre Pompidou, which shows the openness and
inclusiveness in the planning of the scheme. These future users were encouraged to add their
requirements into the guidelines. The most important requirement the team drew up was on
one the point about diversity – the originality of the project resided in the conjunction of
diverse artistic and cultural activities within one single building. Consequently, the programme
proposed two objectives: the flexibility of the interior spaces and the building’s relation to the
urban context.146

Both Georges Pompidou’s ambition and the programme for competitors provided architects
with hints for their architectural concept making. The expressed intentions, including
Pompidou’s idea of having an innovative, multi-disciplinary project, resisting cultural elitism
and encouraging popular culture, and the programme’s specification of the need for wide-
ranging public involvement, flexibility and a relationship with the urban context, were
expected to strongly influence the values that architects would seek to bring to the design. As
the users’ judgement was taken into account, which meant that how the building would
function in reality tended to have an impact and to become interlinked with architects’
“conceptual meaning” at the very beginning. Thus, when architects were processing their

146
Ibid., pp. 16–17.

87
concepts, the values outlined above would play a role as a stage backdrop working in harmony
and cooperatively with architects’ personal performances.

By June 1971, 681 proposals had been submitted, 500 of which came from overseas. In July
1971 the jury designated one winning project, which had been submitted by a young and
unknown team – Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Gianfranco Granchini, assisted by Ove Arup
& Partners. The jury claimed that only two teams, including the winner, opted to occupy only
a partial area of the site. The relationship between the building and its urban environment was
the determining factor for assessment. That is why they chose Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers
as the winning team.147 Building commenced in May 1972 and was accomplished in January
1977, with a total cost of €157 million.

The “conceptual meaning” the architects created lies in four key areas: relations with the
urban context, cultural liberation, structural and programmatic flexibility, and information
exchange. We can see that those values proposed by the architects overlap with the
programme’s objectives and Pompidou’s personal ambition, but now they were being
transformed into architects’ concepts, the iconic sign, which would then be embodied in
building forms.

147
Ibid., pp. 17–18.

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Figure 16. Draft design of Centre Pompidou: innovative, lively, flexible, fun and accessible to all.

Figure 17. Draft section of Centre Pompidou: The Piazza in continuity with the open ground
floor of the Centre and the idea of an exposed structural system.

For the first “conceptual meaning”, the architects laid emphasis on the continuity between the
centre and the city. Piano and Rogers aligned their building with a north–south axis, parallel
to the Rue Saint-Martin. This orientation made Centre Pompidou integrated with the urban
fabric, without standing out in such a way as to compete with the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de
Paris or the Church Saint-Eustache, which are of almost equal mass but oriented east–west.
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Piano and Rogers’ building only filled half of the given site. In doing so, their purpose was to
leave broader space for open-air activities, creating more possibilities to tie the building in
with the neighbourhood as well as providing a solution to the lack of urban space in this
neighbourhood.148 At the beginning this neighbourhood Les Halles had no open public space.
This gave architects the prompt that they should provide a vast public space open to all in this
neighbourhood. The overall concept of the Piazza (Plaza) was that there would be an
“explosion” of life in this big open space, in contrast to the density of the rest of the area. Les
Halles had many restaurants, small shops and markets, visited by millions of people who would
then all “explode” into this big space.149 In Piano’s view, for a city which has heavy traffic, such
as Paris, pedestrian zones are rather essential; while Centre Pompidou would work as a
“catalysing magnet” in its neighbourhood, a physical open public space around the building
was important to keep it apart from vehicle traffic, so as to ensure robust public activities
would happen around the Centre.150 The final decision in relation to the Piazza was to create
an inner courtyard in continuity with the open ground floor of the Centre. The Piazza would
gently slope down from the Rue Saint-Martin, a pedestrian street, all the way to the foot of
the building. Thus the Piazza would create a link with the neighbourhood as well as providing
plenty of open public space.151 This idea of linking the building with the surrounding urban
context and integrating open public space into the project was in compliance with the
programme’s requirement for a connection with the urban environment. The architects here
were working as meaning mediators.

148
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 20.
149
Rattenbury & Hardingham, Richard Rogers, p. 111.

150
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 45.
151
Ibid., p. 31.

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Figure 18. Masterplan of Centre Pompidou.

Richard Rogers sees the history of architecture as one of social and technical invention rather
than of styles and forms. During those periods when change quickens and turning points are
reached, innovation is more important than consolidation of conventions. 152 It is at such
turning points that new technological developments offer architects extraordinary
opportunities to evolve new forms and materials, but a more crucial social change also arrives
at these times – culture desires to be liberated and open to all. One of Georges Pompidou’s
anti-institutional intentions was to build a centre for the public, not a monument only for
specialist and cultural elites. Following Pompidou’s vision of resisting institutionalism, the
architects insisted that the language of the architecture should be expressed in a rejection of
the idea of a triumphant building. Thus, Centre Pompidou would work as a way to liberate
culture rather than institutionalise society – offering the public a curious and functional object,

152
Richard Rogers (2013), Architecture: A Modern View, London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, p. 7.

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winning over their suspicions and stimulating their interest.153 It would start a movement of
cultural liberalism in which all people would be welcome to actively enjoy artistic and cultural
events rather than creating a cultural monument and letting all worship it. In terms of the
exhibited objects, Centre Pompidou is intended to be a place of living arts, rather than a
pompous mausoleum for the art of the past.154 This idea in some ways follows Archigram’s
intention to liberate the arts into the world of real life, especially elite art such as paintings
and sculptures, teaming experience of urban life with artistic events.155 So the architects were
taking the concept to mean, most importantly, that the Centre would be a people’s place, and
therefore the design had to be fun and accessible to all.156 Piano envisaged that the building
would be a vertical village, where tourists, students, artists, specialists, passers-by and
Parisians could mingle, and enjoy the view over the city, visit exhibitions or read in the
library.157 The users’ well-being should be at the centre of the whole system, by offering them
a good range of services. In this way, the building would become alive.

Another requirement the architects incorporated into their “conceptual meaning” was
flexibility. The brief specified that there should be as much internal flexibility as possible, that
the future evolution of needs should be taken into account and that all sectors should be
treated in a way which allowed the possibility of adaptation.158 Thus, the themes of flexibility
and polyvalence were established early on. Piano and Rogers explained that their building
would not be a conventional architectural monument, but would be fluid, flexible and easy to
change. 159 Flexibility took various forms in the scheme. First, the building itself would be

153
Renzo Piano (1992), Renzo Piano Building Workshop: In Search of a Balance, Tokyo: Process
Architecture Co., p. 29.

154
Peter Buchanan (1997), Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Complete Works (Volume Three), London:
Phaidon Press, p. 10.

155
Bryan Appleyard (1986), Richard Rogers: A Biography, London: Faber, p. 183.
156
Rattenbury & Hardingham, Richard Rogers, p. 63.
157
Renzo Piano (2004), On Tour with Renzo Piano, London: Phaidon, p. 9.

158
Branda, The Architecture of Information, p. 79.
159
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 21.

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physically reconfigurable. Architects would make the building neutral and modular so that it
would allow for possible transformations in the future. The building would effectively be a
framework which would provide room for the improvisations of users. 160 This framework
basically consists of a system of exposed steel superstructure. There would be some parts of
building that would have shorter lives, such as lifts, toilets and service pipes, and would be
replaced periodically. Even the whole building would be changeable. As Rogers and Piano
explained, one way in which they would demonstrate the building’s capacity for change was
to specify the ultimate change: how to take the building apart if the day came that people no
longer wanted to use it. By simply breaking out a little concrete, the whole building could be
disassembled and the pieces could be taken away and reassembled elsewhere.161 The second
form of flexibility would be about programmatic evolution within the fixed architectural form.
This meant that in the future the Centre could potentially become a factory, a food store, a
school and so on. This kind of flexibility would be supported not only by the possible
reconfiguration of architectural forms but also by changes of programming and
management.162 Each of the five storeys is made up of a spatial enclosure with an open plan
which can be adapted to any activity. Structural systems were designed to be relatively
independent, able to be expanded or diminished according to activities.163 The architecture
would be a flexible container, wherein events would happen dynamically and interior spaces
would be transformable within the freestanding structural framework.

The decision to create a transparent façade also interpreted the idea of cultural liberation.164
Piano and Richard clearly expressed their intention of approaching the populism of culture by
abolishing the closed façade and creating a transparent façade so as to remove barriers which

160
Branda, The Architecture of Information, p. 96.

161
Rattenbury & Hardingham, Richard Rogers, p. 84.

162
Branda, The Architecture of Information, p. 97.
163
Massimo Dini (1983), Renzo Piano: Projects and Buildings 1964–1983, New York: Electa/Rizzoli,
p. 126.
164
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 20.

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block access to culture.165 So they intended to break down the conventional idea of a façade
and to create a “non-façade type of situation”.166 Transparency is essential to the democratic
concept, as it allows people to see into and out of the building. 167 The entire structure is
exposed and what can be read on the façade is revealing of its internal mechanisms, and this
enhances the feature of transparency of the building to passers-by. Therefore, Centre
Pompidou would be permeable from the streets. It was proposed to have several entrances
from various points on the ground floor and first floor levels. The transparency and
permeability would provide a strong sense of invitation and welcome, as to achieve the idea
of publicness.

Furthermore, it seems the architects submitted a playful scheme on the edge of architectural
conventions, which would in a way resist the aura of the museum elite. The strongest guideline
in the architects’ thinking was the requirement to design a party, an urban toy, rather than a
museum monument.168 Everything the architects did was part of an attempt to break away
from the classic modernist Corbusian tradition. 169 In short, to attract more people, the
architects proposed to invert conventional codes, make fun of existing institutions, demystify
monumental culture and create new gestures in order to start a new relationship between
people and art as well as a new way of presenting art and culture, closely corresponding with
Georges Pompidou’s anti-institutional vision.

The last element of the “conceptual meaning” for Centre Pompidou was to make it an
information exchanger, a machine of idea sharing. Georges Pompidou’s original intention was
for the building to be an information-renewing system. It was expected to disseminate news
about artistic creation, industrial design and up-to-date research by the institutions of its

165
Francesco Proto (2005), “The Pompidou Centre: Or the Hidden Kernel of Dematerialisation”, The
Journal of Architecture, vol. 10 (5), pp. 573–589, pp. 573–574.

166
Rattenbury & Hardingham, Richard Rogers, p. 87.

167
Victoria Newhouse (2008), “Richard Rogers + Architects, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris”, Journal
of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 67 (4), pp. 597–599, p. 598.

168
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, pp. 21, 27.
169
Rattenbury & Hardingham, Richard Rogers, p. 75.

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library and museum.170 What Piano and Rogers conceived is not only a “cultural centre”, but a
“live centre for information and entertainment”, a formula with a wide range of emphasis, and
“a dynamic communication machine”.171 The building provides information from the Centre to
the public on the Piazza, while people moving around on the Piazza are part of visual effect of
the Centre. The idea of the façade was to create something like a communication intermediary,
helping to exchange information between what is going on in the building and people in the
Piazza.172 The building also attempted to exchange information within and between internal
disciplines – exhibitions, library, museum, theatre and creative workshops, by creating chance
of contact between different activities.173 However, the brief pointed out that the concept of
information connection could not be self-sufficient: it would be meaningful only if activities
and ideas were produced by people in actual use.174

The Centre’s permeability, with outside public space, the flexibility of its interior spaces, the
transparency of the façade, and the fluidity between the inside and outside of the building as
well as between the Centre and the urban public space, made all kinds of exchanges possible
between different disciplines, between the Centre and urban public space, and between arts
and people, which would further achieve Georges Pompidou’s vision of the coexistence and
interaction of multiple disciplines.

Centre Pompidou was expected to discharge a number of responsibilities, from restoring

France’s international identity in creative art to regenerating Beaubourg Plateau, from being
consistent with the urban context to being flexible and polyvalent in programmes and
structural system, from presenting anti-institutional value and liberating culture to exchanging
information between multiple disciplines, as well as between the arts and people. Centre

170
Branda, The Architecture of Information, p. 33.

171
Deyan Sudjic (1994), The Architecture of Richard Rogers, London: Fourth Estate and Wordsearch,
p. 56.
172
Rattenbury & Hardingham, Richard Rogers, p. 65.

173
Ibid., p. 91.
174
Branda, The Architecture of Information, p. 68.

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Pompidou’s struggle results not only in the anti-conventional symbolic form of the building
but, more influentially, in an innovative way of engaging practically with the arts.

2.2.2 Everyday life at Centre Pompidou

Since the building was opened to public, and cultural events have been programmed and
carried out, “pragmatic meaning” emerges in the building, through which “conceptual
meaning” might be reflected in actual experience. The following will firstly look at
management intentions before going into “pragmatic meaning” of the building.

◼ Management intentions

President Alain Seban, appointed to the presidency of Centre Pompidou in 2007, has
encouraged the institution to adopt a strategic approach unique among major cultural
institutions. 175 This strategic approach re-confirms the mission of Centre Pompidou as a
platform for exchanges between society and contemporary creation in pursuit of the vision
outlined directly by President Georges Pompidou, and also overlaps with the design concept
of the architects of making the building an information exchanger.

On the basis of its strategic mission, Centre Pompidou has identified a number of priorities in
programming its activities. There are basically four priorities. The first is about showcasing
heritage of art. Second, Centre Pompidou has committed to clarifying its services by adopting
a programming strategy in respect of temporary exhibitions and has also been aiming to
develop new, more proactive multi-disciplinary programmes with a closer relationship with
artists. Third, as Centre Pompidou has reasserted itself as a cultural innovation platform, it is
a laboratory experimenting with new formats of intermediaries, shows and performances in
order to link arts and people. Fourth, Centre Pompidou aims to be a global player, in response

175
Centre Pompidou (n.d.), Perpetual Momentum and a Proactive Strategic Approach [Online], available
at: https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/The-Centre-Pompidou#75 (Accessed: 13 August 2015).

96
to the globalisation of artistic creation.

These missions and priorities in management terms correspond to a great extent with the
Centre’s “conceptual meaning”. Being a platform for information exchange between creative
arts and wider society follows the architects’ concept of Centre Pompidou as an information
exchanger between arts creation and the public, between the building and the outside
environment, and between diverse disciplines. Furthermore, Centre Pompidou’s policy of
regular renewal is correlated with the architectural concept of flexibility. Constant
development in programmes and updating in creative information are necessary so as to
maintain the Centre’s role in cultural innovation. Therefore, the management values and
“conceptual meaning” of the building have the same root, so that the “conceptual meaning”
which was created at the beginning and attached to the physical space of the building is more
likely to be realised through ongoing programmes and activities carried out under the strategic
mission.

◼ Achievements

Since the moment when Centre was opened to the public on 2 February 1977, it has rapidly
grown to be one of the most popular cultural venues in the world and one of the most visited
monuments in France. The late 1970s and the 1980s saw Centre Pompidou stage highly
influential exhibitions that made major contributions to the history of 20th-century art,
including the series “Paris-New York”, “Paris-Berlin”, “Paris-Moscow”, “Vienna: Birth of a
Century”, “Memories of the Future” 176 , which provide a sense of wide scope in cultural
interaction. A reorganisation in 1992 saw the creation of a department of cultural
development, responsible for a programme of live performance, film screenings, lectures,
symposia and debates, thus offering the Centre more cultural attractions.

Centre Pompidou was designed on the basis of a predicted 5,000 to 6,000 visitors per day. But

176
Centre Pompidou (n.d.), The History [Online], available at: https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/The-
Centre-Pompidou/The-history (Accessed: 9 March 2016).

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it has received over five times as many as this.177 During its first two decades, Centre Pompidou
welcomed over 150 million visitors. After Centre Pompidou underwent renovation work in
1997, it reopened on 1 January 2000, again meeting with great success, being visited by 16,000
people a day that year. 178 At present, Centre Pompidou welcomes some 3.5 to 3.8 million
visitors per year.

Data such as that above provides a sense of how Centre Pompidou has sought to approach
publicness and openness of culture. The details of programmes and events running at the
Centre will say more about what has been achieved.

◼ What is going on in the building?

In line with the “conceptual meaning” of the building and management approaches, Centre
Pompidou ultimately presents itself as a large-scale steel machine accommodating diverse
interactive programmes.

Figure 19. Section diagram of Centre Pompidou.

The large and slightly sloping Piazza, designed as an extension of the Centre, functions to lead
people towards the Centre and is seen as a magnet for the social life of the wider district. The

177
Renzo Piano (1997), The Renzo Piano Logbook, London: Thames & Hudson, p. 238.
178
Centre Pompidou, The History.

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Piazza is a convivial place where different publics intersect – visitors going to the museum,
readers going to the library, participants going to workshops, as well as large numbers of
tourists, street artists and street traders with their stalls on the ground. People from all over
the world experience the public space, enjoy the activities it offers and carry out their own
activities. People lie on the ground, watching the crowds in the escalators going up and down.
Some young people play guitar while some sit around singing together. Some people rest on
the steps, drinking and having their lunch, facing the colourful structure and seeing the moving
figures inside through the transparent façade. There are occasionally live performances on the
Piazza, which results in a crowd of people gathering together instantaneously, to later disperse
soon after the performances finish. Sometimes there are themed events on the Piazza held by
the Centre in conjunction with the festivals taking place inside the building. All of these
contribute to a relaxed and diverse atmosphere around the building that makes the Centre
Pompidou an inviting public space. The activities taking place are conditional, depending on
the spatial conditions and existing events. Many events themselves result in other events.
People of different ages can both pursue their own interests and have chance to meet others
who are different from them. It seems that Richard Sennett’s view, that a city ought to serve
as a place where strangers meet, has been realised here at Centre Pompidou.

Figure 20. Large public space in front of the Centre Pompidou building.

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Figure 21. Stall on the ground of Piazza.

Figure 22. Street artist in Piazza.

The Forum is the largest public space in the building, located mainly on the ground floor,
assisted by basement and mezzanines which extend along the entire length of the building.
The Forum is the heart of the building, serving as the common space for all departments, and
welcoming 25,000 visitors per day.179 It was designed to be a fluid extension of the Piazza. No
threshold, porch or step breaks the continuity between the outside Piazza and the inside
Forum. However, due to climate considerations it was not possible to implement this, and thus

179
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 48.

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the sense of continuity and fluidity was impaired to some degree. The security check and the
long queue it causes at the main entrance block the fluidity between Forum and Piazza even
further. The Forum more resembles an enclosed and covered urban plaza with its own cafe,
bookstore, shop and cinemas, and huge available spaces for temporary exhibitions and live
performances. At the same time, the glass wall enables people to perceive activities happening
in the Piazza and the surrounding city. So the continuity between inside and outside only exists
at the visual level in reality, with little physical continuity in terms of actual behaviour. In
addition, being permeable from the street is one of the ideas contained in the design concept
– it was proposed to have several entrances from various points on the ground floor and first
floor levels, which was supposed to provide a strong sense of welcoming. But having too many
entrances created inconvenience in terms of practical management, so that in the end there
are only two entrances open to the public – one main entrance leading to all departments
except the Public Information Library (BPI), and one entrance especially for the BPI. Therefore,
practical management considerations to some extent weaken the architects’ “conceptual
meaning” of liberating culture as much as possible by allowing access to creative culture
through a permeable façade.

Figure 23. Glass wall between Forum and Piazza.

Following the architects’ claims, the Forum, as the most polyvalent place in the building, serves
as the information connector where people accessing different departments meet, and where

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a diversity of activities and events take place. There is an information desk which acts as a
reception, where maps, workshop introductions and exhibition information are available. A
consultant team works there, waiting for enquiries from the public. Several LED boards and
big screens stand scattered throughout the Forum, showing advertisements for applications
designed by Centre Pompidou and ongoing exhibition information, as well as forthcoming
workshops and other events. These LED boards and screens work as an accessory to the
information desk, disseminating news of the arts in order to connect the public with the arts.
The huge space of the Forum is available for temporary exhibitions and live performances.
Many different artistic displays have been arranged in the Forum since it was opened. There is
a 900-m2 hollow in the centre of the Forum, which makes the continuity between the ground
floor and basement possible and enables some art works which need more space in height to
displayed and to be visible from the ground floor. For example, Figure 39, showing large
metallic balloons hanging over and down into the hollow space, is an art work named “Le
Grand Mobile” by Xavier Veilhan, which was displaying from October 2004 to January 2005 in
the Forum in parallel with the exhibition in the Espace 315, an exhibition space adjacent to the
Forum.180 The plain space in the Forum enables it to be flexibly used and able to accommodate
a wide range of art works, reflecting the Centre’s openness to all arts.

Figure 24. “Le Grand Mobile”, Xavier Veilhan, displayed in Centre Pompidou from October 2004
to January 2005.

180
Ibid.

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However, at ordinary times when there is no special event taking place on the ground floor of
the Forum, the huge space is converted into a place with a certain sense of emptiness. A
Chinese family visiting Centre Pompidou commented that it was better to look at the building
from outside, as the outside Piazza was lively and welcoming, but there was nothing in the
Forum.181 Although it is always crowded as there is usually a large number of people moving
through or staying on the ground floor, yet it is seemingly more like a commercial plaza than a
public space. This feeling of commercial atmosphere is a result partly of the twinkling neon
signs and partly of the shop and the bookstore, located at two edges of the ground floor.

Both the shop and the bookstore sell products relevant to the brand of Centre Pompidou,
creative art products, art education books and the like. The bookstore offers more products,
and, what is more impressive, a broad range of professional artistic books from installation art
to architectural design, from photography to sculpture, from music to dance. The shop and
bookstore are the two main departments of attraction on the ground floor. The cultural
products provided at the two shops play multiple roles – besides direct economic benefit, they
aim to reinforce the brand of Centre Pompidou and maintain its cultural status and reputation
for innovative art. But more significantly, the shop and bookstore, in a way, act as information
exchangers, following the architects’ concept, which tend to create a linkage between modern
and contemporary art and the public.

181
Personal conversation, Piazza, Centre Pompidou, 8 August 2015.

103
Figure 25. Bookstore and cafe in Centre Pompidou.

Figure 26. Children’s Gallery on mezzanine floor in Centre Pompidou.

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Figure 27. Shop underneath Children’s Gallery in Centre Pompidou.

Above the shop is the Galerie Des Enfants (Children’s Gallery), a playground for children. The
Children’s Gallery is an exhibition area where children and their families can enjoy artistic
creation through engaging with experimental installations. It is perhaps the most visible space
of the entire Centre Pompidou. This highly visible presence of the Children’s Gallery to the left
of the main entrance enhances the sense of creation and popular culture of the building.182
Each year, the Children’s Gallery presents two new workshop-exhibitions aimed at children,
devised by contemporary artists. These workshop-exhibitions are interactive and fun,
encouraging children to engage more in artistic work and share experiences of art with their
peers. These exhibitions are renewed every six months, either linked to major exhibitions in
the Centre or on an seasonal theme, which corresponds with the design concept of
flexibility . 183 Furthermore, those exhibitions consist not of static art works hanging from
picture rails, but practical workshops for children to have fun through doing and learning with
artistic installations, therefore children’s interest is activated and they are actively involved,
and this is in accordance with the architects’ conceptual assertion of liberating the public while
resisting elitism.

182
Fiona Kearney (2000), “Centre Pompidou”, Circa, No. 94, p. 37.
183
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 55.

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Besides the Children’s Gallery, Centre Pompidou also arranges programmes involving younger
members of the public, from 2 to 16 years of age, in the Atelier (Workshop) and Studio 13/16
on the ground floor of the Forum. The Workshop attempts to provide a range of activities,
graphic arts, design, fashion, music and dance, targeting different young children of different
ages, so as to create a place where they exchange and share ideas through observing,
experimenting, being familiar with the world of artists, developing their imaginations and
utilising contemporary creations. 184 Specific programmes taking place in these places are
linked with featured exhibitions and provide the young generation with a space of imagination
and creativity and the privilege of contact with art.

Information exchange between society and contemporary creation is one of the major
missions of Centre Pompidou; to support and observe contemporary creation is part of the
task for the Centre. On the mezzanine level of the Forum, two places are designated for
accommodating contemporary art exhibitions: Galerie Sud (the South Gallery) and Espace 315,
both are running two to three exhibitions per year. 185 These two places are open to younger
generations of artists; thus, visitors here can encounter the latest trends in art in the most
innovative forms.

Theatres also contribute to disseminating information on creative art. There are four theatres
for films, shows and lectures in the Forum, some of them linked with programmes held in other
places in the Centre. Two of the theatres are cinemas, with at least 450 screenings and 50,000
spectators per year. The theatres cover a multitude of cycles of monthly programmes, multi-
disciplinary festivals and retrospectives in which many actors and professionals of the cinema
participate. 186 Moreover, the cinema in fact is everywhere at Centre Pompidou, in the
museums and libraries, since it is considered as an art in parallel with painting or photography.
Thus, the cinema at Centre Pompidou is treated as an object of exhibition in addition to being
used to screening programmes at theatres.

184
Ibid., p. 54.

185
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 51.
186
Ibid., p. 52.

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Figure 28. The Public Information Library in Centre Pompidou.

As the BPI serves as a huge information connector accessible and free to all, not even requiring
registration, it has broken the institutional tradition of libraries by offering information to the
whole public rather than small groups of specific people.187 Unlike most other libraries, the
mission of the BPI is to offer continuously updated collections, both French and international,
both general information and current events, aiming to satisfying all public needs from those
of neophytes to those of specialists, instead of collecting and conserving publications only. The
collections in the BPI are dynamic, based on the criteria of being as up-to-date and useful as
possible. It tends to offer knowledge in its latest available forms, while making it available to
the public directly and easily in multiple forms including books, periodicals, sound and audio-
visual recordings, and digital resources.188 Besides concrete and digital documents, the BPI
also offers a range of cultural activities, including exhibitions, encounters, public reading, social
issues and digital cinema. These activities are held inside the BPI and some extend to theatres,
and even outside the building. Diverse forms of mediation are employed for the purpose of
involving more social groups in the Centre’s activities. These mediations range from teaching
workshops to a personalised service of answering remote questions.189 As a result, the BPI,
aiming to be a knowledge mediator, does follow the architects’ concept of the Centre being an

187
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 56.

188
Ibid., p. 57.
189
Ibid., p. 58.

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information exchanger and liberating society by being open to all of the public, to all ideas and
all forms of expressions, and by engaging with as wide a range of social needs as possible
through multiple programmes arranged at the library.

The zigzag escalator hanging outside the building, which functions to transport the public to
the upper levels, has become a key part of the image of the façade and has acted as a symbol
representing Centre Pompidou. With the escalator going up, the eye moves away from the
Piazza to the whole urban landscape. Visual contact between the building and the Piazza is
generated on the lower levels, but as one moves higher, the image of the roof landscape of
Paris takes shape. Most of the buildings in Paris were built during the 19th century following
Baron Haussmann’s planning which regulated the height limit of 20 metres, or six to seven
storeys. This limit is still in force today, with a maximum height of 25 metres in the district
where Centre Pompidou is located. 190 Only a few important buildings, such as Centre
Pompidou, have been allowed to exceed this height limit. As a result, on the upper levels of
Centre Pompidou, a great visual relationship can be generated between the Centre and the
urban landscape, which enhances the architectural concept of having a strong relationship
with the urban context. Standing on the top level, one is able to see several iconic buildings
across Paris, such as the Eiffel Tower, Sacre-Coeur, the Grand Arch of La Defénse and the
Cathedral of Notre-Dame.

190
Ibid., p. 84.

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Figure 29. Inside the escalator tube of Centre Pompidou.

Figure 30. Viewing corridor on the top floor of Centre Pompidou.

The escalator was originally designed to be accessible from the north entrance outside the
building, but for safety and management reasons the north entrance leading directly to the
escalator is closed and the permeability of the building is thereby impaired. So, to access the

109
escalator, one needs to go through the main entrance to the ground floor of the Forum, go up
to the mezzanine, and reach the ticket check-in entrance. Only those who have purchased
tickets for the Paris view or the museum can access the upper floors, either by the escalator
or by the lifts. The escalator was designed to stop and access each level, but in fact does not
provide access to the second and third levels (except for experts and researchers, who can
access the Kandinsky Library on the third level from the escalator). Members of the public who
have purchased museum tickets are allowed to access the museum on the fourth and fifth
floors and galleries of temporary exhibitions on the sixth floor from the escalator, while those
who only have Paris view tickets are not permitted to get into any of the exhibitions, and can
only have an experience of the escalator and the view of Paris from the corridors outside
exhibition rooms in the envelope of the building. In this sense, the upper spaces are not that
public, they are more like consumption spaces, the architectural concept of cultural liberation
is not completely realised.

The Musée National d’Art Moderne (MNAM), which houses permanent collections of modern
and contemporary art works, functions as the major tourist destination, with the entrance on
the fifth floor and exit on the fourth level. The journey of the museum starts with modern
collections (1905–1965) on the fifth floor, and then down to contemporary art (from the 1980s
until today) on the fourth floor. The interdisciplinary concept is followed in the organisation of
the exhibition. Multiple disciplines are involved – painting, sculpture, graphic arts,
photography, experimental cinema, new media, design and architecture. Over time, the
collections have grown spectacularly, from about 17,000 works in 1977 to over 65,000
today. 191 The presentation of modern art collections are highlighted in a circuit organised
based on historic sequences, where the key landmarks and figures provide a clear picture
about genealogies, transitions and associations. The presentation of the Centre Pompidou’s
contemporary collections looks at recent creations including art, architecture and design in
diverse formats. Nearly 180 artists, architects and designers from over 55 countries have so
far had their creations displayed in this section.

191
Ibid., p. 64.

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On both of the two levels, small individual exhibition modules in various formats are arranged
in a sequential order throughout the circuit, focusing on different themes and artists. These
modules are renewed every two years and designed as study and research areas by the
organisation team of the museum. This enables the museum to be a platform for the
continuous exploration of art history, rather than being a place of information dissemination
only. In addition to exhibition spaces, there is a place especially for collections of new films
and videos on the fourth floor. It possesses over 2,000 video and audio tapes, installations and
multimedia works, artists’ websites, and experimental films. These media creations are
produced by artists from different countries working in various disciplines, from visual arts to
cinema, from dance to music, and from theatre to architecture.192 These creations, which have
been digitised in order to be viewable onsite on computer screens in the media collection
room, provide valuable reference materials in contemporary art fields and aim to contact with
wide public.

Figure 31. Plan of the exhibition modules (the fourth floor of Centre Pompidou).

192
Ibid., p. 65.

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Figure 32. Exhibition modules arranged in a linear order connected by a wide corridor.

Figure 33. Room for collections of films and other media on the fourth floor of Centre Pompidou.

The top floor houses the major exhibition areas, but is also only accessible to those with tickets.
The entire floor is divided into two galleries, along with a restaurant. The exhibitions
programmed in the galleries aim to attract as broad a public as possible through following the
principles of societal and multi-disciplinary approaches. Each of the galleries presents two
shows per year. Historical exhibitions and thematic contemporary exhibitions are both
involved, in order to maintain Centre Pompidou’s identity as both a museum and a centre of

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creation.193 Galerie 1 runs historical and thematic exhibitions alternately, while Galerie 2 is
used for one-person shows of contemporary artists. Half of the exhibitions are monographic,
and each exhibition is a suitable occasion for multiple activities, including lectures, meetings,
performances and film cycles.

Figure 34. The top-floor restaurant in Centre Pompidou.

2.2.3 Summary

As shown in the illustrations of the actual use of the building, the Centre has sought to retain
in practice the “conceptual meaning” claimed by the architects. The concept of flexibility has
been reflected through the programming of diverse events in the Forum, the Children’s Gallery
and temporary exhibition areas as well as on the Piazza. The transparent façade which enables
visual contact between the inside and outside of the building reinforces the building’s relation
with the urban – both the immediate surroundings, such as the Piazza, and the larger urban
landscape – while the visible exhibitions in the galleries emphasise the relationship between
the interior and the surrounding street. Furthermore, following the implications of the design
concept, Centre Pompidou indeed functions as a large information-exchange machine.
Information about artistic creation is disseminated through multiple channels – exhibition

193
Bidaine, Centre Pompidou, p. 76.

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galleries, studios, workshops, shops, libraries, cinemas, museums and other settings such as
signboards and LED screens. Information exchanged between disciplines can be identified in
the Centre, where departments are mutually supportive. Cinemas, galleries and children’s
studios act as an extension of the museum, while the museum gives those departments ideas
for activity programming. Cinematic showings can be arranged by the Public Information
Library for events, festivals and information dissemination. The collaboration between
different departments at Centre Pompidou makes information circulation possible within the
Centre, so enabling all departments to keep each other active and vibrant.

Liberating culture is a keynote of the “conceptual meaning”. The playful forms, the transparent
façade and the legible structural system overturn the traditional understanding of a museum
as representing elite culture. The concept was to have a cultural building accessible to all, and
in reality there are various events and programmes free to the public, such as children’s
workshops and exhibitions in Espace 315 and the South Gallery. However, the management
teams of the Centre have in fact changed some of the architects’ original intentions. For
example, many of the entrances architects designed have been closed by the Centre because
of organisation and safety concerns, which to some degree impairs the high level of
accessibility expected at the beginning. Moreover, though cultural liberation was stressed as a
major concept, some of the spaces are not that public in a pragmatic sense, since they are
more like consumption spaces, including the cafe, Children’s Gallery, museum, escalator,
viewing corridors and patios. These places are not accessible unless one has purchased a ticket.
Those activities take place there are not available to be freely enjoyed but rather are to be
consumed by paying customers. Cultural liberation has not been implemented completely, and
culture has been partly transformed into commercial products.

Centre Pompidou can be considered a vicarious achievement of Archigram; it is an “instant

city” – “indeterminate, superserviced, media-saturated, pop, popular”.194 Things can hardly be
predetermined in the building. Information is exchanged instantly and events happens
transiently. Contemporary programmes are carried out in and around the building, such as art

194
Simon Sadler (2005), Archigram: Architecture without Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 163.
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exhibitions, performances, and film viewings. Different media are highly involved and
constitute a working interface between people and arts, different disciplines, the building and
the city. The Centre serves the public, individuals from plural cultural backgrounds, instead of
cultural hegemony or any monistic narrative, rendering the building a carnival of popular
culture. Therefore, the building is the design of the ever-new, a varying evolution, in a
continual state of becoming, and moving towards open-ended answers. The idea of the
“instant city” is also embodied in the design of Parc de la Villette. The meaning of the space is
not pre-determined in the design concept; the architect left it to be produced by users through
actual experience. Popular arts, such as music performance, frequently happen in the park.
The exact nature of such events could not have been anticipated at the design stage – they are
indeterminant and transient and actively emerge when people are actually engaged with the
space.

In brief, however, Centre Pompidou basically follows what was anticipated in the “conceptual
meaning” of the building, though imperfectly in practice. Led by the desire to liberate culture,
the concepts of being related with the urban surroundings, being an information exchanger
and being highly flexible and accessible are transformed into “pragmatic meaning”. The design
concept of Centre Pompidou is not only about creating an iconic image for the city of Paris,
although the visual symbol of the Centre was important for Paris and France in regaining a
better international reputation for arts and culture. Rather, the architects chose to turn their
attention to social engagement issues, and how the building would function to accommodate
these issues. They proposed the ambition of liberating culture for the public as the basic value
running throughout the design. It is this value which focuses the Centre on social and
functional matters instead of pure visual symbolism, and that gives rise to the mutual
permeation of “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning”. The design concept
pragmatically considered the social-cultural context and transferred this into the spatial design,
while in practical use, how the building functions follows what was imagined during the design
phase, thus enabling “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning” to be associated.

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 Chapter 3. Deconstruction: The Containment Relationship of “Conceptual

Meaning” and “Pragmatic Meaning”

This chapter goes further to see how these two ways of meaning are associated, so as to
reconfirm that the project is both conceptually and practically important, especially that
“pragmatic meaning” has a crucial role in identifying “conceptual meaning”. It will attempt to
explain a case in which “pragmatic meaning” is contained in “conceptual meaning” in a
deconstructive project. Deconstruction is a linguistic concept that asserts that an object has
no essential meaning, and that meaning needs to be generated by users according to their
individual situations when they use the object. Therefore, in the deconstructive idea, the
whole meaning of an object has to be fulfilled in practice. Parc de la Villette in Paris is selected
as an example to clarify this containment relationship. Parc de la Villette is a project with a
strong concept. The architect conceptually designed three spaces as a disjunctive synthesis,
without completely defining the specific function of any single space. The architect had an idea
in his mind as he was formulating the design concept that the whole story of the park could
not be achieved through the architect’s conceptual intentions, but should be completed by
users’ practice in actual spaces. Though the architect proposed a strong concept for the park,
the concept did not try to fixedly define the meaning of the space; it contained flexible room
for users to define the whole meaning in a dynamic way. The architect embedded in his
concept this idea that the whole meaning of the park should be left to be fulfilled in actual
experience by its future users. As users interact with spaces and events are dynamically
happening in these spaces, this is when “pragmatic meaning” is produced. Only after
“pragmatic meaning” is achieved in actual spaces will the “conceptual meaning”, the idea of
deconstruction, be proved to have been accomplished – “pragmatic meaning” determines the
fulfilment of the “conceptual meaning”. The “conceptual meaning” is not the whole; it leaves
blank space to be filled by “pragmatic meaning”. The whole is always being delayed, to be
defined through actual practice. Therefore, in the case of deconstruction, “pragmatic meaning”
is seen as being included in “conceptual meaning”.

The design concept of Parc de la Villette seems more philosophical than that of Centre

116
Pompidou. The architect borrowed the linguistic concept of “deconstruction” in the process of
finding design ideas for Parc de la Villette. But there are still some potential deconstructive
ideas that can be found in the design of Centre Pompidou – for example, the ideas of pluralism,
anti-centralism, the focus on individual experience, changes and transformations.
Nevertheless, the concept of Centre Pompidou is not associated with any explicit philosophy
as we find with the Parc de la Villette. That might be because the influence of philosophy
became much greater in architecture in the 1980s, under the influence of philosophical
architects such as Bernard Tschumi. Centre Pompidou was designed ten years before Parc de
la Villette. Tschumi was working in a culture which already included Centre Pompidou and its
influence, which was helpful for him in making a kind of association between architecture and
philosophy.

Being created in the post-structuralist context, both Centre Pompidou and Parc de la Villette
are imbued with the idea of pluralism. For Centre Pompidou, designed in the light of cultural
liberation, high culture is no longer appreciated, and popular culture is stressed. The concern
is with public consciousness, public interests and things that used to be supressed. Lively and
plural parts of the culture that were debased by high culture become meaningful. The design
of Parc de la Villette follows the idea of pluralism. The concept is not a top-down dogma but
requires people’s diverse experience to make it fully interpreted. The architect merely created
a framework of space for the park, leaving elastic room for “pragmatic meaning”, the meaning
that emerges from users’ experience, to fill the concept. Therefore, in concept, it accepts the
plurality of architectural meaning, denies the inflexibility and monism of meaning dominated
by architects, and admits that meaning can grow dynamically, accidentally and diversely.

3.1 Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a trend of thought first developed in linguistic, which spread into

architecture in the 1980s. It tends to overturn what had been advocated by previous the
previous trends of structuralism and logocentrism. Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, is
best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis: deconstruction. Bernard Tschumi is one

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of the deconstructionist architects who acutely caught this idea and strove to apply it to
architectural thinking and practice. What will follow is a brief review of Derrida’s concept of
deconstruction and Tschumi’s struggle in deconstructive architecture, before the chapter turns
to Tschumi’s project, Parc de la Villette, in order to analyse the relationship between
“conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning” in a deconstructive design.

3.1.1 The brief of deconstruction

The transition of post-structuralism breaks it apart from any form of transcendence, from any
possibility of ontological focus; namely, it shifted from explaining single true reality to free
understanding, from structuralism to anti-structuralism. In structural aesthetics, there is a
foundational framework, a binary opposition – signifier and signified. Signifiers exist in many
forms, such as words written or printed on paper, diagrams, drawings, paintings, sounds of
music or the form of architecture, while signifieds exist only in the brain, in the form of ideas,
concepts or ideologies. We pass “immaterial” ideas from our brains to other people by putting
them into “material” form, the words. As the “material” sounds pass to others’ ears, another
person will decode the sounds into ideas in his/her brain. What enables ideas to pass from
brain to brain is that those “immaterial” ideas are one-to-one joined with “material” words:
there is one-to-one correspondence between signifieds and signifiers. 195 This one-to-one
correspondence implies that all the meanings have already been structured in the words, and
the singular “truth” is immanent in language or inflexibly links with language, so that language
is superior and dominant within a certain system. This is the core idea of logocentrism;
however, it is something that post-structuralism denies and something should be
deconstructed. Meaning can be regarded as constructed from outside a word or an object,
instead of being considered as residing within that word or object. Words or objects do not
have inherent meaning – it is readers/users who produce particular meanings through their
experience in particular circumstances.

195
Jorge Glusberg (1991), Deconstruction: A Student Guide, London: Academy Editions, pp. 32–33.

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Logocentrism is an ideological tradition of Western philosophy which originated in ancient
Greece, and it is what Derrida intended to overthrow and deconstruct. However, the idea of
logocentrism seems not to have been spread to East Asia, as the philosophical ideas there do
not seem to follow the logocentric tradition. Derrida sees the Western philosophies that are
rooted in logocentrism as “philosophy”, while other thoughts or ideologies are not within the
genealogy of “philosophy”. Derrida visited China in September 2001 and gave a series of
lectures and had conversations with Chinese philosophy scholars. During a conversation with
Professor Wang Yuanhua, a famous literary critic, Derrida mentioned that to his way of thinking
China had no philosophy, but only thoughts or ideologies. These words shocked the people
around him, but then Derrida explained that he did not mean to debase Chinese ideas: in fact
to him, thoughts are the equals of philosophies, and Western philosophy cannot be seen as
the hegemony of culture. What Derrida wanted to stress was that traditional Chinese ideas
are not in the genealogy of the “philosophy” which was shaped through logocentrism. Chinese
traditions fortunately escaped from the influence of logocentrism. Therefore, Chinese ideas
are not a part of the logocentric philosophy that Derrida would like to deconstruct.196

In fact, Derrida’s deconstruction shares one point with traditional Chinese philosophy – both
of them are inclusive. To deconstructionists, there is no universal and fixed meaning to
anything, there is no essential reality capable of being measured; the interpretation of the
world can be achieved in varied ways by observers and their observations, depending on their
socio-cultural backgrounds and the ways in which they see the world. As a result, meanings
can be produced and are constantly changing according to particular situations. 197

Deconstruction accepts both commonness and differences, as do Chinese philosophies.

Commonness and differences exist at the same time between different individuals, cultures or
ethnicities. If there is no “commonness”, the “differences” could not be identified. If each
individual, culture or ethnicity emphasises only their own distinctions, there are catastrophic

196
Xiaozhen Du & Ning Zhang (2003), Derrida’s Lectures in China, Beijing: Central Edition and Translation
Publishing House, pp. 139–140.
197
Antonio Sandu (2011), “Assumption of Post-Structuralism in Contemporary Epistemology”,
Postmodern Openings, vol. 7 (7), pp. 39–52, p. 49.

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consequences such as cultural conflict and aggression.198 Chinese traditional philosophy will
be discussed particularly in the next chapter, where the ideological roots of it and its influence
in contemporary architectural practice will be further explained.

According to Benedikt, Jacques Derrida’s ideas of deconstruction are uniquely productive for
architecture.199 Derrida attacks several traditional beliefs which used to be foundations in the
Western philosophical trajectory. One of his considerable emphases is the querying of the
capacity of language under the shackles of logocentrism. He seeks to reject logocentrism by
claiming the fullness of the meaning of human experience, which exceeds the capacity of
language to report on it.

The deconstructive aesthetics, to Derrida, is as a subversive alien, the foreign body who
violates the existing constructional forms and has already inhabited the interior of its host. 200
Benedikt concludes four principles that come from Jonathan Culler’s writing about Derrida’s
ideas of deconstruction, and attempts to translate those four principles as four lenses through
which to look at architectural practice.

The first principle is “différance”. Différance literally has three meanings. The first is
“differences” – the spacing and the distinctions between things, including vocabularies and
the dimensions in one vocabulary where meanings of different dimensions are separated from
each other. The second is “deferral” – the process of passing along or postponing, of
suspension or protraction, the spacing in time. Différance in this sense is to temporise, to defer,
and to detour, suspending the accomplishment or fulfilment of a will. The third meaning is
“differing” – disagreeing, dissenting and dissembling.201

In this sense différance attempts not to be identical or discernible, as it always tries to conceal

198
Du & Zhang, Derrida’s Lectures in China, p. 140.

199
Michael Benedikt (1991), Deconstructing the Kimbell: An Essay on Meaning and Architecture, New
York: Lumen, p. 2.

200
Glusberg, Deconstruction, p. 23.
201
Benedikt, Deconstructing the Kimbell, pp. 10–11.

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the fullness of anything. 202 The principle of différance tries to reverse the tradition of
logocentrism. Logocentrism assumes an existence of a fixed meaning behind something, prior
to actual practice according to different individual situations. It advocates the unity of thinking
and language, believes that language can perfectly express thoughts, in order to achieve
objective truth. On the contrary, différance denies the existence of cut-and-dried essential
meaning, and suggests instead that meaning is distinctive from individual to individual, always
in the process of deferral, varying and evolving, and not always consistent between different
things. Différance belongs neither to the voice nor to writing in the usual sense, where the
words are located. Différance happens over a period of time across spaces.203 It always tries
to take away the familiarity which links one thing to another, it sunders things apart, into
individual pieces, unfamiliar to each other. Therefore, to Derrida, there is never a sort of
consistent meaning; there are always differences in “the represented and the representative,
the signified and signifier, simple presence and the reproduction”.204 Différance rejects unity
and perfection, which is unachievable in phenomenal reality. Rather, différance offers infinite
real possibilities, differences and distinctive existences. It presents itself in the sensible world
in sensible forms that we are able to witness. In that world, language is merely one immaterial
presentation but more space is left for more comprehensive understanding and creation.

As différance suggests there is no essential meaning in each vocabulary, nothing is a self-

evident matter, and thus there must be at least two elements or ideas mutually
complementary so as to define each other. It is of no value to indicate one thing by itself. One
cannot recognise “black” without “white”, and one cannot notice “up” without “down”, just as
one cannot have presence without absence. The mere presence of something has neither
value nor meaning unless the absence of other things is simultaneously recognised. The
presence of something stands out on the basis of the absence of other things, while the
absence of something lies behind the presence. The recognition of a pattern on drawing paper

202
Jacques Derrida (1982), Margins of Philosophy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 8.
203
Ibid., p. 5.
204
Jacques Derrida (1973), Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs,
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, p. 52.

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as substantial matter depends on the blank space of the rest of the page. The impalpable void
of a jug is formed by the concrete material surrounding it. Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona
Pavilion shows a binary opposition of presence and absence by simultaneous affirmation and
denial of substance with the alternation of wall and glass.205

The second principle Derrida claims is “hierarchy reversal”.206 He criticises the fact that the
idealisation of Western metaphysics causes all aesthetical and ideological distinctions to be
hierarchical. If a system of philosophy is set up, the terms playing within the system are not
always treated equally. Such terms are usually related to one another in a dual structure, in
which one term dominates while the other is suppressed, such as “truth” and “fallacy”, “soul”
and “flesh”, “consciousness” and “unconsciousness”, and “rationality” and “sensibility”. The
terms in each of these dual structures are in a definite hierarchical order that is historically
widely believed to be natural. What deconstruction looks for is, first, what is being suppressed
under the shackles of some hierarchical “truth” and, second, the ways in which hierarchy can
be overturned or polarity reversed.

Derrida thinks that such dual terms have some distinctions between them, but that there is no
hierarchical order – “truth” is on an equal level to “fallacy”, “soul” on an equal level to “flesh”,
and “philosophy”, rooted in logocentrism, on an equal level to Eastern ideas. Moreover, those
dual terms mutually interact and are included in each other – “truth” and “fallacy” cannot be
completely separated, and nor can “soul” and “flesh”. The resistance to hierarchical dualism is
linked to the Chinese Yin–Yang idea, which believes that the Yin–Yang unit is the basic element
constituting the world, but that Yin and Yang are neither independent nor hierarchical – they
are indispensable to each other, mutually defined in relation to each other, and always trying
to reach or convert into each other. Influenced by this Yin–Yang idea, Chinese culture displays
an ambiguity in dualism. This ambiguity is embodied in the way of thinking about the
relationship between intellect and body, theory and practice, and elite and popular culture.
Both elements in each of these dual concepts are equal to each other and are mutually

205
Benedikt, Deconstructing the Kimbell, p. 14.
206
Ibid., p. 17.

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inclusive. Therefore, Chinese cultural customs lay more emphasis on the relationship between
things than on the intrinsic meaning of individual concepts. The ambiguity in dualism of
Chinese culture, which serves as one of the important ideologies of Chinese tradition, will be
further discussed in the next chapter.

For architects, there are usually typologies in their minds prior to practice, arranged in
hierarchical orders. The superior ones are expressed by exposure, enlargement, or special
materials and coloration, while the inferior ones are suppressed by concealment, disregarding
or shrinkage, or special techniques enable them to fade away from dominant presentations.
Therefore, architectural style is a consequence resulting from the selection of certain patterns,
with some dimensions reinforced and other dimensions suppressed. As to clarity about how
those patterns run in practice, Benedikt finds some examples in architectural projects.207 He
finds Frank Lloyd Wright’s style is consistent in the repression of vertical walls and the
expression of horizontal roofs. Roofs are enlarged and ground contact is spread, while walls
are faded away under the domination of roofs. Differently from Wright, Le Corbusier valorises
the wall and represses other elements, Robert Venturi valorises the window, and Louis Kahn
valorises servant spaces rather than served spaces. Architectural style is a kind of playing of
the hierarchical orders of elements of which architecture consists. As a result, many architects
design buildings with their preferred forms in mind and design from the outside in, since the
appearance of the building directly implies the already established hierarchical orders in their
mind. It is interesting to see that buildings usually have official views, the valorised viewing
angle. When these views appear in magazines, they lead us to learn the official appearance of
certain buildings. Therefore, we will know something the photographer would like us to know,
while ignoring something hidden behind this which might not be good to know.

Another principle which is closely aligned with the critique of hierarchy reversal is the
opposition of “marginality and centrality”.208 Margins are places close to edges or boundaries
which distinguish outside from inside. Centres imply the depth and heart of certain areas. They

207
Ibid., pp. 23–25.
208
Ibid., p. 29.

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are places of concentration where actions are controlled or from where they originate. A
centre is remote from its margin in every direction and is completely embedded in its area,
while a margin is a long distance from the centre and is always at the limits of the centre’s
control. Margins and centre are opposing and interdependent.

There are some architectural phenomena which demonstrate a marginal-central relationship.

If we look at a room, usually the peripheral zone of the space is occupied by the more
stationary, less frequently used pieces of furniture such as cupboards, drawers, bookcases and
the like, while the central zone of the room, usually left more open and able to be more flexibly
used, is where the main living activities take place. Benedikt finds that Frank Lloyd Wright
brings a variety of furniture into thick exterior walls, where window seats, cabinets and ceiling
drops draw a sense of habitability into exterior walls.209 This design offers a larger space in the
centre of the room for living activities, so that these living activities that are intentionally set
as the centre are more highly valorised. Sometimes furniture settings emphasise a hierarchy
of different programmed activities. For example, it is common in the furniture settings of
libraries to place book stacks in the centre and leave peripheral areas for reading, which
implies that, for libraries, books are central and the most emphasis is laid on them, while
reading is marginal. However, some libraries emphasise librarian control and reading as the
central point, by setting the librarian’s desk at the centre, with reading desks around, and book
stacks along the peripheries.210 It is easy to perceive that the meaning of this layout is different
from that of former one. However, as Benedikt points out, Mies van der Rohe’s glass-box
buildings show an ignoring of the repression of the margins.211 The furniture is free standing,
and the glass curtain wall is thin, so one can walk to the very marginal edge of the interior
space and look towards the outside. The interior margin has been compressed as much as
possible. Furthermore, the fact that architectural ornamentation is quite commonly found
around spatial edges, joints or boundaries conversely shows the importance of marginality as

209
Ibid., p. 31.

210
Ibid., p. 33.
211
Ibid., p. 31.

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opposed to centrality.

The avant-garde, the powerless and the un-valorised are considered to be at the margin of the
social fields, while those who are established, powerful and valorised are said to be at the
centre. Derrida’s struggle is to wake up those who are at the margin, challenge the situation
of the repression of the margin, and reverse what is at the centre. He uses a term, “parergon”,
which means a subsidiary aspect of something, namely, the margin.212 In order to stress the
importance of the parergon, he takes the frame of a painting as evidence, saying that the frame
of painting does not function only to distinguish the painting from the wall or to be seen as
embellishment; more importantly, it essentially serves to valorise the painting, to confirm that
it is art. Likewise, the pedestal, podium or surroundings of a sculpture aims to reinforce the
special role of the sculpture as art. Responding to Derrida’s exemplification of painting and the
frame, in architecture the elements that have been set as marginal, such as porches, planting,
greenhouses, storage, garages and so on, are necessary and essential to some people; however,
what has been regarded as central, such as the architectural concept, structure, symbolism,
form and so on, for most people are remote and meaningless.

The last principle Derrida discusses is about “iterability and meaning”. 213 Iterability means
repetition, difference, alteration and thus singularity. If we inherit language, a philosophy or
anything else, there is a sort of inert repetition. But when we inherit something, we do not
only passively receive it. We often choose, filter, interpret and reaffirm. Thus, iterability occurs
when we attempt to inherit something.214 In terms of linguistics, the laws of language allow
the production of new sentences through the permutation of words. That a word can function
as a word is due to its capacity to be repeatedly used, as the meaning of a word depends on
its iterability, the capacity to be repeated. Words which demonstrate iterability are adaptable
and reusable in various contexts. The stability of the denotative or connotative meanings of a

212
Ibid., p. 34.
213
Ibid., p. 37.
214
Paul Patton & Terry Smith (2002), Jacques Derrida: Deconstruction Engaged, the Sydney Seminars,
Sydney: Power, pp. 76–77.
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word and its recognisability in different contexts is what enables language to become a
constant system. The capacity of repetition, or iterability, is the precondition for the existence
of meaning, as it ensures one single word can function as a unit of meaning capable of being
applied to various contexts. Oral language comes originally from random sounds, but once a
certain sound is repeatedly used to express certain meaning among a society or a group of
people, the sound has become language. So, as Benedikt points out, perhaps the most
fundamental evidence that unconscious expression, whether in the form of sounds or other
forms of expression, transforms into language is the case of repeated use of a certain
expression, whereby that unconscious expression becomes an intentional resource with a
certain meaning shared within a collective space.215

It seems that architecture has the same capacity for repetition as language. As we can see,
plenty of architecture has repeated elements, such as tiles, windows, bricks, beams and
columns, as well as structured spatial forms, geometrical figures and so on. Moreover,
buildings pursuing the same architectural styles are repeated within a region, or spread
throughout different regions. Architecture without a style seems hardly possible. Architects
seem to fear to use unique materials, structures and forms in design practice, because they
are afraid of making any mistake. They usually seek to repeat what have already done in former
projects, following certain existing styles and design methods, in order to deliver their own
intentions. Some repeated solutions in architecture were once unique to particular problems,
but when they are adopted by other architects in later cases, those solutions will become
architectural language with the capacity of iteration. This iteration can be found in numerous
projects of one architect, because the architect is apt to apply and experiment with a certain
thematic language through different projects in order to explore his design philosophy. Besides
this thematic language of individual architects, different decades have their own mainstream
themes and popular fashions, which periodically shift according to relevant cultural
backgrounds. The attempt to thematise architectural design ensures the capacity of repetition
of certain architectural forms, thereby enabling the formation and the spread of certain

215
Benedikt, Deconstructing the Kimbell, p. 40.

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architectural language.

Benedikt argues that it is inappropriate to translate linguistic theory of repetition into

architecture, since the repetition of architectural language (either styles or themes) might
undermine rather than support the intentionality of architecture to attach itself to the
world.216 Iteration does not create meaning but only conveys it into different circumstances.
The significance of iteration is to promise that meaning will come out under certain
recognisable language systems. So language is the by-product of meaning: it is not the locus
where meaning resides. However, the very essence of meaning is the picture we witness rather
than read from text – the most sensible and resonant images of living. The meaning does not
lie in the metaphysical or logical claim of the text, but in living moments and visceral desires,
while text is something employed for the explanation of meaning. Architecture bears meaning
by recreating, reproducing and reconstructing the structures of past situations rather than by
arbitrarily associating meaning with existing architectural language, through the association of
signifiers and signifieds.217

There are two kinds of iteration. “Horizontal” iteration refers to one form that spreads from
one building to another under the dimension of space, while “vertical” iteration refers to the
evolution through time, which transforms earlier forms into later ones. The interior growth of
architectural meaning over time is that of “vertical” iteration. This kind of iteration is what
architecture should employ.218 Meaning, therefore, is ever-changing and re-forming over time.
The dislocation, re-grounding and re-contextualisation of architecture are nodal points in the
axis of “vertical” iteration and are necessary for the happening of new iterations. As a result,
architectural meaning ought to be a différance. Meanings are changeable through time, and
thus are distinctive from one moment to another. Meanings created in different moments
might differ from each other. This echoes Archigram’s idea of indeterminacy. Meaning does
not look towards a fixed answer, but open-ended, and always in a continual state of becoming

216
Ibid., p. 43.

217
Ibid., p. 47.
218
Ibid.

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and renewing. 219 One valorised form (language) is not permanently valid, but forms are
permanently transforming. So the formation of meaning is all the time being and always
unable to reach an end-point. The final meaning is always in suspension.

3.1.2 Tschumi’s discovery of an alternative order of architecture

Derrida’s idea of deconstruction has been translated into architecture, in both theory and
practice. Deconstruction has already been a category of architectural school. The endeavour
of looking for repressed ideas in modernist architecture and the establishment of renewed
meaning of architecture was begun in the 1960s. During the 1980s the idea of deconstruction
in architecture was promoted widely. The concept of decentring, disjunction and rejection of
existing fixed order was employed in this architectural revolution. A group of deconstructionist
architects and their projects began to emerge, including Richard Meier’s Museum für
Kunsthandwerk in Frankfurt and his High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia; Eisenman and
Robertson’s Housing Block 5 in Berlin and their Centre for the Visual Arts at Ohio State
University; Zaha Hadid’s scheme for the Peak in Hong Kong; and Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la
Villette in Paris.220

Bernard Tschumi is one of the most important deconstructionist architects who devoted
himself to seeking the margin which had been ignored or suppressed in the modernist
hierarchical order. He discovered an alternative way of reading architecture based on
deconstructive ideas. This alternative order is not about static building forms, which were the
priority for modernists, but about the priority of experience, programmes and events taking
place dynamically in the space at every moment.

Experiencing pleasure in architecture was for many generations considered something

decadent, even reactionary.221 Modernists think of architecture as a geometrical spatial order

219
Sadler Simon (2005), Archigram: Architecture without Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p.93.

220
Glusberg, Deconstruction, p. 12.
221
Bernard Tschumi (1994), Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 81–83.

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rather than a pictorial or experiential sequence. The architecture of pleasure is something
marginal to the centre of the modernist orthodoxy, and is suppressed under the hierarchy of
modernist “truth”. Tschumi, on the one hand, agrees that architecture refers to a
dematerialised or conceptual mind, but on the other hand he insists architecture should be
more like an empirical event accommodation that is concerned with the senses, perceptions
and experience of the body within the space. Further, he asserts that the pleasure of
architecture does not depend merely on the pleasure of geometry or space.222 Indeed, without
the signs of geometrical or spatial orders, some architecture will lose its meaning of presence,
such as Egyptian pyramids or the Chinese Forbidden City; thus, geometrical and spatial orders
still play a role as a necessary partner to the literary perceptions of architecture. However,
without a concern for sensorial and experiential pleasure, architecture will be reduced to a
frozen and hollow symbol.

Tschumi has noticed a dilemma in architectural practice.223 Architects, on the one hand, would
like to develop their own independent design philosophies, but on the other hand they have
to accept social requirements and constraints, since they depend financially on society; if they
separate too much from widely accepted social ideologies, their architecture will be accused
of elitism. Nevertheless, Tschumi encourages architects to continue to adhere to their
particular philosophies and question the existing widely adopted orders, because what is
considered a necessity of architecture today might be denied and disregarded as a non-
necessity in the future. Tschumi believes we need a renewed order and that this order should
no longer be the imitation of the past orders. Architecture contributes to creating breaking
point upon the veil between reality and illusions. As a result, Tschumi is struggling to save his
unique philosophies by challenging modernist ideas and exploring an idea of architectural
deconstruction.

Tschumi’s idea of the ultimate pleasure of architecture lies in neither concept nor immediate
experience alone, but on the junction between the two. Either of the two alone, under two-

222
Ibid., pp. 85–86.
223
Ibid., p. 87.

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value logic, is not an ideal solution, but the junction between the two transcends all the
thinking based around binary opposition derived from the founding principle of Western
philosophy. Tschumi’s junction of abstract concept and practical experience is the merging of
rationality and irrationality – this ambiguous pleasure of rationality and irrationality is a kind
of “eroticism”.224 Tschumi’s “eroticism” is a theoretical concept, with nothing in common with
the formalist’s concern for “erotic” forms of building, but it is a subtle emotion. Individually,
neither a concept nor an experience is “erotic”. Only when the concept becomes associated
with the practical experience can the architecture be “erotic”. Therefore, the ultimate pleasure
of architecture, in Tschumi’s view, the architecture of “eroticism”, transcending either concept
or experience alone, but requiring consciousness as well as voluptuousness, is the junction of
reasonable concept and immediate experience of space, the pleasure of rational order and the
pleasure of irrational sensuality. Consequently, to Tschumi, exceeding modernist dogmas of
past social and economic constraints by disrupting functionalist forms and turning attention
to sensuality is not only the subversion of the past, but more significantly, it is the maintaining
of the capacity of architectural “eroticism”.225

Due to the dominance of modernist ideology and the ignorance of sensorial experience, the
notion of the programmes and events taking place in the space has remained a forbidden field
for decades. Even until the early 1980s, programmatic concerns were still rejected by
modernist doctrines. 226 Few architects dared to elaborate programmes for the space and
explore the relationship between physical spaces and programmes. Architecture has become
about eye-catching images in magazines; or models, films and pictures in exhibitions or
galleries, presented as art works to be watched. These, to a large degree, render architecture
a passive object instead of a place where dynamic activities emerge and encounter each other.

Chinese garden architecture (Jiangnan Garden) also intends to achieve sensorial and
experiential pleasure. The aim of gardening is bodily pleasure, which leads to the pleasure of

224
Ibid., p. 89.

225
Ibid., p. 92.
226
Ibid., p. 141.

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the mind – creating poems or making music in the garden are both bodily and mindful
pleasures. “Aesthetic sense” has for a long time been the highest pursuit in artistic creation for
Chinese men of letters, no matter whether in poetry, painting, calligraphy or gardening. It must
be sensed and experienced in the body as a consequence of exposure to certain images (or
other artistic works) when one is in a suitably contemplative state of mind. Chinese culture
does not traditionally have a definite intellect–body dualism, but sees the world as an
extension of the body: bodily senses are lenses through which we look at the world and shape
the mind. This idea is consonant with Richard Shusterman’s “somaesthetics”, which asserts
that knowledge is not absolutely constructed through intellectual thinking, but through bodily
experience. Tschumi’s idea of architectural “eroticism” also shares something with
somaesthetics, as it sees the ultimate pleasure of architecture as the junction between
concept and the immediate bodily experience: the concept needs the experience before it is
fully achieved, and this idea is applied in Tschumi’s design of Parc de La Villette. Therefore,
both Tschumi’s idea of pleasure and the Chinese theory of body are consistent with
somaesthetics. The traditional Chinese ideas of body will be discussed in the next chapter and
how the idea of “somaesthetics” is embodied in a contemporary project will also be illustrated
in the design of Xiangshan Campus.

Contrary to the functionalists’ negation of programme, Tschumi notices the strong links
between architecture and events – linked, as he points out, in the same way as the guard is
linked to the prisoner, and the doctor to the patient. According to Tschumi’s definition, an
event is an incident, an occurrence, a particular item in a programme. A programme is a
sequence of events. Events can encompass particular uses, singular functions or isolated
activities.227 Tschumi argues there is no architecture without any action, event or programme,
and there is an intensive relationship between individuals and their surroundings. Tschumi
names this intensive relationship the “violence of architecture”, in order to represent the
mutual violation between physical spaces and bodies. 228 Bodies violate spaces when they

227
Bernard Tschumi (2012), Architecture Concepts: Red Is Not a Color, New York: Rizzoli, p. 106.
228
Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, pp. 121–123.

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intrude into the pre-existent spatial order of architecture, while spaces violate bodies when
they inflict on bodies a must-accept order, such as the imposition of a narrow corridor on a
large crowd, or the overwhelming sense of a space on its users.

Spaces and events can be, at times, positively reciprocal with one another. When architectural
spaces and events are totally independent from each other but condition each other’s
existence, that is, users’ needs will determine architects’ creation of spaces, while architects’
design decisions will then dominate users’ attitudes and activities in spaces, so that the two
are interacted. Spaces are qualified by events, just as events are qualified by spaces. Centre
Pompidou is an example in this case. The Piazza in front of Centre Pompidou is qualified as an
urban plaza because it accommodates various events and programmes held by Centre
Pompidou; and those events are qualified to take place because the Piazza offers an open-air
space, serving as an extension of the Centre. Events and spaces do not merge, but they affect
one another. Some of the interactions between spaces and bodies can be ritualised, and these
rituals can build up into solidified relationships between events and spaces. 229 The traditional
Western wedding taking place in the church and the traditional Chinese wedding taking place
in the bridegroom’s house are both fixed rituals in different cultures. These rituals imply a deep
relationship between Western wedding programmes and the church space, and between
Chinese wedding programmes and the Chinese traditional residential space.

However, Tschumi also claims that spaces and events occasionally contradict each other, when
they constantly transgress each other’s rules – that is, a place appears incompatible with its
intended use.230 When an event is programmed in an physical space that is not appropriate to
it, the rules of that event have been transgressed, while when some activities are
spontaneously generated that are not in accordance with the spatial rules that the designer
expected, the rules of that space have been transgressed. In such cases, there is less of a causal
relationship between form and use – form does not follow function any more. Tschumi
explores the disjunction between expected form and its expected use by denying that a

229
Ibid., p. 126.
230
Ibid., p. 132.

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particular programme should correspond to a specific spatial form. He even goes further, to
suggest that programmes can be housed in unexpected sites, in which it would be impossible
to house them according to conventional orders, such as a stadium in Soho.231 Tschumi calls
this principle of using a given spatial configuration for a programme it was not intended for
“crossprogramming”.232 This principle of dissociation of spaces and events, on the one hand,
frees those spaces, as it rejects any constraint which could obstruct inspiration over the use of
the space, so that its polyvalence is ensured. On the other hand, users are liberated, as it is
not necessary for them to use the space according to an intended and fixed function, but
rather the space can be used at will according to their intentions.

In addition, events and spaces are in some cases indifferent to each other, when a space is
capable of accommodating a variety of different activities. Tschumi takes 1851 Crystal Palace
as an example, in which the exotic stalls are arranged among the regular columnisation. The
consideration of the form of the space does not depend on its utilitarian purposes.233 But the
identity of the exhibition building could be reinforced by the series of events carried out in the
building. Hence, instead of creating a simple range of possible fixed uses, architects can also
propose built structures with undefined or unexpected programmes.

Tschumi’s idea of the disjunction of spaces and events implies the disjunction of architects and
users, which is analogous to Roland Barthes’ disjunction of authors and readers. Barthes points
out in “The Death of the Author” that “ as soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to
acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other
than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its
origin, the author enters into his own death…”.234 Architect’s meaning production is always
from his/her expected purpose, which does not act directly upon reality, so that it might be
unhelpful in real practice. Once the building has been designed and built, the building will be

231
Ibid., p. 147.
232
Bernard Tschumi (1999), Event-Cities: Praxis, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 155.
233
Ibid., 159.
234
Roland Barthes (1977), “The Death of the Author”, Image Music Text, translated by Stephen Heath,
London: Fontana Press, p. 142–148, p. 142.
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away from the architect, the actual meaning that gained through real practice cannot be
controlled by the architect but by the users. When this disjunction occurs, the meaning
emerges from the reality is isolated from the architect’s “conceptual meaning”, which means
that the architect enters his/her own “death”. When the building is in real use, architects will
lose power in producing events and “pragmatic meaning”, it is users that directly make events
happen in a certain space. Tschumi noticed the disjunction of architects and users, thus he
claimed that the spaces and events could be contradictory and indifferent – the architect’s
expectation might not be consistent with user’s practice, as users always make the events
happen accidentally, unexpectedly and diversely, and this is what Tschumi kept in mind when
he was designing Parc de la Villette – he conceptualised user’s culture as part of the architect’s
intention and the concept needs user’s practice to fulfil it.

Barthes also thinks that the author is never anything more than a person who writes, “just as
I is nothing other than the instance of saying I: language knows a ‘subject’, not a ‘person’”.235
After the text has been made by the author, the author’s idea will never be important, and the
text can be interpreted in multiple ways. In the production of a building, the architect creates
conceptual ideas and physical spaces; the reception of the building needs the physical spaces
to come into contact with the users as they make practical use of the spaces. What users know
is the space, something they can engage with and make practical use of. The users’ practice
begins with an encounter with the space. What happened before the space was built is not
necessarily related to users. The user knows the space, not the architect.

As Barthes implies, the temporality of the association of author and book is different from that
of book and reader. The author is considered as the past of his own book – the author pre-
exists to and nourishes the book.236 Then, the book is considered the past of its readers – it
pre-exists to and nourishes the reader’s mind. Therefore, author and reader seem as if
standing at the two sides of a line, where the text is something in between, the line in the
middle. The author’s idea moves towards and shapes the text, and then the text helps to shape
the reader’s idea as he or she encounters it. There is a similar situation between the architect,

235
Ibid., p. 145.
236
Ibid.
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the building and the user. The building is the line in the middle, and the line has two sides: the
architect exists before the building, while the users come after it; thus the two sides of the line
respectively refer to the production and the reception of the building. The production of the
building involves the architect’s idea and the building, analogous to Barthes’ author and text,
and the reception of the building involves the user’s understanding and the building,
analogous to Barthes’ reader and text. The building is the product of the architect, it is the end
of the architect’s meaning production, and it is at the same time the start of the user’s practice
where “pragmatic meaning” will grow. Tschumi had this idea in mind, so that he tried to avoid
the disjunction between his concepts and users’ experience by conceptualising users’ future
“pragmatic meaning” as part of the architect’s intention in the design of Parc de la Villette: its
“conceptual meaning” is like an incomplete framework, which will be complete and fully
interpreted when actual events happen in the space.

In “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, Roland Barthes implies that the
contents of a text could be changed, as they are not inherent to it.237 If the contents of the text
can be changed and reassembled, the narrative becomes an accidental narrative. The event
happening in a particular space is similar to the event developing in a literary text. The space
of Parc de la Villette is merely the structure of the “architectural narrative”, the incomplete
framework designed by the architect prior to “pragmatic meaning”; the contents can be
flexibly added, changed and reassembled through users’ actual experience, in order to
complete the “architectural narrative”. The relationship between space and event is not
correspondent one-to-one any more. Modernism always offers architecture a definite function
and expects that pre-planned events will happen according to the architect’s intention. But
Tschumi deconstructs this idea by redefining the relationship of spaces and events as diverse,
dynamic, fragmental and ambiguous.

The events emerging in a space are always dynamic and unexpected, which imbues the space
with multiple meanings. Architecture has multiple dimensions; it is the users and not the
architect that make this multiplicity. The multiplicity of architecture is analogous to Barthes’

237
Roland Barthes (1975), “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”, New Literary History,
vol. 6 (2), pp. 237–272.
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multiplicity of text. A text can consist of multiple meanings, issuing from several cultures and
entering into dialogue with each other. There is one place where this multiplicity is collected,
united, and this place is not the author but the reader. That is to say, the unity of a text is not
in its origin; it is in its destination. Similar to architecture, “pragmatic meaning” looks towards
the end, the result, or the consequence of the space; thus, the unity of the architecture is not
in its original concept but in the end – namely, the events that happen in the architectural
space. Therefore it is the users who experience the space, with their diverse individual
purposes, that give architecture its multiplicity.

In short, there is no space without event. Architecture cannot be dissociated from events
happening in it. Not only is the significance of events a matter of objective historical
precedents, but events underline the importance of the relationship between abstraction and
narrative – the platform for the juxtaposition of abstract concepts and immediate
experiences.238 An event is also an architectural concept. There is no concept without an event
that qualifies the concept. 239 Architectural concept should not focus on concrete forms,
materials and techniques, but on the programmatic events which could take place in the future
spaces. Architectural concept is largely about the arrangement of a series of events.
Experience in the space will see the realisation of these arranged events. Events are something
considered at the stage of concept making, and the concept is qualified by events through
actual experience. Therefore, events are included in concepts, and only when the programmed
events have actually taken place in real spaces, when the experience has already been
generated, will the concepts be fulfilled. This means that the “conceptual meaning” created
by an architect contains not only an abstract theoretical part but also a pragmatic part, and
only when “pragmatic meaning” has been produced in architecture through the actual
experience of users will the “conceptual meaning” be completed. “Pragmatic meaning” is part
of “conceptual meaning”. The accomplishment of “conceptual meaning” is delayed until the
space has been used in practice. As a result, under Tschumi’s idea of deconstruction,

238
Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, p. 145.
239
Tschumi, Architecture Concepts, p. 177.

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“pragmatic meaning” is included in “conceptual meaning”, and the completion of “conceptual
meaning” is deferred until “pragmatic meaning” emerges to fill it up: therefore, “pragmatic
meaning” and “conceptual meaning” are in a relation of containment.

In The Manhattan Transcripts, Tschumi offers a different reading of architecture in which

architectural narrative is presented by three synchronous but separated levels of “reality” –
spaces, movements and events. 240 The dimension of movements is added by Tschumi to
indicate the actual actions of bodies through spaces. The notation of movements is used as a
means of blurring the conventional analysis of spaces. Movements are the sequences of
physical actions by which bodies are capable of intruding into the controlled order of spaces.
As bodies carve spaces through their motions, architecture is passively engaged with users,
whose body pushes against established architectural rules.241 In The Manhattan Transcripts,
spaces are physical objects composed of buildings or urban spaces abstracted from maps and
plans. Movements are recorded with diagrams. Events are abstracted from photographs.242
These three disjunctive levels of sequences are equal to each other, apart from modernism’s
debate on whether form or function dominates. Each level tells one dimension of a continuous
experience, and when the three levels unite they will depict an overall story. The purpose of
the tripartite mode of notations is to introduce an alternative order of experience, an order of
sequences and time, subverting the previous formalist order; it also tends to question the
widely used method of design presentations, such as plans, sections, axonometrics and
perspectives, aiming to transcribe things normally removed from conventional architectural
presentations, namely the complex relationship between spaces and their uses, between the
set and the script, between "type" and "programme", and between objects and events.
Therefore, this concept is simply about a new way of understanding architecture through the
movie-like sequences of experiences taking place in sequential spaces, while the experience,
as part of the concept, fills in the blank in “conceptual meaning” and completes it.

240
Bernard Tschumi (1994), The Manhattan Transcripts, London: Academy Editions.

241
Ibid., p. 107.
242
Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts, pp. 8–9.

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Tschumi creates an alternative means of looking at an architectural situation, through the
effect of the disjunction of spaces, movements and events upon certain programmes. This
alternative approach is about the anatomy of dynamic architectural programmes – events
happening in spaces over time – replacing the modernists’ anatomy of architectural space.
Bodies act as active motivators of movements, as they actively interact with and become firmly
associated with spaces. Bodies become the main subjects of architecture, the subjects where
meaning is produced through actual experience, whereas spaces do not have any pre-attached
meaning. Meaning comes from how the space interacts with bodies, which is transient,
changeable and varied. Therefore, meaning does not depend mainly on abstract description
of concepts or spaces, but on the proceeding programmes conducted by bodies over time.
Thus, first, the meaning of architecture proposed by Tschumi follows Derrida’s principle of
différance. Second, as bodies are used to being suppressed in the traditional hierarchy of
architecture, Tschumi’s new order reverses modernism’s neglect of the agency of the body. So
this alternative order again echoes Derrida’s principle of hierarchy reversal. The treatment of
bodies instead of physical spaces as the central subject of architecture also responds to
Derrida’s struggle to wake up those who are at the margin and to replace those who are at the
centre. Moreover, that ever-varying and ever-transforming meaning is constantly produced
through bodily experience and dynamically emerges in architectural spaces could be seen as
the “vertical” iteration of architecture according to Derrida’s definition. Meanings update as
the programmes conducted by bodies are varied over time, so that architectural meaning is
not permanently stable, something sealed up in a fixed spatial form, but is permanently
iterative with the movements of bodies, with the transforming of events, and with the growth
of the interaction between spaces, events and bodies.

This new way of looking at architecture in The Manhattan Transcripts serves as the theoretical
base for Tschumi’s later project, Parc de la Villette. The following section will discuss how the
concept of Parc de la Villette was worked out based on disjunctive principles. The focus of
Tschumi’s architecture is on neither the purely conceptual nor the purely experiential, but the
junction between the two. Pragmatic concerns ought to be involved in concepts, while
concepts are not completely self-evident, but rather need the help of actual experience in

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order to be fulfilled. Hence, what actually happens in spaces will be discussed in the following
section, with the intention of seeing how “pragmatic meaning”, being included in “conceptual
meaning”, is produced through actual experience and how it functions to complete what
“conceptual meaning” is unable to accomplish by itself in the case of deconstruction.

3.2 Deconstruction in Design: Where “Pragmatic Meaning” Is Contained in “Conceptual

Meaning”

Parc de la Villette is a deconstructive project where Bernard Tschumi puts the theory of
deconstruction into practice. Tschumi’s concept is firmly based on the idea that the design is
neither an end nor a whole, but leaves an elastic space for the future practice of users to
complete the meaning. The design offers a systematic plan for the site, conceptual and
abstract, but “conceptual meaning” is not completed through the architect’s efforts alone; the
inherent meaning comes from the actual practice of users, which is supposed to complete
story in order for “conceptual meaning” to be fully interpreted. Therefore, in this project,
although it has great conceptual concern, “pragmatic meaning” is contained within
“conceptual meaning”, parasitising the concept, and serves as a necessity which enables the
concept to be accomplished. “Pragmatic meaning” is varied and transforming all the time, as
the events happening on the site are transient. “Pragmatic meaning” is endlessly produced
and re-produced on the site; it is always different, and different meanings disagree with each
other, so that the emergence of a fixed meaning of the space is always postponed. In this way,
“conceptual meaning” is constantly interpreted and reinterpreted as “pragmatic meaning” is
constantly iterated in the space, enriching and evolving over time, without reaching any
boundary or ending.

3.2.1 Design concept

The competition for the Parc de la Villette was arranged by the French government in 1982. As
one of the “Grand Projects”, along with the Opéra at Bastille and the Grande Arch at La Défense,

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the objectives were to mark the scope of a new era, and economic and cultural development
in Paris. The brief proposed a 21st-century urban park encompassing multiple cultural facilities,
such as an open-air theatre, music centres, workshops and cultural gardens. Parc de la Villette
is located on a large site in the northeast corner of Paris, a 125-acre expanse, between two
metro stations.243 Over 1 kilometre long in one direction and 700 metres in width, the site for
Parc de la Villette was at a complicated location, as a complex of former slaughterhouses that
served Paris and the surrounding regions still covered the site, thus giving the project an
unusual back story.244 These abandoned buildings on the site were surrounded by railway lines
and a major city ring road, and the site was intersected by an industrial-period canal through
its centre. So when architects came to this project, on the one hand they were expected to
propose new strategies for an urban park in the new era, and on the other hand they had to
concern themselves with how to deal with the existing architectural elements in any new
scheme.

243
Bernard Tschumi (1987), Cinégram folie: le Parc de la Villette, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural
Press, p. ii.
244
Tschumi, Architecture Concepts, p. 114.

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Figure 35. Key buildings on the site of Parc de la Villette and transport links.

In 1983, Bernard Tschumi’s scheme was selected from those submitted by 470 teams from 70
countries. His winning scheme proposed a new urbanistic strategy by borrowing
deconstruction as a design philosophy, and articulating concepts of superimposition,
disjunction, différance and cinematic narrative. With a strong conceptual framework, Parc de
la Villette, built between 1982 and 1988, is considered to be a built theory as well as a
theoretical building, organised without any reference to the traditional rules of composition,
hierarchy and orders.245 This is the first built work to explore the concept of disjunction and
superimposition under deconstructive notions. As Tschumi claims, this practice is a move from
“pure mathematics” to “applied mathematics”, since la Villette was built for the sake of
applying the deconstructive method to architectural practice as an extension of the theoretical
argument in The Manhattan Transcripts. The ambition of the project, as Tschumi clarifies, was
in opposition to functionalist, formalist, classical and modernist doctrines, seeking instead to
deconstruct architectural norms of totalising synthesis and reconstruct architecture along
different axes with a concern for the disjunctive relation of events, spaces and movements as
a major component.246 The abstraction of the intellectual concept was combined with and
completed by the pragmatics of actual experience. First, the discussion below will focus on
how the concept was formulated, before moving to consider the “pragmatic meaning” of the
space.

As Tschumi says, Parc de la Villette is not a green space but the largest discontinuous building
ever constructed in the world. Tschumi set out his strategies for Parc de la Villette from an
intention to approach the design of the park as architecture. The park was supposed to be a
masterly construction, an inspired architectural gesture. Tschumi rejected making Parc de la
Villette a composition in harmony with the Villette district, evoking nostalgia for the
preceeding urban context. He preferred to create a park with its own autonomous identity.

245
Bernard Tschumi (1988), “Parc de la Villette, Paris”, in Papadakēs, A. (ed.), Deconstruction in
Architecture, London: Architectural Design, pp. 33–39, pp. 35, 38.
246
Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, p.186.

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Moreover, he also rejected the expression of some pre-existing forms of architecture. As a
deconstructive project, Parc de la Villette sought out substitutions. The aim was to search for
and to produce a complement in the margin, to fill the gap left by what was already there. It
was also to deconstruct what already existed by critically analysing the historical context and
adding new layers that could exist independently, without centre and hierarchy. The project
was intended to act as a mediator, between the site, programmes and theoretical concepts.247

The programmes at Parc de la Villette are complex. When the park was in the planning stages,
at the north end of the site the huge steel carcass of the slaughterhouse left from the 1950s
was already being transformed into a museum of science and technology. 248 Another
abandoned cast iron and glass building to the south was also going to be transformed into the
Grande Halle de la Villette, a cultural centre. There was also a music venue (Le Zenith) for rock
concerts and other venues of music entertainment in the eastern part of the site (Philarmonie
de Paris, Le Trabendo and Cabaret Sauvage). The new park was intended to have several
workshops, a gymnasium and facilities, playgrounds, and places for exhibitions, concerts,
scientific experiments, games and competitions. All of these intended programmes could have
been arranged in one building complex, but Tschumi saw the whole parkland as an open-air
cultural centre, within which all of these programmes would be separated into different
buildings and scattered throughout the space like fragments exploded from an entirety.

Besides these planned programmes, Tschumi place a great deal of focus on a non-
programmatic strategy – that is, there was no established cause-and-effect relationship
between programme and architecture. 249 In the modernist period, form acted as an
interpreter of hierarchy and symbolic meaning, through the unity of its parts and transparent
trace from object to meaning. There were one-to-one correspondences between form and
function, style and use, context and programme, space and action, object and meaning, which

247
Glusberg, Deconstruction, p. 68.
248
Bernard Tschumi, Frédéric Migayrou & Centre Georges Pompidou (2014), Bernard Tschumi:
Architecture: Concept & Notation, Paris: Centre Pompidou, p. 121.
249
Glusberg, Deconstruction, p. 69.

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might originate in the correlation between signifier and signified. What gave rise to those
values was a belief in a unified, centred, self-generative subject – an architectural form of self-
sufficient and self-evident matter.250 In contrast, associated with deconstruction, Tschumi finds
more pleasure in what he calls “concept-form”. The concept-form is an abstract configuration
that can be built in a particular place and welcomes its culture to be accepted and
accommodated in the form. The concept can be programmatic, social, technological and so on,
but the form must be relative abstract, since these programmatic, social or technological
aspects are indeterminate and possibly in constant mutation. 251 The form hence is not
necessary to be bounded with a particular intention, whereas it has to be highly adaptive to
multiple situations. Therefore, the concept-form requires “a high level of abstraction in
orchestrating together a complexity that includes materials, movement and programmes in
the definition of architectural form”.252 This notion of concept-form suggests a disjunction in
those one-to-one correlations derived from modernism, attempts to decentre the notions of
architectural forms of synthesis or totality with inherent meanings, and rejects the well-
defined signified which was meant to guarantee the authenticity of architecture. Instead it is
in favour of a superposition or juxtaposition of the “cause” and the “effect,” and programmes
and forms are considered to be independent, both crucial and equal to each other. In addition,
a concept-form should not be seen to be relevant with a typological form, as the concept-form
has no priori meaning attached to it, and it does not originate in historical conventions.253

So, from the deconstruction’s point of view, architectural meaning does not come
straightforwardly from architectural forms. It could come from the traces of an event or
programme – namely, actual experience in the spaces, which has not been predetermined by
and does not immanently exist in architectural forms. Thus, programmes are generated
according to users; thereby, meanings are transiently produced and re-produced over time

250
Tschumi, “Parc de la Villette, Paris”, p. 33.

251
Bernard Tschumi (2010), Event-Cities 4: Concept-form, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 14.
252
Michael Costanzo & Liugi Prestinenza Puglisi (2009), “Twenty Years After (Deconstructivism): An
Interview with Bernard Tschumi”, Architectural Design, vol. 79 (1), pp. 24–29, p. 26.
253
Tschumi, Event-Cities 4, p. 15.

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and varied between individuals. As a result, architecture is a neutral object, and architectural
spaces are considerably compatible, as heterogeneous programmes can happen in one place,
randomly and unexpectedly, on different occasions. By these means, as Tschumi rejected the
idea that meanings are immanent in building forms with direct capacity for signifying, he
subverted functionalism’s utopia in which form follows function and rejected logocentrism’s
insistence that meanings are immanent in words.254 However, Tschumi’s geometric system of
architecture actually means nothing, as he intended to offer pure architectural forms without
any semantic reference, paralleling Derrida’s rejection of the fixed relationship between well-
defined meanings and their linked signifiers. They both insist that no meaning inherently exists
in objects, or any other materials, but that meanings are always socially produced in practice.
To Derrida, words such as “park”, “architecture” or “science” had lost their inherent meanings;
to Tschumi, the buildings or any constructions in the park had also lost their fixed meanings,
just as signifiers had lost their signifieds. The meanings produced in buildings would be
constantly “différance” – different, deferring and disagreeing, without beginnings and ends,
but constantly forming and iterating over time. So at the conceptual level, an object (or
concept) leaves room for pragmatic experience to complete the “conceptual meaning”.
Programmes are an integral part of architecture. Architectural elements have no absolute
“truth”. Architecture only functions when it encounters the movements of bodies. For example,
the red folies in la Villette have no “true” meaning by themselves: their meanings are deferred,
to be aroused through activities such as street arts, small parties, live shows or sport games
actually taking place in their spaces. Therefore, the concept is also being deferred, to be
achieved when “pragmatic meanings” have emerged in the spaces in later experience. This
gives rise to a multiplicity of programmes. Each individual can project his own programme onto,
and has his unique interpretations of, a space. Architecture becomes a carnival of
interpretations. Only when events and programmes have already happened in spaces can the
“pragmatic meaning” be produced in architecture, and “conceptual meaning” will then be
fulfilled. Therefore, Tschumi’s concept of disjunction works as a theoretical tool for the

254
Glusberg, Deconstruction, p. 71.

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generation of architectural meaning in both conceptual and pragmatic terms.

Figure 36. Three systems of lines, points and surfaces of Parc de la Villette at the conceptual
level.

Tschumi ignored the context and subverted any notion of boundary on this site. Without
concern for context and boundary, Parc de la Villette is arranged as a quite autonomous
systematic anti-contextual complex and no relation to its surroundings.255 Three systems are
superimposed on the same ground layer by layer, a system of points, lines and surfaces. These
three systems are distinct in geometrical formation and also in programmatic configuration.
The system of points contains point-like programmed and un-programmed activities; the
system of lines directs the movements of people through the park, thus containing linear and
curvilinear activities; and the system of surfaces contains series of un-programmed activities
that can be appropriated by the public in unexpected ways. The surfaces are supposed to host

255
Tschumi, “Parc de la Villette, Paris”, p. 38.

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larger-scale surface activities, from an open-air cinema to informal football games. 256 The
concept of three superimposed systems offers not only a way of arranging geometrical systems
but, more significantly, a way of combining different events, both programmatic and un-
programmatic. Whether or not those programmatic events imagined at the conceptual level
are realised and “conceptual meaning” is completed depends on whether or not “pragmatic
meaning” is generated through actual experience on the site.

Though one system is superimposed on another, they retain their own internal logic and are
distinct from each other, they resist any dominant or foreign elements, and are supposed to
contaminate but not negate one another. Each of them represents a distinctive and
autonomous whole, hence it is impossible for them to be combined and play a part in a bigger
composition. Therefore, the superimposition of the three systems never produces a coherent
mega-structure.257 It is apparent that in Parc de la Villette the architecture is seen not as the
result of composition, or as a synthesis of functional concerns, but rather as a complex process
of an ever-changing relationship between events, spaces and movements. As opposed to the
more traditional play between function and form or use and style, in Parc de la Villette the
architecture is a pure matter waiting for the permutations of programmes, and a combination
of a large set of variables constantly resetting with time.258 The principle of superimposition
of the three autonomous systems presents a rejection of totalising synthesis. Additionally, the
principle of heterogeneity is applied in spatial structures, by disrupting the coherence of the
three systems, promoting the instability of the overall structure, encouraging conflict over
synthesis and fragmentation over unity; the park thus avoids being homogenised into a
totality.259

The system of points is made up of bright red cubes. Tschumi called them “folies”, meaning
madness and passion. Those folies are the most striking features on the site, organised in a

256
Tschumi, Migayrou & Pompidou, Bernard Tschumi: Architecture, p. 109.
257
Tschumi, “Parc de la Villette, Paris”, p. 38.

258
Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, p. 181.
259
Glusberg, Deconstruction, p. 70.

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self-referential grid, placed every 120 metres at the vertices of a Cartesian grid.260 Each of the
folies started as a 10 m cube, and was divided three by three by three into 27 small cubes.
These three-storey constructions of neutral spaces can be elaborated and transformed
according to specific programmatic needs. Whenever the cubes are given particular
presentations, with solid walls, curtain walls, hollowed out, or combined with trellises or
cylinders, these red folies are designed to have their own characteristics. Each of them is made
up of several different parts which can be assembled and disassembled in a variety of
configurations depending on their individual programmes.261 Some cubes have metal plates
filling all exposed sides, thus looking like solid boxes; some are semi-solid with movement
vectors such as ramps or staircases attached on one side; and some cubes are combined with
sculptures or installations, such as a water wheel.262 The grid of points allows almost all of
what is already on the site to be retained, especially the 19th-century buildings. The small
structures juxtapose with the remains of old buildings rather than invading them. For example,
when the grid of folies comes across the remains of a 19th-century building, the whole folie
cannot be built at that location, but a red frame is designed paralleling the building remains,
highlighting its own presence as well as respecting the presence of the old building. Therefore,
as Tschumi stresses, the folies are elaborated through the methods of normality and deviation,
since they try to be uniform, in line with one grid and with the same structural matrix, but at
the meantime they tend towards heterogeneity and dissociation, thus involving both
rationality and irrationality.

260
Harry F. Mallgrave (2011), An Introduction to Architectural Theory: 1968 to the Present, Malden, MA:
Wiley-Blackwell, p. 138.

261
Tschumi, Migayrou & Pompidou, Bernard Tschumi: Architecture, p. 126.
262
Glusberg, Deconstruction, p. 71.

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Figure 37. Conceptual design of neutral red folies on the system of points.

This organisational concept allows the massive programme devised by committees to be

broken down into smaller components rather than being concentrated in one building complex.
Some cubes are able to house some planned programmes, such as exhibition galleries, bars,
restaurants, workshops, offices, cinemas, a first-aid centre and an information centre, as if the
programmatic needs have been exploded into a series of fragments. Some cubes stay as pure
architectural structures calling for “pragmatic meaning” to be attached. Each folly constitutes
an autonomous sign which indicates its independent programmatic concerns. Therefore, these
folies are the nodes of programmes, the points of intensity, as they are the focus of dissociated
spaces, acting as anchoring points accommodating the relations between objects, events and

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people.263 Thus, this system is a layer of multi-referential anchoring points encouraging people
to interact in order to bring “pragmatic meaning” to the spaces, hence it challenges the
institutional structure of buildings, urban parks or any other leisure and cultural centres.

The lines are formed by the linear pathways running between the folies and curvilinear
pathways randomly weaving around folies and thematic gardens. An orthogonal system with
wide and straight pedestrian routes on the site marks the site with a coordinate cross. The
north–south pedestrian route links two main park gates and two metro stations by each gate,
while the east–west pedestrian route – the paths on the north and south banks of the canal –
connects Paris to its suburbs. A 5-metre-wide open weaving cover-structure runs all the way
over these two orthogonal pedestrian routes, which to some degree offers a strong sense of
direction, stressing their leading role among all paths. Besides these coordinate-like linear
pathways, there are also other straight lines, such as the one spreading from northwest to
southeast across the width of the park linking a series of paths, and a shorter one going
northeast to southeast connecting the former pedestrian route to the south entrance. The
system of lines also includes curvilinear paths going through thematic gardens. These paths
cover most parts of the park, although seemingly random, yet they carefully constitute a well-
organised circuit. Thematic gardens are located all over the park along the curvilinear circuit.
The paths of thematic gardens intersect with linear paths at various places in order to link all
key activities, and this linkage is accessorised by alleys connecting curvilinear paths with
activity areas (on all systems of points, lines and surfaces). When people enter the thematic
gardens, they might feel as if they are entering a dense and green microclimate, which would
be an experience different from that of the rest of the park, thus the “pragmatic meaning”
produced in thematic gardens is different from that of other parts of the park. In addition, for
linear pedestrian routes the paving stones and pavement are laid out in rough and smooth
bands which provide distinct expressions to movement separation. This separation implies and
directs “pragmatic meaning”, as smooth pavements is intended for bikes while walkers are

263
Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, p. 178.

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able to use both the rough and the smooth zones.264

The system of surfaces is the bottom layer underneath the systems of points and lines. It
contains multiple functional grounds laid over the site. On the conceptual level, the surface
system includes four areas of surfaces along the west side of the north–south pedestrian route,
and a smaller area located at the back of the fourth of these; there is also a linear area north
of the east–west pedestrian route, with a tiny area east of it, one area (the largest) south of
the east–west route, and one triangular area on the northeast corner of the site. These big
areas include lawns, playgrounds and gardens. There is no programmed activity on the
surfaces. They all play host to any unexpected activities requiring large expanses of space for
play, games, exercises and mass entertainments. “Pragmatic meaning” is then iteratively
produced in the surface system through large-scale activities.

Therefore, the idea of deconstruction in the park can be understood in three dimensions. The
first dimension is the geometric, presented by the separation and superimposition of three
autonomous layers of points, lines and surfaces. The second is the programmatic dimension,
presented by the disjunctive relationship between form and function, space and action, object
and meaning. The last dimension is an extension of the second, in the non-correspondence
between signified and signifier. Architectural space itself is a signifier without any signified,
while the meaning of the space is produced through actual programmes, events and activities
happening within the space. As programmes transform over time, the meanings of the
architecture are constantly changing, so that the architecture is structured through ever-
evolving programmatic images, performed like filmic scenes.

This filmic analogy is not only expressed in single buildings, the system of points, but, as
Tschumi describes, the linear system of the park also acts as narrative paths made out of
segments like film frames. A “frame” means each of the segments of a sequence. Each frame
is placed in a continuous movement. Successive frames constitute a sequence of film. The
sequence of the film can be slow, fast or accelerated, as one moves along a path at varying

264
Tschumi, Migayrou & Pompidou, Bernard Tschumi: Architecture, p. 136.

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speed.265 The images of the film change with the movement of one’s body, from gardens to
playground, from fields to folies. One can design one’s own film as one moves through the
park and searches for ways to frame segments of images. Hence, the park becomes a narrative.

Tschumi’s filmic idea in the design of Pard de la Villette is in some way engaged with traditional
Chinese gardening philosophy, namely, scenes change with the movement of the body.
Gardens are spaces of pleasure for the body’s wandering. Individual bodies could find different
ways of scenes, that is, different journeys in the garden. One can have different journeys at
different times when one encounters the garden. The body’s pleasure leads to the pleasure of
the mind – body and mind are integrated and inter-affected. Usually traditional gardens
(Jiangnan private gardens) are small, but it could offer unlimited pleasure, and makes the body
feels like it is at a forest – this is the very point of gardening philosophy, creating the “aesthetic
sense” of “small forest”. One of the essential techniques to achieve this feeling is to make more
scenes and scenes-change within the limited space, in order for the body to have richer
experience and more pleasure as it moves through the space, thus having the sense of staying
at a forest. This gardening philosophy is considerably applied in a contemporary project, the
design of Xiangshan Campus, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Similar to the design
of traditional Chinese gardens, Tschumi has the idea of scenes-change in the design of Parc de
la Villette. One creates one’s own journey as one wanders in the park. What one sees and
experiences accidentally happen on one’s way and this is where the pleasure comes from. The
architect could neither design the exact ways one has to walk on nor exact experience one
would go through, it is users who direct their own films following bodies’ movement.

The cinematic promenade is the key feature of the park, where the sequences of events,
activities and incidents are inevitably superimposed on the fixed spatial sequences.
Architecture produces a distance between physical forms and the programmes it encompasses.
The elements of architectural forms in different layers are free from their historical
connotations, the fixed signifieds. They have been put into a broader, more flexible and plainer
plane, waiting for unimagined activities to occur, ready to receive new meanings and to be

265
Ibid.

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framed into films.

3.2.2 Everyday life in Parc de la Villette

According to the above, the concept of Parc de la Villette has defined a new type of urban park,
as it proposed an innovation in programme organisation, which drew heavily on ideas from
films, linguistics and deconstructive philosophy. Parc de la Villette is basically about
establishing an opposition to the context of both time and space – to what currently exists in
that period and in the surroundings. Generally, there are three issues Tschumi is interested in:
first, juxtaposition, superimposition and the fragmentation of the three autonomous systems
– in both physical spaces and experiential programmes; second, the filmic representation of
disjunctive terms of spaces, events and movements comes directly from The Manhattan
Transcripts; third, the belief in différance of architectural meaning that is seen as constantly
developing over time and negates fixed relations between signifiers and signifieds. All of the
methods of superimposition, disjunction and différance are employed, with the intention of
making the totalising composition of the self-contained architecture impossible.

Tschumi offers a strong conceptual framework, wherein “pragmatic meaning” is considered as

a part of the concept. The concept has arranged a physical structure of programmes containing
three systems, so that the project is generated through top-down imposition of conceptual
aesthetics. However, this abstraction of the intellectual concept needs pragmatic experience
to be combined with it in order for the concept to be realised. So observation of actual
activities on the site is necessary in order to explore “pragmatic meaning” on the site, as well
as to understand the whole meaning of the concept.

After the physical space had been constructed, Parc de la Villette became the container of
potential events, programmes and activities. It welcomes people to engage with the spaces,
thus bodies and spaces become mutually violating, irrationality and rationality interact, and
immediate experience and the design concept are combined; therefore, Tschumi’s definition
of the ultimate pleasure of architecture becomes approachable, and “pragmatic meaning”
emerges in the spaces.
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Derrida commented on Tschumi’s work in 1986 in an exhibition on la Villette. He denied that
the deconstructive meaning of Parc de la Villette led “back to the desert of an architecture”
which was “without finality, aesthetic aura, fundamentals … inhuman, useless, uninhabitable
and meaningless”; in fact, those structures on the site maintained, renewed, re-inscribed and
revived architecture.266 Hence, the life span of Parc de la Villette would be longer than that of
architecture with fixed meaning, and thus the architectural meaning of Parc de la Villette could
stay young and vigorous over a longer period.

Therefore, in order to discover “pragmatic meaning” and have a full interpretation of

“conceptual meaning”, investigations of the actual use of the spaces on the site has been
carried out. Just as everybody seeks their own way in this programmatic structure, I also
sought to find a route for investigation. The route I chose was the curvilinear pathway of the
movement system. While walking on this route, events happening on the three systems were
instantly mapped on different individual maps respectively. Site observations and mapping
work was undertaken in summer 2015 over two weeks on weekdays and at weekends, in
different weather conditions – cloudy, sunny, windy and rainy. It was not intended to be a
scientific investigation or to produce a precise programmatic map of Parc de la Villette – after
all, activities happening in the park could not be accurately counted, as they are too flexible
and changeable. So, since the park had been devised as a place filled with and signified by
incidentals, the observer who violated the spaces was also an incidental looking for other
incidentals. When I was following my planned incidental way on a certain incidental date in
certain incidental weather, it was interesting to see what events were caught incidentally.
Events caught were first mapped respectively on individual maps of points, lines and surfaces;
when these individual maps are brought together, the way in which irrelative events are
seemingly compatible is revealed more dramatically than when the maps are looked at
separately. In effect, Tschumi devised a drama stage for the public, but the scripts are left for
public to write, and the shows are directed and performed by the people who participate in
the park as actors. Therefore, everybody is acting in a self-written, self-directed and self-

266
Mallgrave, An Introduction to Architectural Theory, p. 140.

153
performed play in Parc de la Villette, while everybody is also a part of the audience watching
dramas performed by others.

As events were caught, mapped and superimposed on the same map, Tschumi’s logic of
superimposition of three systems has been followed and reflected in the pragmatic method of
study. Events were mapped over a period, and have been superimposed and analysed, so that
the “pragmatic meaning” of the spaces has been gradually discovered over a vertical time axis.
The “pragmatic meaning” produced in spaces is therefore incidental. It seems that it is hardly
possible for “pragmatic meaning” to be pictured completely, as it can only be caught partially
and coincidentally, revealing only a segment of the whole. But nobody knows what the whole
looks like and how to predictably get a certain expected segment from it: what can be caught
is only an incidental part from a never-completed indefinite picture. Events are constantly
changing and transiently exist in the spaces. The “pragmatic meaning” that grows in the spaces
can vanish in a flash, thus it is hard to have an accurate plan and gain even a segment of
“pragmatic meaning”. As a result, the examples of “pragmatic meaning” obtained from site
investigations are merely small fragments from a total meaning which is permanently
developing and transforming through time, and the overall “pragmatic meaning” gained from
the investigation is a combination of these fragments. These fragments which are organised in
an attempt to interpret “pragmatic meaning” are in a chaos of logic, since each individual plays
a part in his/her drama without any central guidance; thereby, the fragments of meaning are
freely produced, combined and disappearing out of control. Though “pragmatic meaning” is
incidental and logically chaotic, it is ceaselessly iterative. This is a “vertical” iteration
proceeding over time, as events are continuously happening in and vanishing unexpectedly
from the different spaces of the site, upon which “pragmatic meaning” is constantly created,
transformed and replaced. Moreover, in this case “conceptual meaning” is interpreted
incidentally as well, since the “pragmatic meaning” which is involved in and accomplishes
“conceptual meaning” is variable. Hence, when the spaces have already been in actual use,
the concept will not be an intellectual abstraction any more, but will be enriched and will vary
as “pragmatic meaning” vertically iterates. “Conceptual meaning” is then interpreted and re-
interpreted by ever-changing events, so that it is continuously fulfilled and re-fulfilled.

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“Conceptual meaning” is not any more seen as a lifeless and empty rhetoric: it is alive. What
Tschumi did was simply to form a frame of meaningless spaces based on a general
categorisation of three main activity types. When “pragmatic meaning” emerges in these
spaces, “conceptual meaning” becomes animated. It moves from being a rhetorical term with
grand, constant ambitions to being an elastic, living body carefully adjusting with the change
of “pragmatic meaning”. The liveliness of Parc de la Villette consequently becomes a
combination of “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning”, where “conceptual meaning”
contains “pragmatic meaning” while “pragmatic meaning” animates “conceptual meaning”,
and the ultimate pleasure of architecture which Tschumi proposed – the junction of concept
and immediate experience – is realised as the result of the combination of the two kinds of
meaning.

155
◼ Point-like events

Figure 38. System of points: programmed and unprogrammed folies.

156
Figure 39. Events incidentally observed on the system of points.

When walking close to the main entrances, the red structures standing near the gates will
inform the passer-by of the presence of Parc de la Villette. Just as Tschumi expected, the red
folies are the most visible structure on the site, giving the park identifiable images. The
repetitive appearance of the red structures surprises constantly as one is moving around the
site, since they are not exactly alike – they are distinct and creative, and always unexpectedly
appear in front of one’s eyes. Wandering in the park, the three overlapping systems of points,
lines and surfaces are not as easily noticed as they are in the conceptual diagram. What can
be easily perceived is the well-organised system of red folies. It can be sensed in the park that
157
these folies are in some repetitive order, but it is not as explicit that they are in an organised
grid as it is in the conceptual diagram. Only those folies that are located along the two linear
pedestrian routes and make a distinct cross on the site present a strong sense of the dot-array,
while the rest of the folies do not have such a recognisable sense that they are placed in a grid.
Moreover, it seems impossible to realise that the repetitive red folies are in some state of
dissociation through the process of explosion from a mega-totality, as is explained on the
conceptual level, because it is difficult to imagine that they are in the form of separation from
an abstract matrix when looking at them from a phenomenological perspective instead of as
conceptual drawings. When in the park, the abstract sense of design philosophy Tschumi
created is not much associated with the liveliness of the actual places, even though those
activities happening in the park are what Tschumi anticipated. There is an impressive dialogue
between steel structures and landscape settings, such as canal, lawn and gardens. It seems
they are conflicting as they are in different materials, but at the same time they
homogeneously co-exist within the same ground. The red folies seem radical, but they create
a peaceful and vibrant picture with the involvement of the green ground and the events
happening around them.

The follies were originally arranged based on Cartesian coordinates; however, in fact it was
found that not all of the folies were properly presented. Nearly one third of the planned cubes
have been displaced or are missing compared with the original scheme. The actually presented
folies are still arrayed in the expected order. There are altogether 26 red cubes, including three
frame structures adhering to existing buildings. They are organised in a grid of five columns
and nine rows, in which columns are named J, L, N, P and R, from the west to the east, and the
rows are numbered with Arabic numerals from 1 to 10, starting from the north. The name of
each folie is made up of its column name combined with its row number, such as L2 and P7.
So in this way the folies are easily distinguished from each other by their unique names.
Wherever one comes across a folie in the park, one can be aware of one’s position according
to its name. Therefore, the elaborately arrayed folies and their accurate names give the park
a sense of orientation and also mean to emphasise the systematicness of the layer of points.

In the layer of points, each folie contains programmed or un-programmed events. Some folies
158
function to meet the requirements of the project brief, which intended there to be appointed
services in the park, such as workshops and a museum. As stated before, Tschumi put those
programmes in some of the folies, and thus they are scattered over the park instead of
concentrated in one building complex. There are 14 folies out of 26 having fixed programmes,
of which there are three workshops (L5, P5, N6), a restaurant (L2), an exhibition gallery (L7), a
submarine museum (l’Argonaute) (P4), a television studio (N5), a children’s playground
reception (L6), a music venue (R6), a first-aid centre (N7), a cafe (P7), two offices (R7, P8) and
an information centre (L9). There are two folies working as walkway exchangers, R5 and J5. R5
has three levels of walkway intersecting – the bridge over the canal, the east–west elevated
gallery along the canal and the ground level. J5, serving as the west entrance, links the lower
park area, the east–west elevated gallery along the canal and the ground level. These two
walkway exchangers also serve as un-programmed activity points, as people were occasionally
found resting and rambling over them. Besides this, some folies house electricity equipment,
such as L3, L7 and P6. Some workshop folies are not usually open, including the first-aid centre
and exhibition spaces. But some public services are used heavily, especially those along the
north–south linear pedestrian route and l’Argonaute museum, as well as the information
centre and the cafe.

Figure 40. The folie (P8) has been used as an office.

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Figure 41. The folie (L9) has been used as an information centre at the south entrance.

Figure 42. The closed first-aid centre (N7).

Besides the four frame-like folies which are attached to existing buildings (N1, N8, N9, L8),
there are eight folies which are completely un-programmed – empty, flexible and fully
available for the public. There are also partly un-programmed folies, such as R7, which has an
office upstairs, leaving free space for the public downstairs, and P5, which has a workshop
downstairs accessible from ground level and a public free space upstairs accessible from a
bridge corridor. However, some of the un-programmed spaces are partly locked for some
reason, like N4 and P5.
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As the investigation of incidentals was being carried out when I was walking along the
curvilinear pathways on the system of lines, some spontaneous events were caught,
happening in different folies on different days and in different weather. L1 serves as the
landmark presenting the entrance of the park. It was identified several times people were
using L1 individually as a pavilion for short rests. They stayed there alone for 10–15 minutes
and then continued on their journeys again. Some continued their journeys towards the park,
while some moved towards the Avenue. So, to people who used the space, L1 functioned
much like a transition terrace, a node of time and space connecting the previous and the next
journey.

Figure 43. The folie (L1) acts as a pavilion for short rests.

N1 is an interesting structure with a spiral staircase going from the ground floor to the upstairs,
and an upper-level terrace linked to an existing concrete building. As was observed, two or
three people occasionally gathered on the upper floor, chatting and having their lunch, while
sometimes children treated the spiral stairs as a big toy that they found enjoyable as they were
crawling up and down them. Therefore, in this case, N1 meant different things to adults from
what it meant to children. The “pragmatic meaning” adults produced for N1 was of a small-
scale semi-private area for taking a rest with friends, but the “pragmatic meaning” children
produced was of something like an amusement machine that was able to bring them joy.

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Figure 44. People are sitting on the upper level of the folie (N1).

P6 is a cubic structure accompanied by a large spiral ramp, starting from the ground floor and
leading to the first level. It was observed on several occasions that the ramp was used by
children as a cycling lane or a skateboard lane, since the sloping and wide conditions provided
children much pleasure when they cycled or skated downwards from the upper end. In this
case, the ramp becomes meaningful when children are playing on it. In addition, a group of
hip-hop dancers once were found dancing inside the round space enclosed by the spiral ramp.
Their live show attracted several people who went up on to the ramp to watch the
performance. So in this situation the ramp became a watching stand and its curved shape
effectively directed people’s eyes towards the centre – the space surrounded by the ramp –
which served as the perfect place for a live show. In addition, some people chose to go up to
the upper level of the structure via the ramp, had a seat on the reticular floor and enjoyed a
private time with a couple of friends. Therefore, as happened at N1, the different parts of the
folly meant different things to different groups of people. And those different meanings could
occur at the same time in different parts of a single folie.

Follies could sometimes become rain shelters; one day during an unexpected heavy storm,
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several park visitors found that the folies were good places to shelter from the rain. And during
the rain, the folies were seldom used for other purposes, so it seems that acting as a rain
shelter was the most proper function they fulfilled in that situation. Hence, how a folie
functions also depends on the weather conditions, in addition to the primary factor of the
subjective intentions of users; that is to say, how “pragmatic meaning” transforms also
depends on climatic factors.

There were three folies preferred by teenagers: L4, R4 and R7. Almost each time they were
visited, groups of young people were found occupying these spaces. They were usually sitting
in a circle or practising their skateboard skills. L4 has a raised stage semi-covered with red
structures and an open-air public square in front of. It is located by one of the main pedestrian
routes, at the bank where two canals intersect. Therefore, it offers space for teenagers’
exercises, an open view and good accessibility from the main path, and these are the reasons
for its popularity. However, the other two folies popular with teenagers are not close to vibrant
parts of the park but located at the corners where they are only accessible from curvilinear
paths, away from the main flows. R4 is purely a frame structure in which a footstep goes
through the middle of the ground floor. R7 is available at the ground level, with offices on the
upper level above the gathering area. Teenagers preferred to take these places as a place to
gather basically because they are separated from the crowds, and thus the young people could
turn these places into their own realms, so that the sense of identity of those places would be
built up. The “pragmatic meaning” of these three places preferred by teenagers is produced
in the folies by those teenagers who would like to establish realms belonging to them alone,
with those particular folies, either spacious or semi-private, offering appropriate spatial
conditions to meet teenagers’ requirements.

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◼ Linear and curvilinear events

Figure 45. System of lines.

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Figure 46. Events incidentally observed on the system of lines (pathways).

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Figure 47. Events incidentally observed on the system of lines (thematic gardens).

On the system of lines, the north–south linear pedestrian route is the most heavily used
pathway. Its width and its function of linking two main entrances and two metro stations
pragmatically give it a distinct role. Its width, the identifiable characteristics of the weaving
cover, and the repeatedly appearing folies with programmed and un-programmed activities
along one side jointly maintain the importance of this path. Besides the main expected
programme of walking movement directed by the path, numerous un-programmed incidental
movements and events were occurring transiently on the path. Children were always found
playing on their skates, skateboards and bicycles on the smoother pavement of the route. They
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were either following their parents or with a group of other children. The barrier-free smooth
pavement provides possibilities for children to translate the pedestrian path into a skating or
bicycle lane. Casual football games occasionally happened on the rougher pavement; at the
same time, other free exercise was taking place, such as running, cycling, badminton or
sometimes just casual play between a couple of children on the wide pedestrian path.

Figure 48. North–south coordinated pathway.

Figure 49. Football on the rough pavement of the pedestrian coordinates.

Stationary activities also took place on the linear system originally designed for movement.
People were found standing on the rough pavement in a circle, some with their dogs, chatting
while enjoying the sunshine during good weather; some were found sitting on the pavement,
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reading books or having sandwiches. There is a 40-cm-high partition set up between the rough
and the smooth pavements all the way along the pedestrian route. Its height makes it possible
for it to serve as a bench. So there were always people sitting on this partition, watching others
passing by. However, in children’s eyes, this partition could not only be used as a bench, but
also as a walking bridge, since it gave them plenty of fun when they were walking on the top
of the partition instead of the pavement. This concrete bench was also a practice place for
guitar players. A couple of guitar players were observed gathering together, sitting on the
partition, practising and conversing, heedless of passers-by who were interested in their
playing.

This clearly shows that one place means different things to different individuals at the same
time. It was common to see that a group of children skating by people who were having lunch
on the partition, and sometimes two or three boys showing off their football skills in front of
a girl sitting on the rough pavement. These different meanings emerged in the space and were
compatibly mixed together. Moreover, the activities are quickly varied and transforming. For
example, some people who were walking on the pavement might suddenly move to have rest
on the partition, or a boy who was cycling along the pedestrian would choose to join a football
game with another two boys, and after a while the three might find it would be more
interesting to play with a dog held by its owner nearby. Therefore, the “pragmatic meaning”
generated in the spaces is diverse and changeable, and anything new could happen at any time
in the near future.

The pedestrian flow of the east–west linear pathway is not as heavy as that of the north–south
linear pathway, although the east–west pathway consists of two levels, a ground-level
pedestrian path and an elevated gallery along the canal. However, unexpected programmes
were also found happening in this linear space: children were skating and skateboarding,
people were cycling, some were walking their dogs, some were taking photos, some were
standing and chatting by the side of the path, and some were sitting on the bank of the canal.
Besides the lower flow rate, the main visible difference compared with the north–south path,
it was also noticeable that the numbers of people who were running along the east–west path
was considerably higher – there were almost no joggers found on the north–south path. This
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shows that the wide and straight conditions of the pedestrian route, with a great park view,
could serve as an ideal running space; however, high pedestrian flow would decrease the
likelihood of a space being an ideal location for joggers. As a result, this difference between
the two pedestrian routes implies that whether or not a particular activity will take place in a
space depends on the pre-existing programmes in that space – the effects that the pre-existing
programmes bring to that space – so that the effects created by other programmes become
conditions of that space together with environmental and spatial conditions. The effects of
existing programmes are considered by any new potential programmes. Running is a potential
programme in the park and, by considering the existing conditions of each path, people chose
the east–west linear path as the ideal place for this.

Another two more secluded linear pedestrian routes, starting from the west and the south of
the park, spread diagonally across the park and intersect in the east part. Except for the west
end of one of these routes, they usually remained quiet, and were thus much more private.
The sense of linear space is stressed by two lines of trees standing by the sides of the paths,
and these trees also help to create a more concealed space, therefore the sense of seclusion
is reinforced. In these two relatively concealed linear pathways, far fewer passers-by were
observed, but joggers were often found running through, along with other un-programmed
events, such as children’s cycling and skating.

Figure 50. Children cycling on the smooth pavement of the linear pedestrian path while people
walking on the rough pavement.
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The most commonly observed activity on the curvilinear paths was that of people sitting on
benches. These people could be alone, in couples or in a group; some were sitting silently and
some were chatting and having food together. These people were using the benches for their
intended purpose, but other people were found lying on the benches having naps: they
pragmatically created an extra meaning for the benches. Sports such as jogging and cycling
which were frequently observed on linear paths were much less observed on curvilinear paths,
but they could still be found occasionally at some places in good weather. The curved character
of those paths makes places more private and secluded, so that they provide ideal places for
dating couples. But the curves of the paths also make it more difficult for cyclists and joggers,
except those people who specifically choose to cycle or run along zigzag and hilly paths. Some
un-programmed stationary activities were also found on the curvilinear lines. Guitar players
were once found sitting together on a bench, practising their music for their own enjoyment,
without any passers-by walking around. Thus, the area they occupied resembled a private,
open-air, live house. A bigger music/dance show was found on another curvilinear path, also
for the purpose of self-enjoyment. More than ten people were involved in this music/dance
show; some were playing instruments, while some were dancing, which attracted a number
of passers-by to stay and watch. The small area immediately became an open-air performance
stage in the woods.

Figure 51. Music/dance show on the curvilinear pathway.

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Figure 52. Thematic garden 2: children’s playground.

Figure 53. Thematic garden 10: children’s playground.

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Figure 54. Folk music show in garden 6.

Ten thematic gardens located along the curvilinear circuit present different identities. Three of
them are children’s playgrounds (2, 3, 10), of which garden 2 and garden 10 have amusement
facilities carefully set up, while garden 3 only offers an area of flat and smooth ground,
probably for children’s sports which do not need accessory facilities. So garden 2 and garden
10 were always popular places where children of different ages were playing and sharing fun
in the well-organised spaces. Children could also be found cycling and skating on the
playground of garden 3, moving in circles around the edge of the ground or straight from one
end to another. Sometimes also middle-aged women could be found learning traditional dance
on the flat ground of this garden. Garden 8 has a series of exercise facilities where each time
large numbers of young people were found doing exercises, and sometimes children were also
found showing an interest in these facilities. Activities happening in gardens 2, 8 and 10 were
fully programmed – children were acting to install meaning based on established programmes
– while garden 3 was un-programmed, and it was children themselves who found out the
possibility for it to serve as a playground for skating and cycling according to its conditions.

The rest of the gardens are not specifically programmed and all have their own distinctions.
Events randomly take place in these gardens, thereby creating and transforming programmatic
meaning, at times unexpectedly. For example, garden 5 is a sunken garden filled with bamboo.

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One can see a thick bamboo grove when one is standing outside the garden, but one has to go
down steps to reach the bottom of the garden, where one can feel an extraordinary sense of
seclusion. But unfortunately nobody was found going down to the garden, probably because
of the sense of insecurity, as the sunken garden was nearly invisible from the ground level of
the park. Garden 6 is a grove with a number of stone benches set in an order. Usually this area
was quiet – only a couple of lovers came here occasionally – but sometimes on sunny days it
might become vibrant because of folk music groups. Once there were two folk music groups,
each of them occupied at a corner; this attracted numbers of people to come and watch, and
some even took part in dancing. As it became crowded, several stalls of folk products were set
up. Folk decorations were on sale, accompanying the folk music, and hence a strong sense of
folk culture was generated. Therefore, the garden temporarily transformed into a show stage
as well as an open market, from which the meaning of the folk culture largely emerged in that
place at that moment.

From the filmic point of view, each garden is like a frame. Each of these frames can become an
individual piece of a film sequence. When people are walking along curvilinear paths, these
gardens appear in front of them one by one with the movement of bodies, analogous to the
playing of film frames. Frames can be arranged by mixing, combining and superimposing as
bodies move along the paths. Bodies can choose specific narrative paths, film lengths and
playing speed. As one moves along the paths, one might encounter various unexpected scenes,
like music groups, dancing people, children cycling, dating lovers and so on. There are
countless paths people can create and each of them, at different times, presents a unique film.

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◼ Surface events

Figure 55. System of surfaces.

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Figure 56. Events incidentally observed on the system of surfaces.

In the actual space the system of surfaces contains fewer areas than it was designed to contain
at the conceptual level. There are three areas missing, while the remaining six pieces are still
present and in actual use, but are modified in comparison to the conceptual design. Some of
the areas designed to be involved in the system of surfaces have been taken into the system
of lines as thematic gardens, some areas have been converted into concrete ground for other
uses, and some are enclosed and inaccessible to the public; therefore the surfaces are either
reduced in area or transformed in shape. But the surfaces that are present are still working as
they were intended to.
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The most popular areas are the two larger ones in the centre of the park as well as a smaller
one at the corner where the two canals intersect. Plenty of activities were observed occurring
on these surfaces, and thus these areas are usually vibrant and lively. There were always a
great many people sitting or lying on the lawn, having picnics or just chatting in circles and
sunbathing during sunny days. Dynamic activities were happening at the same time. Some
people walked across the wide surface from one side to the other, so that the surface served
as a path to them. However, far more people took surfaces as places to accommodate events
of longer duration. Many people, including children, teenagers and adults, were playing
football, badminton or tennis, running around, doing exercises, or engaging in other activities
such as hip-hop dancing, guitar playing and singing, Kung-fu display, and other games like
bubble blowing. These events coexisted on the same surface, so that meanings produced on
one surface were multiple and compatible. Sometimes one activity interacted with another,
for instance when people who were sunbathing became the audience for a Kung-fu display.

Figure 57. Sunbathing on the surface in the centre of the park.

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Figure 58. Kung-fu display on the surface in the centre of the park.

Figure 59. Resting and picnics on the surface in the centre of the park.

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Figure 60. Schooling on the surface where the two canals intersect.

There is a smaller area east of this larger one separated by the north-south linear pathway at
the north bank of the east–west canal, acting as an extension of the larger space. As it is
located by the main linear pathways and has the larger surface next to it, there were usually
people sitting on the lawn, some alone, some with couple of friends, and some with a group
of people in a circle; but this tiny place was not that active, as there were far fewer dynamic
activities taking place.

A quieter area is found hidden behind thematic gardens 1 and 2. Dynamic activities were
seldom found occurring on this area: only sometimes during fair weather were a couple of
people found there playing badminton or doing exercises. Usually there were stationary
activities, such as lying, sitting or sunbathing while reading, and fewer people came here,
perhaps due to its secluded location. The last surface is the one along the side of the north–
south pedestrian route by the north entrance. This surface was designed to be a larger linear
space, but it has been reduced to a small square-like surface. Although this place has good
accessibility, in actual use there were fewer activities found occurring on the surface, especially
dynamic activities. Even if there were events happening occasionally, such as children’s
football games, badminton and picnics, these did not last long. Usually after a short period of
liveliness, it would again become silent for a long time until it was used again. It seems that if
a surface is bigger and more accessible either by vision or by action, it is more likely to generate

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dynamic activities and be more active, whereas if a surface is smaller and less accessible, it is
more likely to accommodate stationary and quiet activities.

3.2.3 Summary

As described above, events were incidentally observed in each system, and “pragmatic
meaning” emerged in the space wherever events occurred. Events are conditional actions; the
occurrence of an event can be attributed to particular situations at a particular moment in
relation to the space and other events already taking place. Events are varied, transient and
constantly transforming, so that “pragmatic meaning” is being produced and ceaselessly
accumulating on the spaces over time. “Pragmatic meaning” on one system can be converted
to another system, as people move between systems. When people move between folies and
paths, folies and surfaces, or paths and surfaces, their activities extend between systems, so
that “pragmatic meaning” too transfers between systems.

Some of the activities in folies are programmed, such as workshops and exhibition spaces, and
some of the areas in the system of lines are programmed as well, such as children’s playground
gardens and the areas with benches. Programmed spaces in some ways serve as the indexical
signs, according to Pierce’s terminology. For example, benches were designed for people to sit
down on; when one finds a bench in a garden or at the side of a linear path, one might realise
that this structure can be used for sitting. The meaning of the bench as a place for sitting
therefore will be achieved in the actual space, and the bench is proved to be an index in this
case, as the bench and the action of sitting have a physical causal relationship. Similarly, a
children’s amusement facility is an indexical sign. Amusement facilities placed in the garden
are meant to encourage children to get engaged with them. When children come across these
facilities and choose to play in them, again the activities happening in the actual space are in
line with the expectations and the meaning of the amusement facilities has been confirmed
through actual use. In contrast to the programmed spaces, large parts of the un-programmed
spaces – parts of folies, parts of paths and gardens, and the whole area of surfaces – serve as
symbolic signs. For example, when people use benches for napping, when children take the

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steel stairs of a folie as a big toy, when teenagers skate on curvilinear paths, and when people
play football or do exercises on the big lawn of the surfaces, these spaces are symbolic signs
to their users. These symbolic signs allow the possibility of future interpretations and future
developments, and require the participation of users’ understanding and practice. The
meaning of symbol is not fixed prior to the occurrence of any activity, but needs users’ mental
associations to link activities to spaces. As the spaces have not been endowed with meaning
before actual practice occurs there, the meaning does not simply transfer from signs to users,
but rather is produced by users when they attach themselves to actual spaces. When users
encounter a particular space, the existing conditions of that space will influence their thoughts,
and arouse their associations between the space and their previous experience, habits and
intentions, and then they will conduct their practice in that space. Hence the space will
become a symbolic sign, and the activities happening in that space are fully pragmatic practice
– the conditional action that depends on the constraints of the space and users’ previous
experience and creativity.

Anyone who is involved in a space is contributing to enriching the “pragmatic meaning” of that
space. Each time one is involved in the space, one can raise a different “pragmatic meaning”
based on one’s action in that space. One’s action in the space, according to observations, is
actually not completely random, but depends on environmental and spatial conditions, such
as weather, accessibility, existing activities, privacy and spatial forms. When one’s subjective
intention matches the existing conditions of the space, events will occur, and thus “pragmatic
meaning” will be aroused and will grow.

Since “conceptual meaning” leaves room for “pragmatic meaning” to complete it, as
“pragmatic meaning” develops the “conceptual meaning” will then be constantly interpreted
or re-interpreted and increasingly accomplished following the “vertical” iteration of the
“pragmatic meaning”. However, the design concept of Parc de la Villette does not have a clear
description of the final consequences for the space, such as “to liberate culture”. The design
concept only has a systematic plan for a spatial structure where potential programmes and
events might occur. In this plan, spaces are categorised into three systems of different potential
events – point-like, linear and plane. The spaces are abstractly built up, without any
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imagination about the ideal consequences; rather, the consequences are left to be made up
by users in a way which produces “pragmatic meaning”.

Spaces are physical containers of ongoing events. Spaces are lures, and events are something
substantial. Spaces always try to induce the body to explore more possibilities, to encourage
it to interact. In Parc de la Villette, everyone seeks their own path and their own particular
meaning for the park along that path. Everybody in the park is involved in Tschumi’s concept,
everybody who takes action in the park helps to add “pragmatic meaning” to the it and thus
further accomplish the “conceptual meaning”, but it is interesting to see that people who are
involved in events do not actually know that they are contributing to fulfilling Tschumi’s
concept. The concept is updating endlessly, because as long as there are people coming to
engage with the spaces, the events will never cease, the production of “pragmatic meaning”
will never reach an end, and “pragmatic meaning” will therefore never be complete. As a result,
“conceptual meaning” too will be eternally in a state of not being completely accomplished,
because the “pragmatic meaning” is endlessly growing. Though one single event cannot live
long, and is usually gone in a moment, yet “pragmatic meaning” can be re-created iteratively
over time. Each new iteration of “pragmatic meaning” will always tend to be different from
the previous one, with multiple meanings disagreeing with each other, and will emerge and
re-emerge in the spaces, through which both “pragmatic meaning” and “conceptual meaning”
become increasingly abundant, without reaching any boundary or ending.

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 Chapter 4. Traditional Chinese philosophies: Pragmatic Aesthetics is

embodied in “Conceptual Meaning”

Centre Pompidou has clarified how “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning” are inter-
filtrated on each other. The concern for mass culture which is taken into design concepts gives
rise to the two kinds of meaning becoming associated. This idea is accord with Shusterman’s
interest in mass culture. He takes much effort to justify the value of mass culture, for example
he takes rock music as an example to show how people actively interacted with the music
using their bodies’ movement vigorously and thus they always have plenty of pleasure. But
when people are listening to the classical music, they easily get bored. For poplar art like rock
music, it gives aesthetics a broader dimension. Similarly, the pragmatic value of Centre
Pompidou lies in the way that the architects took the idea of cultural liberation into the design
and the way that people engage with public programmes in the building.

“Conceptual meaning” is generated by architects through their encounter with the

circumstances of the site, the complexities of the brief, building techniques and materials and
so on. How buildings are going to function in order to achieve better social engagement and
cultural liberation is considered at the conceptual level, and in actual use the buildings perform
as the concepts have promised at some point. As this concept takes public involvement as a
central idea, when the idea becomes realised in actual space the idea becomes the interface
associating “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning”.

The deconstructive project Parc de la Villette presents a containment relationship between

these two kinds of meaning, where “pragmatic meaning” is included in “conceptual meaning”.
Deconstruction is a linguistic theory which rejects the existence of any inherent meaning in
language, and holds instead that the meaning of language ought to be produced by users when
they are using the language practically according to their particular situations. A
deconstructive architecture implies that architecture loses its inherent meanings, and
meanings only emerge when people experience the actual spaces. This is to say that for
deconstructive architecture, “pragmatic meaning” generated from experience is part of the
“conceptual meaning”; only when actual practice has happened and “pragmatic meaning” has
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emerged in particular spaces can the idea of deconstruction be fully realised. This is how
“pragmatic meaning” works in the fulfilment of the concept. “Pragmatic meaning” is
contained in “conceptual meaning”.

A good architect might approach a commission with the intention of finding out about the
function of the building, the place where it is to be built, its culture and the like, and will then
work out a design that seeks to deal with all of these kinds of things, and at some point during
this process a concept will arrive. Though the architect at times brings pragmatic thinking into
design, he/she can never predict exactly what will exactly happen in real spaces, so the
“pragmatic meaning” is usually out of the architect’s control. Tschumi seemingly had a concept
in mind that “pragmatic meaning” was uncontrollable and it would be users’ duty, rather than
that of the designer, to find it out, so that Parc de la Villette was created as a meaningless place,
leaving an unarticulated void to be clarified by its future users. Therefore, the pragmatic value
of the design lies in the architect’s concept that contains “pragmatic meaning” as well as in
the people’s actual experience that produce “pragmatic meaning” and interpret the
“conceptual meaning”.

This chapter focuses on traditional Chinese philosophies and their connections with pragmatic
aesthetics, and then turns to two contemporary Chinese projects whose design concepts are
considered as being found in the encounter with traditional philosophies and where pragmatic
aesthetics is thus manifested in the designs. The two Chinese examples in this chapter
concentrate more on approaches to design in which pragmatic aesthetics can be embodied,
thus attempting to provide architects with alternative approaches to design.

Traditional Chinese philosophies that are known as being rooted in pragmatic aesthetics. They
stem from the intuitive understanding of the surrounding environment through the body’s
perceptions; there is an unclear separation between the intellect and bodily senses, between
theory and practice, and Chinese tradition is secular, without much concern for the permanent
aspect of culture, and tends to focus on things with actual effects, without much intention on
describing the reality for the sake of any linguistic concepts or definition. The traditional
Chinese ideas are influential to both John Dewey and Richard Shusterman. Their pragmatic

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aesthetics is deeply indebted to Chinese thoughts. In the present days, some Chinese
architects try to look back to these traditions and bring these ideas into contemporary
architectural practices. In this sense, this chapter firstly attempts to set the scene of Chinese
culture and clarify its connections to pragmatic aesthetics; then, based on that, it secondly
turns attention to the architects’ design concept – trying to clarify how the architects intended
to find the concepts by encountering with traditional Chinese philosophies and how pragmatic
aesthetics is embodied in the process of design and “conceptual meaning”.

4.1 Traditional Chinese Philosophies

Chinese culture has always had a secular tradition. It is concerned with the happiness of real
life rather than the permanence of an afterlife. Chinese people tend to believe in something
that can be felt, immediately experienced, intuitively understood, and that is practically useful,
more than in abstract theories. Thus, traditionally, there is hardly any definite division
between intellect and body, and between theory and practice. The existence of these
traditional ideologies could be attributed to the I-Ching, a universal law that originates in the
observation of daily elements and the body’s engagement in its environment, thus considering
the world as an extension of the body.

Traditional Chinese philosophies have considerable influence on pragmatic aesthetics. In

Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Richard Shusterman claims that his
concept is encouraged by Chinese philosophy and other ancient Asian thoughts. 267 John
Dewey was also deeply influenced by his experience of living in China from 1919 to 1921. 268
Therefore, there is a deep affinity between pragmatic aesthetics and traditional Chinese
philosophies. This section will briefly indicate some key points of traditional Chinese ideas –
the ideas of the I-Ching, ambiguity in dualism and the secular culture of China – and will then

267
Richard Shusterman (1992), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Oxford, Oxon, &
Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, p. 5.
268
Richard Shusterman (2004), “Pragmatism and East-Asian Thought”, Metaphilosophy, Vol. 35 (1/2),
pp. 13–43, p. 17.
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provide clarification on how pragmatic aesthetics is connected to Chinese philosophies.

4.1.1 I-Ching: Origins in the intuitive understanding of daily phenomena

The Book of Changes (the I-Ching), the ancient divination text and the oldest of the Chinese
classics, could be regarded as the root of all Chinese philosophies, including Confucianism and
Daoism. Chinese tradition’s emphasis on humanism, bodily experience, plurality and everyday
life originates in the ideas of the I-Ching, as it focuses on changes rather than stability, and is
rooted in the belief that the world is the extension of the body, through which we shape the
mind and construct our knowledge of the world. The Book of Changes describes the two
elements of Yin and Yang, and tries to find a universal law of everything through the
interpretation of the theory of Yin and Yang. The writing of it began during the Western Zhou
dynasty (1000–750 BC), and it was finished by Confucius.269 In the Warring States period (500–
200 BC), a book of commentary written by Confucius was published, known as Yizhuan, based
on the philosophical analysis of The Book of Changes.270

The Yin–Yang idea was a simple and intuitive philosophy that originated from the early stage
of endeavours to understand the universal laws of the cosmos, and is based on the bodily
perceptions and experience of everyday life of Chinese ancestors. The Book of Changes
conveys that the basic unit constituting the world is not a pure element but a dual mixture of
Yin and Yang, such as the sky having both coldness and warmth, and the earth having both
hardness and softness. They are opposite principles of matter, but they match and closely rely

269
Shiqiang Zeng (2009), The Mystery of I-Ching 易经的奥秘, Xi'an: Shanxi Normal University Press, p. 4.
270
The Book of Change is made up of two parts: the Yijing 易经（the main Text）, which is considered
to have been written approximately before 1150 BC, and the Yizhuan 易传 (the Commentary), which
was finished around 400 BC. The Commentary has ten parts including Tuan Zhuan 彖传 (Treatise on
Judgments volumes 1 and 2), Xiang Zhuan 象传 (Treatise on Symbolisms volumes 1 and 2), Wen Yan
Zhuan 文言传 (Treatise on Remarks about Qian and Kun), Xici Shangxia Zhuan 系辞上、下传
（Appended Statements volumes 1 and 2）, Shuo Gua Zhuan 说卦传 (Treatise on Remarks about
Hexagrams), Xu Gua Zhuan 序卦传 (Treatise on the Sequence of Hexagrams) and Za Gua Zhuan 杂卦
传 (Treatise on the Names of Hexagrams). Therefore, the Commentary is also known as Shi Yi 十翼 (Ten
Wings).
185
on each other. So Yin and Yang are considered as being opposite but indispensable to each
other, and each is always trying to transform into the other. These attributes were found out
through years of observation of daily phenomena and practice.

As can be observed, day and night is seen as a Yin–Yang unity, in which day is Yang and night
is Yin; strength and weakness is a unity in which strength is Yang and weakness is Yin; and male
and female is a unity in which male is Yang and female is Yin. When there is a day, there must
be a night afterwards. But after the night has passed, a new day will come again. Day and night
are opposite but joint. Strength and weakness can only be defined by comparing one to the
other. No strength or weakness can be identified by considering it independently. The identity
of male can be defined by comparing it with the female and vice versa. If there were no
opposition, it would neither be possible to identify things by comparing them to each other
nor to categorise things into Yin or Yang. This attribute of Yin and Yang echoes a deconstructive
idea: nothing is a self-evident matter, and thus there must be elements or ideas mutually
complementary so as to define each other. However, this does not mean that any one thing
should either be absolutely in the Yin or absolutely in the Yang category.271 Yin and Yang are
relative opposites. If a son is compared with his father, the son is Yin and his father is Yang; but
if the son is compared with his wife, he is Yang and his wife is Yin. Again, if skin is compared
with viscera, skin is Yang and viscera is Yin; but if the upper half of the body is compared with
the lower half, the upper half is Yang while the lower half is Yin.272 Therefore, it is impossible
to categorise one thing as absolutely Yin or Yang, as any thing depends on its counterpart in
order for it to be defined, and one thing can have properties of both Yin and Yang according to
particular circumstances. Therefore, everyday things that we can see and experience have
been categorised into Yin and Yang, and the duality of Yin and Yang is a way to understand the
law of the universe.

Another attribute of Yin–Yang is changeability or recyclability. The Book of Changes claims that

271
Zeng, The Mystery of I-Ching, p. 22.
272
Yungong Lan & Zhuxiang Zhong (1999), “Yin–Yang Thinking and the Characteristics of Chinese
Traditional Culture” “阴阳思维与中国传统文化的特征”, Journal of Liangshan University, 1999 (1),
pp. 79–82, p. 81.

186
everything in the world is ever changing, transforming and recycling. Yin and Yang do not
remain stable permanently, but are always tending to transmute to their opposites. The
transformation between Yin and Yang, The Book of Changes believes, gives birth to new things.
So only because Yin and Yang are ever changing are the things in the universe ever developing.
There is no ultimate end to this development. Everything proceeds as in a cycle. The feature
of recyclability is concluded from the understanding of phenomena in everyday life, such as
the cycle of day and night, the alternation of seasons, the ageing of human life, the metabolism
of living organisms, the replacement of good fortune and bad fortune, and so on. When these
changes reach their extremes, they will turn back in the opposite direction. For example, it is
believed in The Book of Changes that after the extremely dynamic comes the static, after a
storm comes calm, after extreme misfortune comes good fortune.273

Based on the study of those phenomenological laws, Fu Xi274 created the symbols for Yang and
Yin – an unbroken line “—“ represents Yang and a broken line “--“ represents Yin.275 At first he
felt there must be two potential powers in the world to control the universe, in the manner of
one power pulling the sun up and one power pushing it down, resulting in sunrise and sunset.
However, he ultimately determined the symbols for Yin and Yang according to the difference
between the genitals of men and women. The representative of Yang is man and the
representative of Yin is woman. Mating between man and woman is considered to be the most
primitive but inspiring behaviour for the development of the Yin–Yang idea. When a woman
mates with a man, new life will be born, so that the law of change takes shape: when Yin
interacts with Yang, new things will be generated, and this becomes the first evident

273
Zongyi Dou (1995), “Exploration of I-Ching's Philosophical Principle of Dialectical Monism Based on
the Enlightenment of Modern Science” “从新科学的启示去探讨《易经》的哲学原理阴阳辩证一元论”,
Study on The Book of Changes, 1995 (3), pp. 71–79, p. 77.
274
Fu Xi was a folk hero in Chinese legend and mythology, credited with creating humanity and the
invention of hunting, fishing and cooking, as well as a writing system of Chinese
characters c. 12,000 BC. Fu Xi was counted as the first of the Three Sovereigns at the beginning of
the Chinese dynastic period.
275
Zeng, The Mystery of I-Ching, p. 38.

187
metaphysics in the history of Chinese philosophy.276

All changes depend on whether or not there is communication or attraction between Yin and
Yang. When Yin and Yang are attracted to each other and interact, new things will be born.
However, if Yin and Yang stopped interacting, there would be no changes any more; the world
would stop generating new life and things would soon go extinct. Therefore, the fundamental
motivation for the continual generation of new life is the interaction between Yin and Yang.
Because of the idea of changes, Chinese philosophies are never involved in a debate as to
whether the world was created by God or evolved without God: Chinese philosophies are
inspired by the everyday phenomenon, believe that the environment is closely linked with
human life, and consider that the universe was both created and evolved based on the law of
changes.

Chinese philosophies found their metaphysics from the phenomenological laws and decoded
the mechanism of the continual generation of everything through an intuitive hypothesis
based on the mating between men and women. So how the metaphysical law functions to
generate heaven, earth, humans and everything else depends on whether or not there is
interaction between Yin and Yang. This is the principle of cosmos in traditional Chinese context.
Only when Yin and Yang match can there be the promise of the growth of the world. This
primitive idea has the most profound influence on Chinese culture.

4.1.2 Ambiguity in dualism

Chinese cultural customs lay more emphasis on the relationship between things than the
intrinsic meaning of individual matters. The Book of Changes concerns the relationship of Yin
and Yang, Confucianism shows an interest in relationships of social groups, and Daoism
pursues the harmonious relationship between life and the environment, and between spiritual
life and physical life. The reason Chinese philosophies are more concerned with the

276
Qingzhong Yang (2006), “On the Dao in the Commentary of the Book of Change”, Frontiers of
Philosophy in China, vol. 1 (4), pp. 572–593, p. 573.

188
relationships between things than with individual things is that they share an original concept
that the basic structure on which the world is constructed is not a pure element but a mixture.

Yin and Yang are equal to each other, they are neither in a hierarchy where one term dominates
the other, nor in a table status but always tending to interact with the other. The individuals
involved in the mixture live harmoniously with and are restricted by each other, which
maintains the harmony of the broader universe. One single object does not have one quality
only. It could be both good and evil, both white and black, both spiritual and physical, but could
not be exclusively good, exclusively white or exclusively spiritual.

Traditional Western philosophy, represented by Plato, has at times had strongly negative
attitudes towards the body, thinking of it as something lustful, where sin originates, while
considering pure mental spirit as something everlasting and incorruptible that transcends the
body. 277 This kind of philosophy overlooks human perceptions and senses and believes in
abstract metaphysical aesthetics constructed by philosophers without taking real life into
consideration. Plato makes a definite division between the intellect and the body’s
perceptions. 278 In his opinion, minds, intellects and concepts are superior to bodily
perceptions. In The Republic he has a strong negative bias against artists. They work with their
bodily perceptions and are regarded as imitators and ignorant. People who work with pure
intellect are superior to those who work with sensory perceptions. Similarly, when Plato
compares the philosopher’s role to the physician’s, he sees philosophy as the superior practice,
since the latter cares about the body’s health while the philosopher cares about the health of
the soul, which is immortal and nobler than the body.279 Furthermore, one of the deepest
legacies of mind–body separation, particularly associated with René Descartes’ philosophy, is
“mind–body dualism”. In Descartes’ view, the mind is thinks, and it is completely different from
the body, which is not about thoughts. One is set apart from the other and can exist without

277
John Dewey (1929), Experience and Nature, London: G. Allen & Unwin, p. 249.
278
Nicholas Pappas (2008), “Plato's Aesthetics”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Online], available
at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/plato-aesthetics/ (Accessed: 2 January 2016).
279
Richard Shusterman (2013), “Everyday Aesthetics of Embodiment”, in Bhatt, R. (ed.), Rethinking
Aesthetics: The Role of Body in Design, London: Routledge, pp. 13–35, p. 15.

189
it. 280 Therefore, in the Western tradition, metaphysics can definitely exist without bodily
engagement, and perceptual things, such as art works, are inferior to purely intellectual
concepts. There have been attempts to avoid this separation, particularly associated with the
British empiricist tradition, including John Locke and David Hume, the American pragmatists,
and the French deconstructionists who suggest “hierarchy reversal” of duality, but Chinese
philosophy has never had to overcome this problem, because it has always originated in the
observation of everyday phenomena and the experience of real life. The Book of Changes
states in its introduction that all our understandings of the world come from the body’s
perceptions of and feelings about the surrounding environment. Dong Yugan claims that the
world we know is an extension of the body.281 By perceiving and observing with bodily senses,
Chinese ancestors have shaped the world and constructed ways of looking at the world. The
metaphysics of The Book of Changes stems from ancestors’ insight into the law of cosmos, and
it can in turn be confirmed by everyday phenomena in everyday life. Its metaphysics is
embedded in phenomenological principles, which can only be found by engaging oneself in
real life. As a result, there is no intellect–body duality: Chinese philosophy sees that there is
an ambiguity in the dualism of intellect and body, but intellect and body ought to be joint and
mutually dependent.

In architecture, there is an ambiguity in the distinction between theory and practice. In fact,
there is no pure conceptual aesthetics in Chinese architecture.282 Chinese architectural theory
is mainly about construction techniques and conventions according to long-term experience
accumulated from everyday life. The Chinese treat architecture simply as a tool, like other
ordinary living tools. Traditional architecture is about neither art nor science, but exists for the
sake of living. Therefore, Han Baode, a Taiwanese architectural theorist, defines Chinese

280
Justin Skirry (n.d.), “René Descartes: The Mind–Body Distinction”, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[Online], available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/ (Accessed: 2 January 2015).
281
I interviewed Dong in Beijing, 13 November 2015.
282
Baode Han (2006), Lectures on Chinese Architectural Culture 中国建筑文化讲座, Beijing: SDX Joint
Publishing Company, p. 12.

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traditional architecture as essentially an “Architecture of Life”.283 Han points out that the idea
of an “Architecture of Life” is different from the Western term “humanism”, as humanism is
about the power of the mind resisting the shackles of divinity. Humanism is a concept of a
revolution overthrowing the old way of thinking about life and redefining the value of human
life. It acts as a slogan, asserting the need to create a more liveable and a more human-
respectable environment for human beings. However, Chinese traditional architecture does
not have any conceptual theory and Chinese traditional buildings do not go as deep in
conceptual terms as humanism does. 284 Thus, compared with humanism, which offers a
spiritual image of an ideal life, the “Architecture of Life” does not reach the conceptual level,
as there is no such absolute concept as humanism to direct craftsman, in order to achieve a
certain social change. If they have any specific pursuit in their design, it is the pursuit of
physical pleasure and better quality of life. Chinese engineers and craftsman never waste time
in thinking about how architecture “should” be, but rather take time to build what architecture
“can” be to resolve living problems. Spatial forms of traditional architecture reflect Chinese
people’s daily life in the past – how intellectuals sought to calm the spirit using the landscapes,
how the ruling class demonstrated their power, and how rich businessmen enjoyed their
luxury lifestyle. The simply structured buildings are firmly combined with life, and thus it is
regarded as the “Architecture of Life”.285

As a result, Chinese traditional architecture is not about pure aesthetic theories, but more
about technical conventions developed from previous experience. These conventions are
delivered from generation to generation and are modified to adapt to different situations. It
can be understood that Chinese architectural theory stems from everyday life and serves
everyday life; it is tied closely with physical practice, far from conceptual aesthetics such as
Eclecticism, Romanism, Modernism and Regionalism and other terms created in a Western
context. Chinese architectural tradition pays less attention to creating new social ideology or

283
Ibid., p. 178.

284
Ibid., p. 181.
285
Ibid., p. 182.

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academic concepts, and more attention to practical life. The concept of Red Brick Art Museum
does not involve a visual-effect intention. It is a method of design – dealing with functional
issues with as less alternations of existing environment as possible. It did not have an expected
image of the building form before the finish of the building construction. The architect claims
the building form should be the consequence of construction which responses to actual
problems of building and use, and the form would be formed up eventually after those
problems have been resolved, but it should not be the purpose of the design.

The ambiguity of theory and pragmatism in architecture refers to the emphasis on the body’s
perceptions and experience in Chinese minds rather than pure spirit, intellect and concept. It
is stated above that the origin of Chinese philosophy lies in the understanding of
phenomenological laws, and that all understanding of the universe is constructed by bodily
senses. The understanding of anything is an extension of the body. The judgement of
architecture is also based on bodily senses and perceptions. If living in a building gives people
a sense of pleasure, if a building presents the wealth and power of its owner, if a building helps
to manage social order and moral behaviours, if a building can function well to accommodate
a big family of four generations, or if it is adaptable for further extension and transformation,
this building will be regarded as commendable. Bodily perceptions and emotions are highly
centred in the design of Xiangshan campus. The concept is about designing a feeling, the
“aesthetic sense”, and the feeling can only be experienced when the body is deeply engaged
in the space. Bodily pleasure is gained through experience and in turn leads to the pleasure of
the mind. Body and mind are indispensable matters of life.

Architecture practice requires bodily senses and perceptions in Chinese tradition. As we know,
the codes and principles Chinese engineers follow are techniques accumulated from long-term
building experience. People judge buildings through their bodily perceptions in the building,
so that over time those codes and principles get closer to what will best serve people’s lives.
About a thousand years ago in the Song Dynasty, the first official treatise on architecture and
craftsmanship was born – Yingzao Fashi by Li Jie.286 Yingzao Fashi is literally called "Treatise on

286
Han, Lectures on Chinese Architectural Culture, p. 191.

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Architectural Methods” or “State Building Standards”. Strictly speaking, it is not an academic
treatise, but a manual for building construction, as it contains a great many rules for the
construction of various structures with particular materials, such as wood, stone, bamboo and
tile, as well as paintings and decorations on structures. It is about the technical methods of
architectural practice, a set of summaries of previous architectural design and construction
experience. So these codes and principles can also be regarded as the laws of living. Building
is a way of living, and to live is the reason for architectural practice, in the Chinese mind.

4.1.3 A Secular culture

The preference for pragmatism of Chinese culture is associated with the emphasis on secular
life and the absence of religious belief. Chinese mainstream tradition does not include a belief
in the permanence of an afterlife. Chinese people think that time is fleeting, just like a white
pony jumping across a crevice; everyone lives in a moment and when life is gone, it will not be
back. Lin Yutang pointed out this idea in his book My Country and My People.287 In this book
he explains that the aim of life lies not in the hope of an afterlife: the idea taught by Christianity
that we live in order to die is not comprehensible, nor the idea of Nirvana taught by Buddhism,
as it is too metaphysical. The fundamental aim of life, to Chinese people, lies simply in the
enjoyment of aspects of real life, such as family life and harmonious social relationships.

Confucius believed that anything that is considered as truth which departs from human life
may not be truth, as truth should not depart from human life. Chuang Tse 288 encouraged
everyone to find their themselves.289 The busy self occupied with daily activities is not the real
self, but one should pursue the real self through the enjoyment of everyday pleasure. To have

287
Yutang Lin (2010), My Country and My People, Oxford, Oxon: Oxford City Press, p. 96.
288
Chuang Tse 庄子 (Zhuangzi) is an ancient Chinese collection of anecdotes and fables, one of the
foundational texts of Daoism. Chuang Tse also refers to the historical figure known as "Master Zhuang"
who is the author of the above work. He was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the
4th century BC during the Warring States period, a period corresponding to the summit of traditional
Chinese philosophy.
289
Yutang Lin (2007), The Importance of Living, Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, p. 103.

193
the best enjoyment of life, we should focus all of our bodily senses on our real life, as happiness
is sensuous rather than of intellectual.290 Also, Mencius291 suggested that we need to live with
passion and sentiment in order to perceive the laws of the world we are living in and to
appreciate everything that arises in our lives.292 We have nothing in life unless we have passion,
because passion gives us inward warmth and vitality, which enable us to cope with life. In
addition, Chinese people realised very early that mortality is inevitable for everybody. This is
the saddest and the most touching realisation to the Chinese. “Life passes like a spring dream
without a trace”; “our floating life is like a dream, how many times can one enjoy one’s self?”:
both of these sentiments were written down by Chinese poets, expressing their feelings of
helplessness about the fleeting life.293

However, the sad awareness of mortality makes the Chinese wish to enjoy life more efficiently.
Because the existence of the current life is all they have, they have to try harder to enjoy it
more. Therefore, the Chinese choose to pay great attention to the aspects of life which can be
perceived and controlled, and this attention leads them to try their best to enjoy the current
days. So, how to best enjoy this short and limited life is of vital importance, rather than wasting
too much time on the thought of a better afterlife, since the afterlife cannot benefit people
and cannot be perceived in this life. The focusing on secular enjoyment requires a pragmatic
way of thinking. The Chinese people are good at finding efficient ways of coping with living
problems, keeping in mind the ideological rule of “twice the yield with half the work”. They
believe that to obtain more pleasure with less work is an efficient way to use their limited
lifetimes. In gardening, for instance, Chinese men of letters have discovered how to get twice
the yield with half the work. Chinese men of letters are fascinated by landscapes. Touring
around the landscape is one of the most favoured methods of relaxation. Designing artificial
gardens at one’s home is the best way of borrowing from landscape scenes, thus enabling one

290
Ibid., p. 136.

291
Mencius (372–289 BC) was a Chinese philosopher who was the most
famous Confucian after Confucius himself.

292
Lin, The Importance of Living, p. 106.
293
Ibid., p. 169.

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to enjoy pleasure from landscapes much more easily. What Chinese men of letters do is to
seek the most efficient way to design their gardens. They make ponds by digging soil out of
the ground and piling it up to make artificial hills; they plant bamboo beside water to provide
greenery and resting places in summer; they set pavilions at the top of hills to act as a focal
point in their gardens as well a place from which to enjoy the view; and they connect ponds
to natural streams so as to keep water fresh.294 These pragmatic methods of working together
fulfil the men of letter’s dreams of enjoying an idyllic rural life in the city realm. In fact,
traditional Chinese gardens do not follow any theoretical guide; they are the work that results
from pragmatic approaches to design and the aim of providing the most intuitive and
perceivable pleasure to those who wish to enjoy their everyday real life. Today, traditional
gardens have become one of the representative features of Chinese art, but the value of
gardens lies not only in the beauty of the artificial works, but also in the concern for everyday
life and pragmatic approaches to gardening. Those pragmatic ways of gardening are borrowed
in the design of Red Brick Art Design and Xiangshan Campus, namely, the rule of “twice the
yield with half the work” is embodied in the design. The details of how this rule is applied in
both the projects will be explained in the sequential sections.

According to The Book of Changes, the main function of the law of changes is to change and
to generate, which is caused by the interaction between Yin and Yang. The fundamental idea
in Chinese philosophy is that everything is in a temporary state and is ready to transform to
another state, such as life going towards death, the moon’s waxing and waning, and the
changing of green leaves to yellow. Whereas Western tradition pays attention to the search
for universal truths, the exploration of permanence and unchangeable truth does not make
sense to the Chinese. Enlightenment is firstly reached through man’s realisation of the self-
imposed immaturity of his inability to understand things without reliance on religious dogma.
It encourages people to understand the world by themselves, without relying on something
that is beyond their own selves. Due to the collapse of the belief that the identity of God serves
as the universal truth, intellectuals began to search for another truth to replace this. René

294
Jiaji Zhang (1993), Annotation to Yuanye – The Oldest Masterwork of Gardening 园冶全释 – 世界最古
造园学名著研究, Shanghai: Shanxi Public Press, p. 133.

195
Descartes’ scientific rationalism is a model of modern science that asserts that truth exists in
rational inference. Jürgen Habermas thought that truth comes out of participation. Where
undistorted communication takes place and a perfect consensus is reached, that is where the
truth is. Marxism explores the truth in historical inevitability, and capitalism seeks the truth in
the free market economy. All of the above seem as substitutes for God as the source of all
truth. However, postmodernism goes further, to doubt the existence of truth. Michel Foucault
believed that the knowledge of truth is produced by power, which intends to strengthen its
status and authority, while Jacques Derrida overturns logocentrism, rejects absolute truth and
claims that the meanings of anything vary from situation to situation. Richard Rorty’s
pragmatism stands opposed to foundationalism, asserting that there is no objective and fixed
truth apart from human existence, non-contextually and non-historically. The “truth” in our
minds is evolving with social-cultural conditions. What the philosophers are doing is not
searching for the truth that is already there but actually creating the subjective existence of
their individual values. As a result, when God is dead, as Nietzsche points out, permanence
still tries to find an alternative foundation, but permanence has started to be questioned since
the last century. It seems that in the Western context, historically, there is a big debate about
what permanent truth is, and whether there is still a permanent truth or not. In contrast,
however, the Chinese traditional way of thinking is not concerned with the search for
permanence or the debate about whether or not there is such a thing as permanent truth. To
the Chinese, change is the only permanence.

The acceptance of impermanence in life makes the Chinese calm and peaceful in the face of
all kinds of changes: rise and fall, fortune and misfortune, life and death. The acceptance of
impermanence also makes them realise that only by paying attention to the continual
generation of new life will things keep flourishing. Therefore, the continuation of family plays
a considerable role in the Chinese mind, and buildings serve only as utensils for the purpose
of solving living problems associated with the development of family. Hence, buildings,
including temples, do not possess any value of permanence and are not seen as having any
responsibility to present this value. That is why Chinese architecture does not attempt to use
stone as the main constructional material. In fact, as early as the Han dynasty (202–220 BC),

196
brick-making technology had been invented. Also, the technology of construction of brick
arches came to full maturity and was widely applied in the Han dynasty, but this was only used
in mausoleums. By the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties ( AD 420–589),
significant progress had been made in stone-working techniques made a big progress, and by
the Sui dynasty (AD 581–618), proficiency in stone arch technology had already reached a
highly professional level.295 However, the Chinese did not consider durable materials, such as
brick and stone, as the main constructional material; rather, they chose wood, a material with
a short lifespan.

Ji Cheng points out a realistic attitude in the Chinese mind in his book Yuanye296: to the Chinese,
what they create should be of the same lifespan as their own life. It is not necessary to produce
something extra for offspring, since offspring might not be satisfied with what their elder
generations have created.297 It is a waste of time to spend decades on building one building.
The first consideration is how to accomplish a project quickly, because the Chinese are too
impatient to wait longer than necessary to enjoy the benefit the building will provide, let alone
to think about the value of permanence. It is easier and quicker to construct buildings with
wood than stone, and each part of building structures is standardised, which makes
construction more efficient.298 But as wood has a short lifespan, buildings therefore also have
lives. Consequently, another meaning of Han Baode’s “Architecture of Life” is that the life of
architecture is similar to human life, with unpredictable vicissitudes and limited span. If
someone is at the summit of their career, for instance, and has a high-status job, their family
will be proud of this, and their house might be refurbished and decorated at such times. But
when this person suffers misfortune, for example losing their business, they will be not in the

295
Han, Lectures on Chinese Architectural Culture, p. 188.
296
Ji Cheng was a Chinese landscape garden artist in the 17th century. His book Yuanye 园冶 was the
first scholarly work dealing with landscape gardening in Chinese history, and it still acts as a manual for
those who are interested in classic Chinese gardens and the study of the art of Chinese landscape
gardening.
297
Yunhe Li (2005), Cathay's Idea: Design Theory of Chinese Classical Architecture 华夏意匠：中国古典
建筑设计原理分析, Tianjin: Tianjian University Press, p. 25.
298
Ibid., p. 24.

197
mood and do not have the money to manage the house, so the building will decay with the
decline of its owner. Therefore, the life of the building is part of the life of its owner and the
fortune of the building is correlated with that of its owner. Not only ordinary dwellings but
royal architecture too has a lifespan. Usually, when a new dynasty overturns the previous one
the new king will build a new palace for himself, to replace the old one in order to display his
prestige in the form of architecture. At the least, the old palace must be refurbished or
transformed according to the will of the new king. With the increasing prosperity of a dynasty,
royal buildings will increasingly flourish in number, scale and degree of luxury. But once the
dynasty is in decline, there will be less time and wealth focused on architectural development,
and when the dynasty gets to the end of its life, architecture will be removed and will be
displaced by a new power. The life of the royal architecture is therefore part of the life of the
dynasty, and the fortune of the royal architecture is related closely with that of the dynasty.

Therefore, Chinese culture believes in the idea of metabolism – “replace the old with the new”,
“get rid of the stale and bring forth the fresh” – so that the conservation of old buildings is only
a modern discourse to the Chinese.299 Chinese people also believe that “long-term flourishing
must turn to decline”, that “after decline there will be rebirth”, and thus they embrace their
destinies, rather than fighting for the permanence of one single life.300 When things approach
their extreme points, it is time for them to turn back in another direction. This idea of
metabolism seems connected to pragmatists’ assertion of thinking afresh. When individuals
come across a new experience that creates a problem for them, this is the time at which they
set out for new ideas. They might find that old values cannot satisfy the current situation any
longer; thus, from then on they begin to seek a modified opinion. The ideas are never “true”,
but are merely something gratifying the current desire. There is never a terminal point, but
always a constant process of forward movement, the developing meanings attaching to the
present, as people are continuously thinking in new situations and foreseeing new
consequences.

299
Han, Lectures on Chinese Architectural Culture, p. 189.
300
Ibid., p. 199.

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Architecture can be seen as following the same law of metabolism. Architectural design is a
metabolic process. In the design of Red Brick Art Museum, the architect did not presume a
definite picture of the final building form at the beginning, but rather he resolved the
functional problems little by little according to the current conditions of the existing space (an
old factory and a discarded site), in order to make the space fit the function of an art museum
and a garden of pleasure. The conditions of the existing space were continuously updated,
problems were constantly renewed, and the design was moved forward. Likewise, the meaning
of Parc de la Villette also follows the idea of metabolism. The architect had the idea in mind
that the meaning of the space is never fixed, but is constantly changing afresh, as events
dynamically happen in the space.

The vicissitude of architecture in a long time span also follows the rule of metabolism. The
architecture usually evolves with the growth of families and with change of ownership. When
it reaches the prosperous extreme, it will go into decline; and when it reaches its ultimate low
point, it will go up again. Private gardens are typical evidences demonstrating the evolution of
architecture. Lingering Garden is located at the city fringe of Suzhou, east of China. Lingering
Garden was firstly commissioned by an exonerated official Xu Taishi in 1593. A stonemason
Zhou Shicheng designed and constructed the garden and called it initially as East Garden. After
reconstruction by Liu Su in 1798, the Lingering Garden came into a flourishing period and
became a public resort. But a hundred years later the Taiping rebellions made it turn to a
decaying period.301 However, Sheng Kang arrived about 20 years later, repaired all damage,
added new artistic works and renamed the garden, and the garden soon entered a flourishing
period again. After the rise, the garden went to a fall again during the Second Sino-Japanese
War.302 The garden was abandoned and even turned to be breeding place for army’s horses.

301
Taiping Rebellion (literally "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement") was a massive rebellion or civil
war in China that lasted from 1850 to 1864, which was fought between the established Qing
dynasty and the Christian millenarian movement of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace. The war was the
largest in China since the Qing conquest in 1644, and ranks as one of the bloodiest wars in human
history.
302
The Second Sino-Japanese War (July 7, 1937 – September 9, 1945) was a military conflict fought
primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan.

199
Fortunately, after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Suzhou government
took over and renovated the garden, and it was re-open to public in 1954.303 As a result, the
Lingering Garden witnesses the vicissitudes of several families and a piece of history of the
country. Today’s garden, though it is still existing, is no longer the same as what it was initially,
since numbers of additions, extensions and modifications carried out by different owners over
a long history. Therefore, architecture is always in a temporary state and always subject to
change, just like the recycling of the seasons and the alteration of the wax and wane of the
moon. Thus, architecture, in the Chinese mind, follows the law of cosmos together with all
other elements of the world.

Figure 61. Lingering Garden, Suzhou, 1593 onwards.

There is great deal of flexibility for traditional buildings to grow and shrink. Usually, traditional
Chinese buildings are constituted around courtyards. One courtyard with its surrounding
buildings is the most basic spatial form, shared by all types of traditional Chinese
architecture. 304 The tiniest dwelling is made up of one unit, one courtyard enclosed by

303
Fuxi Shen (2005), “Appreciation of Famous Gardens in Suzhou (Four): The Lingering Garden” “’苏州
：留园”, Garden, 2005 (3), pp. 8–9, p. 8.
名园’欣赏（四）
304
Lei Ou (2005), “Analysis on Traditional Courtyard Spaces” “浅析传统院落空间”, Sichuan Building
Science, vol. 51 (3), pp. 122–125, p. 122.

200
buildings along three or four sides. The growth of dwellings is about adding units. 305 First,
courtyards will be added along the main axis, and then courtyards will be developed along two
wings. When the family is growing, the tiniest core of the dwelling remains unchanged and
more units will be added along the axis and two wings; when the family is in decline, courtyard
units will be gradually abandoned and the dwelling will shrink back to what it used to be at the
beginning; however, it can still meet the basic needs of a family. So, the basic form of a
courtyard unit ensures the flexibility for the development of traditional buildings. A
standardised form of spatial structure also gives rise to the high level of flexibility. This
standardised form is the simplest prototype of structure that is universally adaptive, regardless
of the scale of the buildings. 306 The standardised form takes a “column grid” and “roof
structure” as its basis. A “Column grid” is a grid constituted of latitudinal axes and longitudinal
axes used for arraying columns. The arraying of the column grid reflects the roof structure.
Each column located at the crossing point of latitudinal and longitudinal axes bears the load
coming from the roof. The spacing between two longitudinal axes is called “Jian”, and the
spacing between two latitudinal axes is called “Jia”. Therefore, the building scale can be simply
and accurately presented by “Jian” and “Jia”. The latitudinal side usually acts as the front
façade, so usually the number of “Jian” is odd, otherwise a row of columns would follow the
central line, taking over the space of the main entrance. Keeping to one simple standardised
spatial structure gives traditional Chinese architecture a high degree of inclusivity and
adaptability. This breaks the law that one form links to one particular function. No matter the
function of the building – private houses, palaces or temples, they all can follow the same
standardised form, as this form is capable of being adapting to different living activities.
Therefore, the simplified and widely-adaptive form made it to be a building method recorded
as a standard structural prototype in architectural conventions, and thus it managed to prevail
over the East for thousands of years.

305
Han, Lectures on Chinese Architectural Culture, p. 200.
306
Li, Cathay's Idea, p. 134.

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Figure 62. Standardised spatial form of traditional Chinese building.

The flexibility firstly means the structure of the building is easily reconfigurable. Builders intend
to make the building neutral and modular so that it would allow for possible transformations
in the future. The structural framework basically consists of a system of wooden pieces which
are connected by mortise and tenon Besides the physical flexibility, the second dimension of
flexibility would be about programmatic evolution, which means that the events taking place
in the fixed architectural structure can be changed – architecture can be easily adapted to a
temple, a house, a school or a market. These two dimensions of flexibility of traditional
Chinese architecture are coincident with that of Centre Pompidou: the building structure of
Centre Pompidou is designed so that it can be disassembled and reassembled, potentially
allowing the building to be extended or shrunk in due course, and the changeable structure
enables the change of uses, thus achieving programmatic evolution. Moreover, the exposure
of the internal building structures displayed by Centre Pompidou seems to echo traditional
Chinese buildings from the far east, as both emphasise the materiality of structure and
structural techniques.

In brief, it has been discussed that traditional Chinese culture is rooted in pragmatism. The I-
Ching, the oldest Chinese classic, originates in the observation of everyday phenomena and
life experience. The idea of Yin–Yang which is central to the I-Ching is concerned with the
relationships between things rather than with individual objects, and this has a profound
202
influence on the way of thinking about dualities, such as man and woman, individual and
society, intellect and body, theory and practice, etc. Mainstream Chinese tradition focuses on
secular life and does not believe in permanence. These rooted ideas have a huge effect on
social ideologies and the methods of art creation, including architectural design. In present
days, some literary architects tend to return to these traditional ideas and try to find design
concepts for contemporary architectural projects from an encounter with tradition. The
subsequent sections will discuss the ways in which pragmatic aesthetics is indebted to Chinese
philosophy, thus bridging Eastern and Western thought, before particularly focusing on two
cases showing how contemporary projects attempt to respond to traditional ideas

4.1.4 The affinity between pragmatic aesthetics and traditional Chinese philosophies

The above provides a general idea of some key ideologies of Chinese tradition. Chinese
traditional culture emphasises the bodily senses, daily life, practice and changes rather than
intellect, theory and idealist philosophies. Pragmatic aesthetics stresses sensations, actions,
practice, pluralist ideas and popular culture. It seems that there is a great deal of overlap
between the orientations of pragmatic aesthetics and classical Chinese philosophy. Actually, in
Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art Richard Shusterman claims that his
concept was encouraged by Chinese philosophy and other strands of ancient Asian thought.307
John Dewey was also deeply influenced by his experience of living in China from 1919 to 1921.
His daughter mentioned that this experience acted as the rebirth of Dewey’s intellectual
enthusiasms, and that thus Dewey considered China as country nearest to his mind after his
own. 308 Therefore, there is a deep affinity between pragmatic aesthetics and traditional
Chinese philosophies. What follows is a brief discussion of the themes shared by these two
philosophies.

One of the grounds that pragmatism shares with classical Chinese philosophy is a focus on

307
Richard Shusterman (1992), Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Oxford, Oxon, &
Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, p. 5.
308
Richard Shusterman (2004), “Pragmatism and East-Asian Thought”, Metaphilosophy, Vol. 35 (1/2),
pp. 13–43, p. 17.
203
feelings. They share the insight that “feeling is a crucial ground and engine of morality and that
feeling also pervades our rational thinking”.309 The master Confucius avoided talking about the
debate of human nature (whether the essential human nature is good or evil), and so did
pragmatists. Debates about human nature are unnecessary, but a focus on ways to improve
human nature is necessary. They believe that human nature can be improved by conscious
efforts of learning and refinement with bodily feelings. Even rational thinking develops through
feelings. The thoughts constructed in the mind are shaped through bodily senses and practice
rather than purely intellectual contemplation.

The most central theme in which the two philosophies overlap can be called humanism.
Pragmatism insists that philosophy is shaped by the human condition and human purpose,
and it in turn serves to preserve, cultivate and perfect human life. Philosophy has social
purpose, aiming to approach human benefits, not merely describing reality for the sake of
producing sentences. Philosophies should engage with experience and actions that are
broader than formulated truth. The value of philosophies lies in promoting concrete human
experience and possibilities. Similarly, traditional Chinese philosophers were interested more
in perfecting humanity through practising than in providing linguistic representation of reality.
The thinkers regarded language not as a means of describing reality but rather as a means of
guiding behaviour. Philosophers should work on how to improve human life rather than
compiling verbal definitions and abstract propositions.310

Confucius is passionate about music, but he does not offer a formal definition of music. Instead,
he provides guidance on how to realise musical value by offering examples of musical
excellence and failures, by providing critical commentary and by proposing exemplary
methods of practice.311 The design of Red Brick Art Museum shows a similar idea: the architect
did not offer a definite concept of what the building would represent; instead, he provided
guidance on how to transform the existing building into a functional art gallery.

309
Richard Shusterman (2015), “Somaesthetics and Chinese Philosophy: Between Unity and Pragmatist
Pluralism”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Vol. 10 (2), pp. 201–211, p. 206.
310
Shusterman, “Pragmatism and East-Asian Thought”, p. 19.
311
Ibid.
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Art is a practical way of providing beauty in everyday life. Art is a means of ethical education
that can refine people by cultivating a good sense of order and shared experience of harmony.
To Confucius, the aesthetic model of good government works by exemplary attraction and
emulation rather than by commandments, threats and punishments. Good conduct or
character is understood aesthetically – through the proper “countenance”, “demeanour” and
“expression”, virtue will be displayed, and it will thus contribute to social harmony and good
government. Therefore, Confucianism’s emphasis on the functionality of art and aesthetic
experience demonstrates that pragmatic aesthetics is not a modern system of thought, but
rather has a rich, long and influential philosophical tradition.312

Pragmatism sees art as a cultural product but also recognises the art’s natural roots. This
means that art is shaped by human history and culture, and human history and culture are
partly structured by the natural world, the geographical environment. Similarly, Confucianism
also regards “ritual as a natural art”, because the forms of rituals are structured through
dynamic interactions between natural world and human mind. 313 The design of Xiangshan
Campus realises this idea by responding to the natural environment as well as considering
regional building materials and techniques.

Pragmatism appreciates the importance of finding the most useful mean in various extremes,
asserting that this mean is not fixed but rather consists of a dynamic balance that best fits the
current situation in a changing and plural context.314 Sensitivity to change is also rooted in
Chinese philosophies. The Book of Changes, the oldest Chinese classic, claims that one of the
features of the world is that it is ever-changing and recycling in a balanced state; this concept
has been influential on subsequent Chinese philosophies. The building form should be a
consequence of a dynamic search for the most suitable balance. It is generated through the
design process, rather than being decided at the beginning of the design for visual purposes.
This idea can be exemplified in the design of Red Brick Art Museum. The architect had this idea
in mind as the design concept, not having a particular expectation of what the building form

312
Ibid., pp. 20–21
313
Ibid., p. 25.
314
Ibid., p. 27.
205
would be at the beginning: the form was gradually shaped through the design process in the
dynamically changing context. Each step of the design is about finding a mean, a balanced
solution that aims to meet the requirement of a gallery according to the existing circumstances.
As circumstances are updated, the design problems change, solutions are worked out and the
design moves forward. Therefore, the process of design can be seen as a course of seeking
means.

In the pragmatist view, things in the world are partly separated and partly connected. We can
recognise the value of the distinctions of one thing without separating it completely from
others. The classical Chinese philosophies also take this view, as evidenced in the fact that
there is a Chinese term describing the universe, “wanwu”, which literally means “the ten
thousand things”. 315 This implies that the Chinese traditionally see the universe not as a
monistic mass but as differently related matters that can be joined to make the whole.

Shusterman thinks that Chinese philosophy’s open-mindedness of approach is deeply

associated with pragmatism’s fundamental pluralism.316 Rather than seeking the singular truth
and excluding all other views, they appreciate all complementarities which could contribute
to their ideas, thus combining the insights of various viewpoints in a more flexible synthesis.
Confucius believes that humility, to other people and to ideas, is a form of wisdom. Pragmatists
express a similar idea by addressing fallibilism – a recognition that any idea we hold as the
truth could be refuted by future experience, so that we have the right to doubt any present
theory and to seek evidence to refute it. Theories or truths are never fixed. Both pragmatism
and Chinese philosophies resist certainty and inflexibility, instead embracing different views
and anything fresh. Both Centre Pompidou and Parc de la Villette manifest the idea of pluralism.
Centre Pompidou is concerned with public consciousness, public interests and the lively and
plural aspects of culture. Parc de la Villette does not have monistic “conceptual meaning” but
requires people’s diverse experience for its concept to be fully interpreted, and thus meaning
changes and is constantly renewed as new events happen dynamically in the park.

315
Shusterman, “Somaesthetics and Chinese Philosophy”, p. 204.
316
Shusterman, “Pragmatism and East-Asian Thought”, p. 27.
206
Another important theme that pragmatists and classical Chinese philosophies share is the
emphasis on pleasure and enjoyment. Western aesthetics is traditionally unfriendly to
pleasure, which is considered as subordinate to the intellectual truth. This is partly because
pleasure is strongly associated with sensuality, desire and the body, which have traditionally
been seen as obstacles to true knowledge. However, pragmatic aesthetics denies this division
between bodily pleasure and intellectual truth. It closely links these concepts and sees that
intellectual knowledge comes out of bodily feelings, understanding and experience.
Pragmatists regard pleasure as qualities of an activity that enhance and fulfil the activity and
make it more zestful. Confucius also presents pleasure as a positive feeling arising from
activities, and recognises the connections between practice and knowledge, and bodily senses
and intellectual thoughts, by saying that “having studied, to then repeatedly apply what you
have learned – is this not a source of pleasure? To have friends come from distant quarters –
is this not a source of enjoyment?”317

Shusterman puts considerable emphasis on the cultivation of the body as the central tool of
self-cultivation, in order for us to have better “perception, action, virtue and happiness”. He
names this bodily dimension of philosophy “somaesthetics”. Somaesthetics is a “study of the
experience and use of one’s sentient body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic perception
(aesthetics) and creative self-fashioning”.318 The classical Chinese philosophies also intended
to find ideas from bodily dimensions, exemplified by the I-Ching, which involves the belief that
the world is the extension of the body, and is constructed through bodily perceptions and
actions. Both pragmatic aesthetics and classical Chinese thought require concern with the
body and claim to improve the use of the body by enhancing awareness of bodily feelings and
actions. The design purpose of Xiangshan Campus is about a kind of “aesthetic sense”.
Wandering around the campus, people may engage in various spatial scenes with the
movement of the body, through which aesthetic feelings and a sense of pleasure will emerge
simultaneously.

317
Ibid., p. 30.
318
Richard Shusterman (2009), “Pragmatist Aesthetics and Confucianism”, The Journal of Aesthetics
Education, vol. 43 (1), pp. 18–29, p. 25.
207
Pragmatism does not regard aesthetics as contradictory to asceticism. Even the simple, ascetic
life has its own enjoyment and beauty. Likewise, Confucius asserts: “To eat coarse food, drink
plain water, and pillow oneself on a bent arm – there is pleasure to be found in these things.”319
The aim of presenting the simplicity and purity of countryside life in the design of Xiangshan
Campus echoes the idea of the integration of aesthetics and asceticism. People can have
aesthetic feelings by experiencing the simple countryside life encapsulated in the campus.
The next sections are going to illustrate two Chinese contemporary projects, trying to clarify
how the architects intended to find concepts from traditional philosophies and how pragmatic
aesthetics are embodied in these examples. The design of Xiangshan Campus explains the way
in which Chinese literary architects pursue poetry in everyday life. The pursuit of poetry in
everyday life is a design concept which tries to achieve an “aesthetic sense”. This sense needs
to be gained through the body’s perceptions in actual spaces rather than understood through
abstract ideas. The architect tried to design the “aesthetic sense” and expected that people
will be able to gain this sense. Usually, architects find inspiration for “aesthetic sense” from
landscape and attempt to transfer landscape scenes into city life. What literary architects
attempt to create is a kind of living atmosphere, a feeling of life. Literary architects always try
to sense how people might feel in a particular place, and their designs are based on those
expected feelings. The pursuit of the poetry of everyday life, which comes from the tradition
of the concerns of the body and the sense of everydayness, is where “conceptual meaning”
lies. The “aesthetic sense” can only be gained when one fully exposes one’s body in actual
experience; in this way, pragmatic thoughts are engaged with the concept. The emphasis on
the body and everyday life is rooted in the I-Ching, which thinks that the world is the extension
of the body: all understandings of the world come from the body’s perceptions of the
surrounding environment.

319
Shusterman, “Pragmatism and East-Asian Thought”, p. 31.
208
4.2 Traditional Chinese Philosophies in Design: Following rather than Altering the Object’s
Original Features

Red Brick Art Museum, a rebuilt project based on an abandoned factory in Beijing, conveys the
concept of following rather than altering the object’s original features, providing a principle
for the creation of new things based on existing circumstances with minimal alternation. This
principle is widely applied in handcrafted works, painting, gardening and poetry. Pragmatic
thinking is associated with the design concept. The concept is about a design method, a
pragmatic way of creating new things by virtue of existing conditions, originating from the Yin–
Yang idea. When existing circumstances match the imagery of the new design, new things will
be created. The concept of following rather than altering the original features of an object
implies the idea of Yin and Yang: the features of the original object and the imagery of the new
space make a Yin–Yang unit, and when the two match, a new creation will be generated.

The aesthetic value of Red Brick Art Museum lies in pragmatism. One important feature of
Dewey’s pragmatic aesthetics is his “somatic naturalism” – beauty arises from humans’ natural
needs and demands of life. Shusterman also stresses living beauty – that aesthetics should
originate in practice and action. The aesthetic value of Red Brick Art Museum comes from its
design concept, from the fact that the building form is worked out in such a way as to satisfy
the functional requirements of the space as a gallery, to incorporate human sensations and all
other factors related closely with humans’ natural perceptions, bodily needs and experience.
The building’s form was not intentionally created, but it was generated by itself as the
pragmatic issues were worked out, according to existing context. The visual effect of the form
was not involved in the design. Form is the consequence of the design rather than the purpose.
The pre-condition for approaching this consequence is humans’ natural needs, perceptions
and practice within particular circumstances.

Pragmatic aesthetics emphasises a sort of dynamic aesthetic experience, which means art
does not exist only in static artefacts displayed in galleries, but also in the dynamic way in
which it is created and in our dynamic sensual experiences of it. Red Brick Art Museum is a
good example reflecting the idea that aesthetic value exists in the dynamic method of creating

209
a building. This is a positive example, demonstrating the basic views of pragmatic aesthetics.
The beauty comes from the architect’s experience in creating the building, lies in the
generative process, not the static forms that come out of the creation.

Therefore, the purpose of this example is to see the way in which the architect approaches the
consequence, namely, the dynamic process of creating meaningful spaces by applying his
design concept – following rather than altering the object’s original features, and hence
responding to pragmatic aesthetics.

4.2.1 The principle in art creation

Following the object’s original features does not mean sticking to one inflexible rule. The
essence of “following” is about generating new things according to the current circumstances
of an object, whether in painting, gardening, poetry, craft or architecture. Circumstance both
restricts and inspires new creation, and that new creation might be the only outcome that is
suitable for that particular circumstance. If the circumstance is Yin, the picture conceived in
the artist’s mind is Yang. This approach of applying the Yin–Yang idea in artistic creation tears
down the boundary between concept and practice. No abstract concept is pre-formed before
reaching any actual practice. Concept should be established as a means of making the best use
of existing situations. Once the imagined picture and particular circumstances match, a new
creation will be generated. A painting depends on the painting materials and what the artist
wants to express; a poem depends on the language the poet uses and the poet’s emotions,
and gardening depends on the existing conditions of the site and the pleasure the garden aims
to provide. When painting materials match the artist’s anticipated expression, when the words
match the poet’s emotion, when the conditions of the site match the anticipated spatial
pleasure of the garden, artistic creations will be born.

It is recorded that there was a special way of painting in the Song dynasty ( AD 960–1279).
Painting work started not with drawing materials but from the making of broken walls. An
artist would ask a workman to make uneven broken walls by throwing mud randomly onto the
wall. After the wall was completely dry, a sheet of silk paper would be put on the wall surface
210
and the painting job would be ready to go. Artists would use the paintbrush and ink to make a
rubbing of the random and irregular patterns of the wall onto the silk paper, and once the ink
was dry would create images on the basis of these random and irregular patterns. By making
a rubbing from the broken wall, the drawings would look more organic.320 These meaningless
patterns were given meaning by imagining them as concrete objects in the drawing. Some
might be seen as mountain peaks and the artist would add a pavilion on the top, some might
be seen as streams and the artist would draw small boats to match, and some might be seen
as big tree trunks and the artist would draw treetops to complete the trees.

Therefore, the random and irregular ink patterns on the sheet of silk paper were pre-
circumstances; what artists needed to do was to conceive images in their mind based on these
pre-circumstances and draw on that silk paper. When the conceived pictures matched the pre-
circumstances, a painting would be done, just as when Yin interacts with Yang new things are
born. Therefore, in this special kind of painting, artists’ creations followed the patterns
randomly produced from the broken wall. Artists tried to find the best ways to make use of
these meaningless patterns. There was no preconceived idea of the final creation before the
making of the wall, but creative ideas were inspired by random work, in flexible and
unexpected situations. The original features of the ink patterns is not altered – following the
principle, the painting’s meaning is found out in the process of matching the original patterns
and the creation. An artist in the Song dynasty, Song Di, summarised three steps for this special
method of painting.321 First, the broken wall has to be observed. As the broken wall is created
randomly by throwing mud freely onto the wall, the appearance of the wall is similar to some
characteristic of the organic environment. Observing the broken wall, one could discover a
mountain and stream, similar to mountain and stream in real landscape. Second, the artist has
to imagine what the drawing could be like. This is the step of matching existing conditions and
imagery – artists conceive ideal images in their minds according to the images suggested by
the broken wall. The last step is to produce a painting based on the ideal images the artist has

320
Yugan Dong (2012), Broken Walls and Ruins 败壁与废墟, Shanghai: Tongji University Press, p. 13.

321
Ibid., p. 14.

211
conceived earlier.

In the preface to Yuanye, Ji Cheng introduces some simple key points for gardening.322 The
main steps of gardening echo Song Di’s method of painting. Similarly, the first step is examining
the basic conditions of the site – terrain, trees and plants, existing stones and water. The
second step is, again, picturing possible images. Some areas may have to be raised to represent
a hill, while some may have to be lowered to show a valley; some areas may require a rock to
be added, and some may require a pavilion. The last step is the construction of the garden
construction to the imagery the gardener has in mind. Once this imagery is completely
matched with the conditions of the existing site, a new garden will come into being.

The making of utensils also conforms to this principle. Poet Bai Juyi described this method as
“by making the vessel follow the shape of the material, the genius will be found inside” in
one of his poems, “Genius Seems Like Clumsiness”.323 In Bai’s view, talented creation ought
not to be an absolute concept coming out of nothing, but ought to take the existing conditions
of materials as a reference. This seems plain and clumsy, but following the original features
does not simply equate to completely complying with existing circumstances without adding
any originality; rather, it aims to achieve “twice the yield, half the work” – the “genius” in Bai’s
terms. According to Bai’s poem, there are also three steps for making utensils, corresponding
to those for painting and gardening. Analogous to Song Di’s wall observation and Ji Cheng’s
site examination, the first step in making utensils is material investigation. Following analysis
of the existing circumstances of the material, the second step is, again, conceiving ideal
imagery based on the requirements of the utensil and matching these with material
conditions. For example, when the carpenter finds a piece of timber that is straight on one
side but curved on the other, he might decide that the straight part is probably suitable for
making a beam for a building, and the curved part could be used as a wheel for a carriage.324

322
Ibid., p. 14.
323
Ibid., p. 17.
324
Yugan Dong (2013), “Designing according to Circumstances – Design for the Red Brick
Contemporary Art Museum” “随形制器 – 北京红砖美术馆设计”, Architecture Journal, 2013 (2), pp. 44–
51, p. 50.

212
The last step, again, is working on the utensil and making the imagery come to life in it. Beam
and wheel are made by following the character of the timber rather than by dominating and
changing the existing features. According to Bai Juyi, the gist of image matching is “following
rather than altering the object’s original features”, while the ideal result of matching is “Twice
the yield, half the work”.325 The carpenter does not change any feature of the timber but
makes best use of both characteristics of it, straight and curving. The carpenter’s work
responds to the rule of following rather than altering the object’s original features. At the
same time, the carpenter matches the existing features of the timber with the required
qualities of a beam and a wheel, which achieves “twice the yield, half the work”.

4.2.2 The principle in architectural design

Reliance on existing circumstance is widely applied in artistic creation and craft-making in

everyday Chinese life. If we bring this principle into architectural design, matching the
circumstances of the existing site with an ideal design image, we will have a building that will
take into consideration the preconditions and will result in “twice the yield, half the work”.
Red Brick Art Museum is an attempt to incorporate the idea of reliance on existing characters,
following Bai Juyi’s view that the vessel should assume the shape of the material.

325
Ibid.

213
Figure 63. Ground-floor plan of Red Brick Art Museum and the garden.

Red Brick Art Museum is a rebuilt project based on an old abandoned factory located in the
northeast suburb of Beijing. The rebuilt project is about 4,000 square metres and the project
was accomplished in 2011.326 All of the exterior walls are built by piling up red bricks and
there has been no cutting or reshaping of any single brick; this is why the building is named
“Red Brick Art Museum”. Dong Yugan, the designer, described the current situation of the
factory as “simple, crude, and huge”.327 There were almost no interior partition walls. Exterior
walls were exposed to the air with 6×6-metre openings arrayed in a line along two long walls;

326
Yugan Dong (2015), Heaven and Paradise 天堂与乐园, Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press,
p. 96.
327
Dong, Broken Walls and Ruins, p. 22.

214
one of the walls faced the main street, while the other faced a blank inner area. These large
openings meant that existing conditions were far from what is required of an exhibition
building that needs sufficient interior displaying walls for art works. Above the simple steel-
frame ceiling, there was a sun-roof with strip-shaped skylights, running from south to north.
Although the sun-roof provided good natural light, the direct light that comes through it could
bring trouble for exhibitions.

Figure 64. Old abandoned factory.

◼ Transformation of exterior walls

Transforming exterior walls was a major difficulty of the project, and how to make ingenious
use of existing walls was the key to the concepts of “following rather than altering the object’s
original features” and “twice the yield, half the work”. Successive openings on the wall were
the major problem, as what art museums need for exhibitions is closed exhibition walls and
uniform diffused light. In order to have continuous exterior walls, Dong did not want to simply
fill in the existing openings or build new walls to straightforwardly replace the old, because
to him this would have been a method of making rather than designing.328 Since the designer
had decided to have a big exhibition hall in the middle of the steel shelf, there would have

328
Yugan Dong (2013), “Image and Setting – Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing” “意象与场景 – 北京红砖美
术馆设计”, Time+Architecture, 2013 (2), pp. 65–70, p. 65.

p. 65.

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been a 5-metre-wide corridor between the existing exterior wall and the hall. However, 5
metres is not enough for displaying artistic works which are more than 5 metres high:
according to experience, the ideal distance for viewing an art work is 1.2 to 2 times as far
away as the height of the work. Therefore, a contradiction arose, because if the designer had
simply compressed the middle exhibition hall to make enough room for the corridor, it would
reduce the space for main exhibition works. The corridor and the middle hall were fighting
for enough space. Finally, the designer worked out a solution to these problems without
changing anything of the existing exterior walls.

A series of right-angled triangles were applied, zigzagging through existing openings. The legs
of the triangles meet both outside and inside the existing walls. As the legs of all triangles
leaned against the edges of the walls between the large openings, they formed triangular
chambers in the corridor enclosed by legs and existing walls, which perfectly wrapped up
steel columns and water pipes next to existing walls. Triangular spaces were also formed
among the legs and existing openings, which would serve as display spaces. However, these
were not the only benefits offered by the zigzag triangular walls; more benefits were
generated unexpectedly. First, the displaying space in each existing opening area was doubled
by adding the triangles, compared with simply adding flat walls to fill in existing openings.
This benefit was especially important for an exhibition building. Second, the triangular spaces
repetitively appear along the corridor, providing a better interior spatial experience than flat
walls. Triangular spaces help both to maintain the visual continuity of the corridor and to keep
individual triangular spaces semi-independent. Third, the triangular walls expanded the sight
distance of the corridor from 5 metres to nearly 7 metres, which meets the standard for a
good exhibition space and gives rise to a comfortable bodily experience. Fourth, the
triangular displaying spaces provided sufficient room for skylights. These could be installed
on flat roofs over the displaying spaces, which would then be invisible from outside, instead
of cutting openings on exterior walls. Usually, the skylights alone are able to function well for
exhibitions without the assistance of artificial lights.329

329
Dong, Broken Walls and Ruins, p. 24.

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The existing walls and the series of openings were retained completely and made use of. The
old walls between the openings were retained as exterior walls, and at the same time played
a role together with legs of the triangles in forming triangular chambers to cover steel
columns and water pipes. The newly built zigzagging walls, going back and forth through the
openings, left the existing exterior walls unaltered, but generated more exhibition space,
greater sight distance and better light quality, as well as a better spatial experience. All of
these represent the idea of “following rather than altering the object’s original features”. The
renovation relied on the conditions of the old materials while aiming to meet the
requirements of an exhibition building, but at the same time unexpected benefits were
achieved. It seems the aim of resolving a pragmatic problem sometimes acts as a starting
point, but that as a scheme proceeds, some more advantages might come up. These
advantages may all depend on one small renovation. If one renovation is implemented and
more advantages are brought about, this renovation might be a genius approach, one that
achieves “twice the yield, half the work”. The interaction between old walls and new zigzag
walls in the Red Brick Art Museum seems analogous to the interaction between Yin and Yang.
The existing wall is Yin while the newly built wall is Yang. Images of the new building were
generated based on the existing conditions as well as on the aim of matching these existing
conditions. The function of interaction is to generate, such that the interaction between old
and new walls means to generate new things and thus “twice the yield” was generated and
simultaneously the new building façade was formed.

The form of the façade was not designed in advance to meet visual expectations before
engaging with pragmatic problems. Rather, it was formed through practically dealing with
particular problems in the temporal circumstances. The form is reasonable only in this case,
and cannot be borrowed or applied in any other cases, since it is the product of the interaction
between this particular circumstance and the architect’s imagination. The form of the façade
did not follow any abstract self-generated concept, but rather followed a design method of
“following rather than altering the object’s original features”, “making the vessel by virtue of
the shape of the material”, originating from the most ancient idea of Yin–Yang interaction. The
generation of the façade relied on a design concept that was borrowed by the architect from

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the traditional philosophy of Yin and Yang. This design concept focuses on pragmatically
resolving concrete problems in specific cases throughout the design; thereby, the form of the
façade in this case was the consequence of the design process.

Figure 65. Idea of the transformation of exterior walls.

Figure 66. Exterior wall of Red Brick Art Museum.

◼ Square Hall and Circular Hall

Through the main east entrance, there is a main foyer area which presented the most
complicated design requirement: a public welfare hall (the Square Hall), a press conference
room for temporary exhibitions (the Circular Hall), a small lecture hall for meetings and
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presentations, a bar and a reception room. There is also a loft over the main entrance foyer
for an office or an assistant’s use. Generally, within this 9-metre-high steel shelter, there were
two ways to win more space: digging down to create lower space and expanding into the
upper space. 330 Renovation sometimes relies on the existing shelter, which here was the
precondition of the art museum’s renovation. Sometimes renovation takes place on the basis
of the overlapping of multiple images of settings, hoping to achieve “twice the yield” with
“half the work”.331

The small lecture hall required artificial light and good soundproofing, such that it was better
to put it underground. It sinks 3 metres below the ground. Because of the strong resistance
of underground water, this was the lowest level it could reach. But the architect was
concerned that a 3-metre clearance height was not enough for a lecture hall and therefore
he decided to set the ceiling on the 1.2-metre-high crossing beams; thereby, the ceiling was
elevated to 1.2 metres above the ground level. After paving with red bricks over the beams,
this arresting 1.44-metre-high platform was well suited as a stage for performance. Hence,
the architect aimed to make this brick-piled platform function as a displaying stage for the
public welfare hall as well as a huge stair or landing linking the ground floor and the loft. 332
As the public welfare hall is shaped like a square, it was simply called the Square Hall.

However, as the platform was at a height of 1.44 metres above the ground floor, it raised the
question of how to attract visitors and induce them to go up to the exhibition stage. Dong
notes a phenomenon whereby visitors are apt to be attracted by previous visitors.333 However,
it is hard for exhibition spaces to benefit from this phenomenon, since art works are usually
displayed in completely closed spaces, which blocks sight when coming from outside.
Therefore, opening up the closed exhibition wall to enable sight communication was
considered to be a good solution. Instead of piling up bricks all the way from the foot to the

330
Dong, Heaven and Paradise, p. 101.
331
Dong, “Image and Setting”, p. 64.

332
Dong, Broken Walls and Ruins, p.28.
333
Ibid., p. 30.

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top, the wall was suspended over the platform, leaving a continuous horizontal slot all around
the platform, exactly at eye-level for visitors standing on the ground floor. This horizontal slot
ingeniously eliminated the closure of the Square Hall and made room for sight interaction
between the Square Hall and the main foyer. The final decision for the height of the slot was
40 cm, as this was the maximum height of the slot without guardrails. Once visitors access
the Square Hall, it is interesting to see moving feet through the 40-cm-high slot between the
wall and the platform in the main foyer, which draws attention and attracts visitors’ interest
in going up to the Square Hall.

How to access the lecture hall from the main foyer turned out to be another question. A space
was created in the middle of the main foyer which sinks to 1.26 metres below the ground
floor level, leading to the lecture hall 3 metres underneath. The sinking Circular Hall is
enveloped by a circular wall at the loft level and is illuminated by natural light through the
roof and through the hollow surrounded by the circular wall.334 This sinking space functions
as a press conference room and a space for temporary exhibitions. The steps going to the
bottom are in random order, and can be used for seating, relaxing or as a children’s
playground. Opposite these random steps, there is a brick-piled rostrum next to the Square
Hall, 0.9 metres higher than the ground floor. The space between the heightened rostrum
and the lowered Circular Hall is enough for people to access the small lecture hall hidden
underneath the Square Hall. Thus, the sinking space also functions as a big stair landing
linking the ground floor to the small lecture hall.

It seems the architect did not attempt to think about the scheme from a macro-perspective,
but rather focused on problems one by one and provided solutions according to temporary
circumstances in the process, before at last reaching the final form of the interior space. The
requirements for artificial light and sound insulation for the small lecture hall led to the first
solution – that is, putting the room 3 metres below the ground floor. After putting the lecture
hall underground, another problem was encountered of insufficient clear height. However,
after the ceiling of the lecture hall was raised, this in turn caused access difficulty for the

334
Ibid., p. 32.

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Square Hall; thus, a suspended wall was required to resolve the problem. Access to the small
report wall was required from the main foyer, such that a sinking space was required to serve
as a stair landing. However, the sinking space was expanded and shaped as a circle, and
functionally became a press conference area, as well as a cafe when it is available. The
challenges the architect came across during the design updated the design process itself;
each solution to a certain problem generated new problems and new opportunities. The
architect, all the time, took the latest circumstances into consideration in the design.
Therefore, the imagery conceived in the architect’s mind was changing to match the changing
circumstances throughout the design process; and the form of the interior space kept
changing with the change in the images, until all problems were solved. The concept of the
design was to seek out problems that existed in the current circumstances, and work out
solutions based on opportunities that also resided in the prevalent circumstances. In addition,
each solution has two or more roles. The platform of the Square Hall functions as the ceiling
of the small lecture hall and the linkage between the loft level and the ground floor, besides
acting as a public welfare exhibition space. Similarly, the Circular Hall is a place for press
conferences, and is also a linkage between the small lecture hall and the ground floor, a public
rest area, and occasionally a cafe. These multi-functional solutions, again, point to the
principle of “twice the yield, half the work”.

(a)

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 (b)

Figure 67. Circular Hall in Red Brick Art Museum.

Figure 68. Circular Hall and Square Hall in Red Brick Art Museum.

222
Figure 69. Square Hall in Red Brick Art Museum .

◼ Church courtyard

There is plenty of open space north of the museum. This is also a part of the project, including
a small, narrow space on the northeast side and a bigger square space on the northwest side.
Landscape designers are involved in the design: they started to work on this space in 2008,
and construction is still ongoing.

The design of this large courtyard north of the museum also relies on “following rather than
altering the object’s original features”. The design of each object tends to approach certain
imagery according to the existing situation. The imagery refers either to the experience of
touring around landscapes or to the intention to resolve real problems. Dong criticises the
museum for its over-closed appearance, which he partly attributes to the separated phases
of design of the courtyard and the building – the courtyard design came second to the
building design. Dong thinks the opportunity to establish good interaction between building
and courtyard has been missed.335 Therefore, when he started out to design the courtyard,
he tried to take other references as starting points than the building itself.

The middle courtyard is a small area northeast of the building, connecting the large northwest
garden and the art museum. It is a narrow space but required to have a 4-metre-wide fire
lane and a 12×12–metre turnaround for a fire engine, according to the fire safety norms. The
architect started by looking for solutions to meet fire safety requirements. The 4-metre-wide
fire lane could possibly be put outside, along the north exterior wall, while the 12×12-metre
space for the fire engine could be placed at the east end of the lane. However, the east–west
fire lane rendered the rest of this narrow place much narrower. Thus, narrowness became a
strong characteristic of this place. The architect took this character as “the object’s original
feature”, attempting to follow and reinforce the sense of narrowness rather than altering this
feature.

335
Ibid., p.38.

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The basilica plan attracted the architect’s interest, since the sense of narrowness it expressed
could be possibly adapted to the current character. Hence, a small church courtyard placed
north of the fire lane was conceived. As Dong explained, some years ago, he designed a
church but did not have the chance to build it. This time, he found that it was a good
opportunity to put the scheme into practice.336 Therefore, he put the basilica church in the
remaining narrow space. However, because constructing buildings other than the museum
was not allowed, the roof of the church was removed and the walls were left, creating an
east–west church-like courtyard. A circular shrine was designed at the east end of the church,
but a wisteria was enshrined there instead of an idol or a cross. At the west end of the church,
opposite the shrine, a 6-metre-high wall was set up. Standing right in front of the high wall, a
cross was displayed. The cross was shaped by drawing selected bricks out of the wall; when
the observer stands directly opposite the wall when the light comes through from behind it,
the hollow cross is revealed completely. According to Dong, the cross was intended to
maintain the image of the church, as a compensation for the loss of the roof.337

336
Ibid., p. 40.
337
Ibid., p. 41.

224
Figure 70. Cross wall of the church courtyard.

Figure 71. Church courtyard.

This courtyard occasionally serves as an outdoor cafe, as an accessory to the indoor one.
There are a number of foreigners living nearby; therefore, the idea of a basilica-style
225
courtyard was also a means of attracting more foreign visitors. To reduce the sense of
inhumanity of the church, the walls were set at only 3.3 metres’ height, and brick tables were
added to window sills – so the windows are not only for viewing, but are also usable. In
addition, the basilica-style courtyard is planted with big trees, so that trees are visible from
outside through the windows, and the trees also help to shade the cafe better during the
summer.

Brick tables on the window sills to the south were planned to be used as displaying tables for
sculptures. Opposite the south wall across the fire lane, the areas between the triangular
masses outside the north exterior wall of the museum were earmarked for the planting of
more trees, set in a series of square tree grates. These tree grates could also be used as
displaying tables for sculptures. Two rows of displayed sculptures along the two sides of the
fire lane were expected to achieve an image of an open-air sculpture gallery, but
unfortunately the tree grates have been removed and the image of the gallery is partly lost.

Therefore, there is nothing generated absolutely by itself, but all works in compliance with
the conditions at that moment. The architect took the fire safety requirements as a starting
point and the fire lane further increases the sense of narrowness of the existing narrow space.
Thus, the architect put this spatial character to use by adding a basilica-style courtyard. On
the one hand, the basilica plan was properly adapted to this narrow and long space; on the
other hand, the basilica spatial form expresses and reinforces the original character of the
space. But, as no other building was allowed to be built beside the museum, the roof was
removed and it became a basilica-style courtyard; following this, a cross was designed in the
high brick wall in order to maintain the sense of a church. This non-roofed church was then
planned to be an ideal place for outdoor cafe. As a result of being a cafe in everyday use, the
symbolic character of the church has been erased, and the architect has increased the sense
of liveness by virtue of plants and human-scale brick furniture. Finally, the architect found the
possibility of achieving the impression of a sculpture gallery with the help of brick tables and
tree grates on the other side. As with the museum space, the architect’s creation was
generated on the basis of previous creations, each step being determined according to
circumstances at that moment. The creation is updated as the temporal circumstances
226
change. Any creation is not an independent entity, but rather the existence of everything is
interpreted and justified by others who shape it.

◼ Redesign of church courtyard

However, the building-like courtyard ultimately aroused the client’s desire to convert it into
an extra lecture hall, to resolve the problem of a lack of report spaces in the museum. Hence,
in 2014, a transformation project around the roof of the church was begun. Solutions for this
transformation also relied on the current circumstances offered by the previous design,
rather than creating something completely new. According to Dong, the transformation is not
about an individual building only, but about the linkage between the spaces around the
church. He plans to take the newly added roof as an intermediary, to link the loft level of the
museum, the water tower at the west end of the church and the small garden at the east side
of the church. A bridge has been set to go across the loft level of the museum to the east end
of the roof of the church, winding down to the small garden at the east side of the church.338
Another bridge, at the west end of the church, links the water tower and a secluded narrow
path attached to the museum’s exterior wall leading to the ground level. The two bridges are
connected by the walkable roof over the former church courtyard.

The V-shaped roof results from multi-functional considerations. On the one hand, as the roof
serves as the connection between the water tower and the loft level of the museum, there
needed to be a flat path across from the west end to the east end of the roof. The valley
created by the V shape offers the opportunity to accommodate a path. On the other hand,
the V-shaped beams not only support the roof as structural frames, but also allow natural
light into the lecture hall through the space between the beams at the top of the side walls.

Though the courtyard has been transformed into a building, the transformation project has
still followed the rule of making best use of existing conditions and deriving the most benefit
possible.

338
Dong, Heaven and Paradise, p. 105.

227
Figure 72. Transformed church courtyard: a small lecture hall.

Figure 73. Newly-built V-shaped roof above the lecture hall.

228
Figure 74. Bridge connecting the museum and the roof of the previous church courtyard.

◼ Management of nine rocks

A big open space, 6,000 square metres in size, is located northwest of the museum. Here, the
architect followed the idea of incorporating the landscape into artificial design, attempting to
achieve an imagery of the landscape in an artificial space. To build a garden inside an urban
area, the first step is to create an imagery of water and mountain on different levels; then
attention turns to the management of the relationship between buildings and landscape.339
As there was no building required to be built in the northern garden, the only task was to
create a landscape. Earth was removed to form a lake, while a hill was piled up using the earth
which had been excavated. A walkable roof was set at the top of the hill, so that the northern
mountain views would be drawn into the garden. It is impossible to illustrate every detail of
the creation of this sizeable garden; however, typical of its imagery are nine rocks which were
collected by the architect from a stone factory and which have been carefully placed in
appropriate places in the garden. The management of these nine rocks illustrates how objects
have been matched with the images that the architect conceived in his mind.

A stone courtyard was built in the middle of the garden, north of the lake and south of the

339
Dong, “Designing according to Circumstances”, p. 51.

229
artificially created hill. The architect divided this courtyard into three adjacent sub-yards from
east to west. These three yards are individually enclosed by dark grey brick walls, but are
connected via openings in the walls. The architect’s intention was to accommodate three
different themes in three sub-yards – water, mountain and forest. The three different themes
are visible from the lakeside through a round opening in the south wall of each of the three
sub-yards.

In the east sub-yard, the architect intended to place a rock with water wave patterns to imply
the theme of water. Since the rock which matched this condition was too big to be placed in
the yard, the rock is embedded in the wall itself, protruding towards the lake. Thus it looks as
if there is a waterfall on the wall. An elephant-like rock is placed in the east yard as well, but
standing against the north wall in order to block sight towards the north concrete retaining
wall of the artificial hill. Another two small rocks are also placed at either side of the elephant-
like rock to assistance it in blocking part of the view towards the concrete retaining wall.

Figure 75. The second, elephant-like rock.

The fifth rock, in the middle yard, seems to imitate the image of a mountain. The rock, shaped
like three peaks on top, was placed against the north wall right opposite the round opening
towards the lake.

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Figure 76. The fifth, three-peak rock.

A camber-shaped rock with a hollow in it is placed in the west yard, with the aim of expressing
the theme of forest. The hollow, the rock and the brick wall behind it have vines planted
around them, with the intention that they will become entwined as the grow, so as to present
the imagery of a forest. Another, cloud-like rock is set up in front of the camber-shaped rock,
and a secluded space is thereby formed between the two rocks, and this space is intended
for a private chatting area.

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Figure 77. The seventh, cloud-like rock.

The eighth rock has been placed in the middle of the lake, echoing the imagery of an island. It
can accommodate four or five people having a conversation on it, having an extremely flat and
spacious surface with an area of 7–8 square metres.

Figure 78. The eighth, island rock.

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The last rock is huge and thin, shaped like a wallboard, prompting the architect to place it at
the bank of the lake, corresponding to the imagery of a standing cliff beside water such as is
often depicted in Chinese paintings.340

4.2.3 Summary

Red Brick Art Museum follows Bai Juyi’s two requirements for the craftsman’s design concept,
“follow rather than alter the object’s original features” and “twice the yield, half the work”.
The object’s “original features” in this design refers to existing exterior walls with successive
large openings, spacious interior space under a steel shelter, the scale of the open-air space,
the function and safety requirements as a museum, the client’s preferences, the surrounding
buildings and landscape, the materials available locally, and any changes to all of these
circumstances over the course of the design process. The object’s “original features” helped
the architect to construct possible imagery for the new space of the museum, and thus the
original features served as a standing base and gave possible justifications for aspects of the
design, thereby rendering it reasonable and reliable. “Twice the yield, half the work” reflects
pragmatic idea of looking towards usefulness and practical benefit. “Twice the yield” in the
design is reflected by the multi-purpose character of new walls, the heightened Square Hall,
the lowered Circular Hall, the roof added to the church courtyard and so on. These multi-
purpose solutions resulted from the need to solve certain problems, but when new forms
were generated, the architect realised that they could be used for other purposes. The
creation follows the original features of existing objects, instead of being worked out from
nothing, such that “twice the yield, half the work” can also be realised: existing objects are
being used and a new thing is being created at the same time.

The architect had neither definite intentions nor a macro-scope for the design. What he had
was an idea of an approach to creating objects. The forms of the buildings and gardens
generated this way are a consequence of existing circumstances, which is what the pragmatic

340
Dong, Broken Walls and Ruins, p. 47–49.

233
approach is fundamentally supposed to be. Based on circumstances, with the designer’s
intelligence, the consequences will be realised as the result of the matching of subjective
imaginery and objective circumstances. Therefore, the consequences of this process is that
real problems are resolved step by step and the intended imagery is achieved at the same
time. The building form, as the ultimate consequence of the design, is not the purpose of the
design, but is something resulting from the effort to cope with existing conditions. Building
form does not imply any symbolic or iconic meaning; the form represents the substance of
the building itself. Thus, form does not perform as a sign translated from another sign and
signifying any information other than physical functions and bodily perceptions, and is an
“ultimate logical interpretant” that grows out of and interprets the context, essentially
responding to the problems without passing problems along to another sign. What we see in
the building is exactly what the building is.

Pragmatic aesthetics resides in the design, in the dynamic process of the architect’s creation.
Pragmatists do not tend to give linguistic definition or conception to anything, but instead
aim to find ways to realise things in practice. Similarly, the design concept of the building is
neither focused on intended visual effect, nor does it aim for any supposed particular result
in advance. Rather, it embodies an attitude of orientation in how it seeks to move the design
forward. Therefore, at some point it meets the ideas of pragmatism, thus allowing pragmatic
concerns to be engaged with “conceptual meaning”. The particular building form comes out
at the end of the design, after the concept has been fully delivered and actual problems have
been resolved according to particular circumstances throughout the design process.
Moreover, the I-Ching and pragmatism both entail the belief that things are always changing
afresh, and do not have a singular truth. The design concept of Red Brick Art Museum
manifests this idea by concerning itself with the constantly changeable circumstances
encountered throughout the design and their effects on solutions. Each step of the design is
about finding out a mean, a balanced solution according to the existing circumstances, so
that the building form develops through a course of seeking means.

As the building form serves as a consequence, without any visual purpose set up at the
beginning, Red Brick Art Museum could be a case of what Christopher Alexander calls
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“carefree and innocent” design. The innocence will only arise when people honestly forget
themselves. When a designer sets out to create a design from a void without having any exact
purpose in mind in the sense of ambitious concepts and willful images, does not care what
shape the finished building has, does not care what other people think of it, and is not afraid
of being laughed at for their ignorance about “art”, the building will be shaped freely, like
plants freely growing in a wild field. Most places are not innocent, such as iconic buildings,
mass-produced residential developments, even the seemingly old-fashioned “regionalism”
buildings, because they are made with strong outward purpose. The people who made those
buildings were trying to convey something intentionally, a sort of constructed “meaning” or
image, through the building form. These buildings are designed from the outside in, and
although some are made to be seen as “natural”, this is, in the end, a pose.341 If a designer’s
mind is full of concepts and purposes, he or she relies too much on those unreal thoughts –
styles, symbols, fashions – and cannot see the world directly through his or her most primitive
sensations, and thus does not understand the reality. The timeless attitude to building that
Alexander indicates is about a design approach that transcends styles, concepts and existing
architectural languages, and aims for buildings with the most apposite forms that grow out
of a particular situation. The forms come into being as the designer feels they should in
response to current circumstances – for instance, there should be a path going along a stream
so that we can walk by the stream in the evening, then it is better to have steps down to the
water to make the stream more intimate to us, and there should be a patio right beside a big
tree for stationary activities. The building form of Red Brick Art Museum comes into being
through the same approach: step by step, according to the events that will happen in the
museum and the conditions of the old factory. The building can be timelessly alive only when
the designer is egoless towards the finished forms.

The “conceptual meaning” of the museum is generated by the architect, from his encounter
with the traditional way of creating art works, following rather than altering the object’s
original features. The concept is from a traditional notion that is widely applied in the creation

341
Christopher Alexander (1979), The Timeless Way of Building, New York: Oxford University Press,
pp. 531–546.

235
of arts and crafts. The “conceptual meaning” the architect has created is about a pragmatic
approach to craftsmanship, a method of dealing with concrete problems rather than an
overarching ambition with clear intentions regarding eventual forms.

The architect believes in the notion that when Yin and Yang interact, a new thing will be born.
The existing circumstances and the imagery conceived in the architect’s mind are matched as
a Yin–Yang unit. When a particular circumstance meets a suitable image, they will soon
become matched and a proper solution will be worked out, and thus a new creation will be
generated. As the circumstances are updated, the design work proceeds, and the final form
is shaped. Echoing the principle that there is nothing absolutely Yin or absolutely Yang but
that things are both Yin and Yang, in Red Brick Art Museum one object always tends to have
two or more characters, such as the roof of the church courtyard which also serves as a high
walkway; the platform of the Square Hall which also serves as the roof of the lecture hall
below it, a stage for exhibitions and a stair landing for the upper floor; or the zigzagging walls
which are intended to expand watching distance between art works and viewers, but which
are also designed so as to cover old water pipes, divide individual displaying spaces and allow
natural light in without the need to cut openings in the exterior walls.

4.3 Traditional Chinese Philosophies in Design: Creating the Poetry

The poetry lies in feelings or moods generated by bodily senses when one places oneself in a
certain environment. For a long time the body has played a vital role in Chinese philosophy
and art. Chinese philosophy is rooted in the understanding of everything perceived by the body,
and Chinese art lays much emphasis on the relationship between the body and landscape. The
design of the Xiangshan Campus explains the way in which Chinese literary architects pursue
the poetry of everyday life – a design concept which tries to achieve an “aesthetic sense”. This
sense needs to be gained through the body’s perceptions in daily life rather than understood
only through abstract ideas.

The design of Xiangshan Campus is a good example reflecting the idea of pragmatic aesthetics.
Pragmatic aesthetics lies in the dynamical method of creating spaces and the aesthetic
236
experience of perceiving them, rather than making linguistic concepts or definitions. Pragmatic
aesthetics requires us to emphasise bodily perceptions, the cultivation and the use of the body
and, through it, consciousness. What the architect did was to design the aesthetic experience
– a series of bodily perceptions and the spaces that would generate these perceptions – and
hope people would realise it in actual experience. The purpose of this example is to present
the way the architect through about the design – how he approached “aesthetic sense” by
dealing with the relationship between buildings and natural environment, considering the
body’s movement through the spaces, using regional materials and so on. Before moving on
to discuss the example in detail, I will briefly discuss somaesthetics and the emphasis on the
body in Chinese culture.

4.3.1 Concerns about the body

In Galen Cranz’s essay “Somatics and Aesthetics”, he cites Alexander Baumgarten’s definition
of aesthetics as a “general theory of sensory knowledge”, a logic theory constructed on the
basis of direct sensation.342 He also refers to Terry Eagleton’s view of aesthetics – the basis of
aesthetics as emotions, which serve as guides between pure sensation and action, directing
us towards or away from a stimulus. Aesthetics is recognised as being associated with the
bodily sense. Richard Shusterman introduces the term “somaesthetics”; though it is a familiar
term in neurophysiology referring to sensory perception through the body, Shusterman
proposes it from a philosophical perspective, attempting to describe the term as it relates to
“how we experience and use the living body (or soma) as a site of sensory appreciation
(aesthetics) and creative self-fashioning”. The term “soma” indicates a sentient body, actively
producing feelings, emotions and sensations, while the term “aesthetics” gives “soma” a
conscious sense of bodily perception; thus, “somaesthetics” comprises both theoretical
thoughts and sensuous practice. 343 The body is our most primordial tool, the most basic

342
Galen Cranz (2013), “Somatics and Aesthetics: The Role of Body in Design”, in Bhatt, R. (ed.),
Rethinking Aesthetics: The Role of Body in Design, London: Routledge, pp. 143–157, p. 144.
343
Richard Shusterman (2008), Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics,
237
medium for interacting with various environments, and a necessity for perception, action and
thoughts. Our cultural identities are largely subject to the body, as the body offers our primal
mode of engagement with the world, shaping our consciousness by structuring our habits,
notions, interests and values towards things, and thereby determining meanings in a certain
culture.

The body’s role as primordial medium has long been recognised. As Shusterman points out,
the basic somatic terms “organ” and “organism” derive from a Greek work for tool,
“organon”. 344 However, Greek philosophy’s tendency to champion idealist ends while
disparaging physical and material values has resulted in condemnation of rather than
celebration of the body as medium, represented by Plato and subsequent idealists. Plato
always argues that the body distracts us from reality, the ideal realm in his imagination, and
the search for true knowledge, by interrupting our attention with sensational commotions and
diverting our minds with passions, fancies and nonsense. The sensorial medium of the body
disorders Plato’s ideal reality through its unpredictable perceptions. As stated previously,
different from Western philosophy, which has at times had strong negative attitudes towards
the body and considers pure spirit as something that transcends the body, Chinese philosophy
does not have a definite intellect–body dualism, but thinks that the world is an extension of
the body: all understanding of the world has always originated in the observation of everyday
phenomena and the experience of real life. It sees bodily senses as lenses through which to
look at the world and to shape mind.

Dong asserts that all religion stems from the fear of death. In this view, religions make up
stories of an immortal afterlife as a means to relieve the fear of death.345 However, Chuang
Tse offers an alternative way of coping with this fear, seeing the change of life in a wider
environment with endless changes – defusing the sense of sadness and fear of the oblivion

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.

344
Ibid., p. 4.
345
Dong, Heaven and Paradise, p. 31.

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of death. A famous poet, Tao Yuanming,346 has left us a fragment of a poem: “death is no big
deal, as it is nothing but just like integrating body into mountain”.347 He considers death a way
of transferring the body from living places to the mountain. The mountain is another home
for the body after death. It is not fantasy, imagined or depicted by the human mind, but a real
everyday environment which can be perceived when we are alive. Therefore, the wider
environment, to Chinese people, is of vital importance. It could be a paradise offering people
pleasure when they are alive, and it could be a home in which to house the dead body as well
as to soothe the pessimistic mood of death. Another of Tao Yuanming’s poems, “Peach
Blossom Spring”, describes his imagined experience in an attractive country field. His
experience is not abstractly out of life, but derives from everyday life experience. He describes
how his body moves through spaces and his feelings change all the way through the journey,
and at the end he is fully enchanted in the charming field and almost escapes from the
sadness and the fear of matters of life. Tao’s way of forgetting death is about simply
immersing the body in wider environmental spaces and freely exploring everything enjoyable
and aesthetic with the sensitive body, thereby getting rid of the dread associated with issues
of life and death. As a result, different from the religious approach, which needs the help of
redemption in the afterlife to resist the fear of this life, Tao’s approach is about forgetting the
fear of death by closely encountering the environment with the help of the body’s senses,
and thus perceiving the poetic beauty of the environment and temporarily fleeing from daily
trivia.

“Peach Blossom Spring” depicts an imagined “perceptual space” in which a series of scenes
can be perceived with the movement of the body, and this kind of space also exists in real life.
The perceptual space is “a space of action centred on immediate needs and practices”, which
cannot be separated from bodily experience and intentions. The perceptual space has a

346
Tao Yuanming (365–427 AD) was a Chinese poet who lived in the middle of the Six Dynasties period
(220–589 AD). Tao is often regarded as the greatest poet, and particularly as a “Fields and Gardens”
poetry poet: that is, a poet of naturalism, but a poet of the more domestic sort of naturalism.
347
Yuanming Tao (1979), The Collection of Tao Yuanming 陶渊明集, Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company
Press, p. 142.

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centre, the perceiving body, from which the space can be constructed.348 The structure of the
perceptual space cannot be understood as a measurable object, but rather has to be
experienced as a sort of sensorial generator that can have emotional effects on the body.
Therefore, the perceptual space is “the most immediate form of awareness”, where we may
have various kinds of emotions and feelings as we encounter diverse material or immaterial
matters.

The “aesthetic sense” is a kind of feeling in the realm of the perceptual space, resulting from
pure bodily sensations and emotions, which usually comes from artistic images. “Aesthetic
sense” has for a long time been the highest pursuit for Chinese men of letters in artistic
creation, no matter whether in poetry, painting, calligraphy or gardening. It is difficult to
discuss “aesthetic sense” in language; it must be sensed and experienced in the body as a
consequence of exposure to certain images (or other artistic works) when one is in a suitably
contemplative state of mind. “Aesthetic sense” is similar to what Peter Zumthor refers to with
the term “atmosphere”. When Zumthor tries to describe the quality in architecture, he refers
to those buildings with beautiful and sensuous presence which are able to move him. The
thing that moves him is atmosphere. 349 Similarly, “aesthetic sense” is also an emotion
resulting from being moved when we confront landscape scenes or artistic works. The artist
tries to encapsulate “aesthetic sense” in art by borrowing the sense of beauty from the
landscape and incorporating it into the creation of art, aiming to engender an “aesthetic
sense” in the people who encounter the artist’s work. John Dewey has noted that artists and
perceivers of art often begin with “a total seizure”, “an inclusive qualitative whole … not yet
articulated”. This quality of an inclusive whole can only be immediately experienced. 350 A
poem may begin to be formed from an emotion or perception which is at first without a clear
and definite object, and the specific parts take shape later. A designer may start thinking of a
project with a vague sort of “aesthetic sense” about it, and particular spaces are designed

348
Edward C. Relph (1976), Place and Placelessness, London: Pion, Ltd, p. 10.
349
Peter Zumthor (2006), Atmospheres: Architectural Environments; Surrounding Objects, Basel, Boston
& Berlin: Birkhäuser, p. 10.
350
John Dewey (1934), Art as Experience, London: G. Allen & Unwin, pp. 191–192.

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later on as that “aesthetic sense” becomes clearer.

“Aesthetic sense” awakened by the bodily senses is seen as poetry in everyday life. Artistic
works serve as an artist’s language, representing the various ways in which the individual
artist pursues “aesthetic sense”. However, the precondition of the pursuit of “aesthetic sense”
is to allow the body to be engaged with space and to give the bodily senses as much freedom
as possible, to allow them to obtain every bit of perception from real life. Any art requires the
understanding of life in order for creative practice to be rendered achievable. What the artist
has perceived or experienced in everyday life will serve as a source for the artist’s pursuit of
“aesthetic sense”; this sense will be represented in the art works produced in the particular
“languages” the artist prefers. The final forms of any art works present as the answers
ultimately resulting from explorations of the most apposite ways of expressing “aesthetic
sense”, rather than being a sign, which signifies extra meaning beyond the bodily senses in
everyday life.

Figure 79. “Picture of literary garden”, Zhou Wenju, 10th century.

The relationship between the body and landscape can be found in Chinese paintings. A
painting called “Picture of literary garden” depicts the ideal life of poets in the Tang dynasty
(AD 618–907). 351 In this painting, there is no house or other living construction; the only

351
Dong, Heaven and Paradise, p. 127.

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objects are rocks and a bent pine tree. The artist outlines an image of a sense of living by
virtue of associating the body with the rocks and the tree. The bent tree acts as a handrail,
upon which a standing man relies. The higher main rock serves as a desk for painting, while
the lower rock next to it is used as a bar on which to set the ink slab, and the broad flat rock
is used for sitting. All of these objects are made best use of, as if they are furniture.
Landscapes, thereby, become a large-scale liveable house where everyday life takes place.

Guo Xi, a Chinese landscape painter who lived during the Northern Song dynasty (AD 960–
1127), provides four principles in reference to the body–landscape relationship in Chinese
paintings; these are: walkable, watchable, liveable and visitable.352 These four principles are
established on the basis of bodily senses. To be walkable means the spaces presented in
paintings ought to be on a human scale, thus enabling the body to move through them
smoothly. To be watchable requires beautiful views, such that the paintings will be attractive
and the body will feel enjoyment. To be liveable suggests that the painting offers potential
pleasant places to live. The quality of being visitable generally refers to places where the
poetic scenery is varied and changes with the movement of the body. Through these four
principles, places can be depicted which would bring constant surprise and joy and in which
the body might stay longer. Tang Bohu’s painting shows an image of a reclusive inhabitation
in a mountain forest, implying an idea of harmony between the landscape and living activities.
Chou Ying’s painting also depicts a scene showing how bodies are involved in landscapes.
“Aesthetic sense” is caused by the landscape elements and the life in the landscapes. Only if
we appreciate a painting by projecting our own body into the image, as if we were in the
painting, can we gain as much pleasure as possible and find the art work’s “aesthetic sense”.

Figure 80. Tang Bohu’s painting, early 16th century.

352
Ibid., p. 39.

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Figure 81. Chou Ying’s painting, 16th century.

Guo Xi’s four principles have also been brought into gardening in the city context. The poetic
beauty of landscapes is thereby transferred into city life. As traditional houses usually have
courtyards embedded in buildings, daily activities and landscapes are successfully merged in
houses; the body is allowed to access landscapes, so that vision, hearing, smell, taste and
tactile sense are all motivated in such a way as to bond the body with the landscape, instead
of allowing vision alone to be engaged with the landscape. Because of the involvement of all
bodily senses in everyday city life, a mental picture of a walkable, watchable, liveable and
visitable city can be generated.

Architectural design is subject to the effort to achieve living experiences. This effort echoes
the pragmatist’s idea that architecture ought to be a living art rather than an “art for art’s
sake”. Architecture should rather perform as a place for everyday experience, as part of life.
Under the pursuit of the poetry of everyday life, the design concept turns out to be a design
of bodily experiences, feelings and perceptions, which comes from the body and directs
attention to the “aesthetic sense”. In this sense, “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic
meaning” are integrated – “conceptual meaning” is a pragmatic way of designing for everyday
life, and “pragmatic meaning” is hoped to be produced once the bodily experience envisaged
in the concept is actually achieved.

4.3.2 The poetry in architectural design

Wang Shu is an architect who is working on translating the poetic beauty of the landscape
into the built environment of everyday life to achieve poetic aesthetics in living spaces. He
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brings to his work a literate mindset, seeking poetic aesthetics from traditional arts and
craftsmanship, as well as the relationship between the built environment and the landscape
in traditional architecture. Wang’s architectural language comes primarily from the
picturesque and “aesthetic sense” of Chinese paintings and Jiangnan traditional gardens. His
design works are mainly attempts to express a sense of beauty such as these paintings and
gardens traditionally connote. His texts help to interpret those moods or feelings he would
like to attach to his design works. What he is doing is not simply attaching symbols from
traditional arts and architecture to contemporary design, but rather an effort to seek an
experience of what has been lost in modern life – the emotions and perceptions of everyday
life and the harmonious relations between the landscape and the body that result from
allowing the body to access landscapes freely. Therefore, Wang is seeking the sense of beauty
and bodily feelings from traditional arts, as well as the craftsmanship and the relations with
the landscape which exist in traditional architecture, and all of these motives are represented
in his design works. The aesthetics transferred from traditional arts mean to arouse bodily
senses and enable modern life to turn its attention to landscapes. In Wang’s architectural
design, landscape-approachable spatial layout, regional materials and unaffected, plain
constructional techniques are repetitively applied, aiming to arouse an “aesthetic sense”
which will result in the return to a simple, pure life.

One project, the Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art, represents Wang Shu’s
essential design directions – concerning bodily experience and the relationship with the
landscapes. Xiangshan Campus is located in the fringes of the city of Hangzhou in the
southeast of China. A small mountain called Xiang stands at the centre of the campus site.
This mountain is 50 metres high, surrounded by two streams flowing from west to east
passing through the foot of the northern and southern sides, respectively, and emerging into
one bigger stream on the east side. Since 2000, the number of new university campuses in
campus-districts has been mushrooming across China under the government’s plan of
developing the university sector, but China Academy of Art has not followed the prevailing
trend of urban development. Artists at the China Academy of Art preferred to locate the new
campus in a rural environment filled with landscapes, featuring water and a mountain,

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because they believe that landscapes is more significant than the building itself, according to
cultural tradition.353 Xiang Mountain was therefore chosen as the backdrop against which to
accommodate the new campus. The integration of the mountain from the very beginning set
a landscape-responsive tone for the future presentations of poetry in architecture on the
campus.

The new campus is located on a land area of 250,000 m2. The first phase of project was mainly
one of the development of the northern part of the site. The design began in 2001 and
buildings were completed in 2004. It consists of ten buildings and two bridges, with a gross
floor area of 70,000 m2. The second phase focused on the south side of the mountain. Design
for this began in 2004 and buildings were completed in 2007, consisting of ten main buildings
and two accessory buildings, with a gross floor area of 80,000 m2. Building structure types in
the first phrase were reinforced concrete frame structures, steel structures, stone masonry,
tile-and wood-structured walls, and whitewashed walls; in the second phrase, reinforced
concrete frame structures, steel structures and brick walls played the main roles.

353
Shu Wang & Wenyu Lu (2008), “Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art” “中国美术学院象山校
区”, Architectural Journal, 2008 (9), pp. 50–59, p. 50.

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Figure 82. Masterplan of Xiangshan Campus.

◼ Harmony with the mountain

Considering issues of harmony with the landscapes, at the beginning of the first phase Wang
came up against the question of how a large-scale university campus could coexist with a small
pre-existing mountain. Wang explains that his initial idea came from his experience of climbing
Six-harmony Pagoda. 354 Six-harmony Pagoda has a huge body but is located by a small
mountain similar to Xiang Mountain. But when Wang accessed the Pagoda, the sense of the
huge mass of the body of the structure immediately disappeared. There are six sides on each

354
Ibid., p. 50.

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floor, and three windows in each side. Thus in each floor there are 18 windows exactly the
same as each other. Looking out through each of the windows, different views present
themselves. Looking towards the Pagoda from outside, the colour echoes that of the mountain,
which renders it as if it is being absorbed in the mountain. This experience gave Wang
inspiration as to how to create the campus buildings in such a way to stand in a humble
relationship with the mountain.

◼ Countryside life

As can be seen from the plan, all of the buildings were arranged along the fringe of the site,
surrounding Xiang Mountain. The main façades of the buildings almost face the mountain,
designed to be in concert with the landscape. Between the mountain and the buildings, there
lies a large area of fields. Existing streams, an earth dam, farmlands and fishponds were
retained intact, with only simple repair and maintenance. The fishponds were cleaned and the
sludge from the pond bed was used in building construction. Weeds were planted around the
ponds, which attracts the local residents to come and visit. The farmlands can be rented to
local farmers. There is no rental charge for these farmlands, but users are not allowed to apply
fertiliser. 355 In this project Wang Shu has attempted to seek out and structure a sense of
countryside life. An image of the countryside has been conceived by leaving landscape fields
to coexist with building constructions and allowing local people to interact with the farmlands.
The concept of the countryside image is rooted in the Chinese tradition of the pursuit of pure
and simple countryside life, especially for men of letters, such as Tao Yuanming, who created
a great number of poems and paintings portraying the poetic beauty of the landscapes and
idyllic countryside life. The appreciation of countryside life responds to pragmatism’s denial of
the dichotomy of aesthetics and asceticism. Even the simple, ascetic life has its own enjoyment
and beauty. The simplicity and purity of countryside life in the design of Xiangshan Campus
integrates aesthetics and asceticism. People can have aesthetic feelings by experiencing simple

355
Ibid., p. 52.

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countryside life on the campus.

Figure 83. Courtyard (Building No. 4).

Figure 84. Courtyard: aerial view (Buildings No. 6, No. 5 and No. 4).

◼ Courtyard and garden architecture

The image of the “courtyard” acts as a motif in the first phase of the project, leading north to
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Xiang Mountain. The courtyard arrangement is the most traditional and the most basic of
Chinese architectural types. This project does not rigidly follow the form of a traditional
courtyard, but rather it trials the idea of freestyle courtyards, which coexist but are distinct
from each other. 356 Ten freestyle isomorphic but slightly different courtyards are not
completely enclosed, but are designed with half-architecture and half-landscape space. Any
two courtyards could be exactly the same in building form, but distinct in their orientations
and their relationship with the mountain, surrounding buildings and settings. Following the
basic form of the courtyard, buildings are at the same time sensitively distorted, with flexible
and delicate variations, and adapted to particular terrains. The flat site has been transformed
into a typical southeast hilly terrain to relieve the sense of the huge mass of individual buildings.
Horizontal eaves repetitively appearing on the façades also help reinforce the horizontal
tendency of the buildings, as a means of being consistent with the small mountain. Therefore,
the form of the courtyard, borrowed from traditional architecture, serves as an approach to
integrate the landscape and everyday life. The architect aimed to create a more
comprehensive experience based on the basic form, according to different terrain conditions.
Being harmonious with the mountain is the rule throughout the design. “Aesthetic sense” can
be realised through outdoor plants, the flexible layout of buildings, the hilly land and the
interaction between buildings and mountain. All of these bring a sense of living in half-
landscape and half-architecture spaces.

The courtyard is one of the forms resulting from the intention to join architecture with the
landscape. However, the state of half-landscape and half-architecture can be realised through
a more general idea known as “garden architecture”, where the poetry of everyday life resides,
as it does in the landscape images shown in Chinese paintings. In garden architecture, the
building layout responds to the relationship between mountain and water. There is an
ambiguity in the boundary between landscape and architectural spaces – water, mountain,
plants and buildings are integrated and intertwined as an organic whole. A series of poetic
places are generated in that organic whole. They repetitively appear as the body moves

356
Wang & Lu, “Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art”, p. 50.

249
through the half-landscape, half-architecture scenery.

Figure 85. “Mountain house” (Building No. 18).

Figure 86. “Water house” a (Building No. 14).

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Figure 87. “Water house” b (Building No. 14).

As Wang states, building type is a sign, and he has produced three building type patterns
referring to different relations between landscape spaces and architectural spaces. 357 Each
pattern represents one topology of landscape–architecture relations. 358 “Mountain house”
takes the cliff temple as a reference. Wang regards the cliff temple as located at the interface
between buildings and landscapes, such that the mountain house can also act as an
intermediary where mountain and building constructions communicate harmoniously. “Water
house” resembles waves on the water, which is a common sight in southern China, but what
is more important about a water house is that it can provide more places for rambling, as well
as spaces for lectures, inside and outside the buildings and even on the roof, where the body
is more related to landscapes. The third pattern, “courtyard”, is the one that can be most easily
adapted to a built city environment. The courtyard usually requires at least three yards in one
building unit, which can create quiet landscape places for tea and conversation, and the flat
roof of which can be used for walking as well as for lectures. Buildings following any of these
three patterns provide organic pictures of the integration of architecture and landscapes,
corresponding to the relationship of Yin and Yang. The three building patterns are intended to
create “aesthetic sense” not only by picturesquely presenting images but by requiring bodily

357
Shu Wang (2002), The Beginning of Design 设计的开始, Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press,
p. 165.
358
Wang & Lu, “Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art”, p. 52.

251
experience between architecture and the landscape. The merging of architecture and
landscape also comes from the tradition of the pursuit of harmoniously living with landscapes,
which can also be found in Chinese paintings.

Figure 88. Viewing from inside.

Figure 89. Viewing from outside.

◼ Viewing and being viewed

There are two viewpoints involved in landscape design according to the location of the viewer
and the object being viewed: viewing from inside and viewing from outside. These two ways
of viewing originated from Chinese paintings. Viewing from inside is about seeing the views
outside from inside the building, whereas viewing from outside is about viewing the buildings
from positions outside, in the mountains or other places. Wang has translated the relationship
of viewing and being viewed in Chinese paintings to architecture and landscaping. One place
may be a good position from which to view the other places, while the same place may also

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be a pleasing object to be viewed from elsewhere. Therefore, borrowing views and creating
views are both important in garden architecture design.359

Architecture and landscape design is concerned with how to both borrow views from some
other objects and create views for others. In the Xiangshan Campus, there are seemingly
random and irregular openings of different sizes deliberately designed into some buildings,
aiming to borrow views from the appointed landscape. Looking outwards through these
openings, ingeniously predetermined pictures emerge, framed by the openings. Openings may
be found anywhere around the campus. Sometimes they act as a window, sometimes as a gate
and sometimes as a big hole in the wall that leaves room for a bridge to pass through. The
views borrowed by these openings are various, from landscapes to building constructions,
from a part of a stair to a whole building. In terms of creating views, for instance, there is a
rock-like shape which repetitively appears in buildings in various forms. Sometimes, it stands
as a small independent building; sometimes, it is an accessory body of a larger building; and
sometimes it is a hole in the wall. People may come across these rock-like shapes occassionally
in many places around the campus. So, the technique of viewing and being viewed borrowed
from Chinese paintings has been extensively considered in the architectural design. Walking
around the campus, views continuously present themselves in front of one’s eyes, offering a
sense that one is wandering in a painting with countless varied scenes.

Figure 90. Rock-like independent buildings (Building No. 19).

359
Jie Lin & Baotong Li (2008), “Scale·Wander: Comparison of First Phase and Second Phase of
Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art” “尺度·漫步: 中国美术学院象山一二期工程比较”, Interior
Design and Construction, 2008 (3), pp. 50–60. p. 52.

253
Figure 91. Rock-like holes in the wall (Building No. 15).

Figure 92. Rock-like accessory body (Building No. 20).

Figure 93. Passages around exterior walls (Building No. 18).

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Figure 94. Passage on the roof (Expert building).

◼ Path

While the image of “courtyard” was set as a motif for the buildings north of Xiang Mountain
in the first phase, in the second phase the image of “path” served as a motif for the buildings
south of the mountain.360 The path is one of the key elements in traditional gardening. Walking
along elaborately designed paths, different views and spaces will be experienced within a small
artificially created space, but a sense of staying within a large-scale landscape will be
generated as a result of the constant shifting of varied views and spaces. In this phase, as many
opportunities as possible have been created for rambling. The possibilities for rambling have
been attained by creating a number of long passages running around buildings, connecting
interior spaces, roofs, outdoor steps, courtyards and the waterside. For example, in Buildings
No. 11 and No. 18, there are continuous long passages circling the entire buildings, linking
several of their interior spaces; in Building No. 19, passages embrace two rock-like individual
constructions; in Building No. 14, passages enclose a waterside open-air yard; while in Building
No. 15, passages connect with an extremely secluded garden which conveys a mood of calm

360
Lin & Li (2008), “Scale·Wander”, p. 52.

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introversion. These mutually interlaced objects join buildings and landscapes as a united whole.
Accessing a selected entrance and walking in a chosen direction along a preferred path, a
series of pictures will be presented successively and endlessly with the movement of the body.
Those pictures are varied and distinct from each other: sometimes a narrow and dark interior
corridor, sometimes a bright open-air garden suddenly comes into view, sometimes a
dedicated architectural space, and sometimes an elegant and sensitive landscape view is
presented through a window. These pictures along the path make a whole piece of journey,
similar to a scroll painting made up of many small scenes. One journey is connected with
another. The end of one journey is the start of another. The boundary between buildings,
between buildings constructions and landscapes, becomes ambiguous; experience between
spaces becomes rich and varied; rambling along the paths feels like watching a movie.
Therefore, the unexpected experience obtained from the rambling journey along freely chosen
paths around buildings and landscapes echoes the experience in traditional gardens and the
scenes presented in Chinese paintings, which is exactly what the architect desired to achieve
in this project.

Wang Shu’s design of the sequence of scenes is analogic with Bernard Tschumi’s filmic idea at
the point that scenes change with the movement of the body. As Tshucmi describes, the linear
system of Parc de la Villette acts as narrative paths made out of segments like film frames.
Each frame is placed in a continuous movement. Successive frames constitute a sequence of
film. The images of the film change with the movement of one’s body. The sequence of the
film can be slow, fast or accelerated, as one moves along a path at varying speed.361 Individual
bodies could find different ways of scenes. One can have different journeys at different times.
In Parc de la Villette, one creates one’s own journey as one wanders in the park. What one
sees and experiences accidentally happen on one’s way and this is where the pleasure comes
from. The architect could neither design the exact ways one has to walk on nor exact
experience one would go through, it is users who direct their own films following bodies’

361
Bernard Tschumi, Frédéric Migayrou & Centre Georges Pompidou (2014), Bernard Tschumi:
Architecture: Concept & Notation, Paris: Centre Pompidou, p. 136.

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movement.

The possibility of rambling seems in some way associated with one of Peter Zumthor’s interests
in design, “between composure and seduction” – the place that makes us calm and induces us
to stay, at the same time as seducing us to move around. 362 Thinking about the tension
between composure and seduction is exemplified in Zumthor’s Thermal Vals project: as he
indicates, the most important concern in this case was to induce a sense of freedom of
movement, a possibility for strolling, a mood that would seduce people rather than directing
them. The paths in Xiangshan also aims to induce people into more new experiences. They are
not like corridors that only direct people straightforwardly to specific destinations; they are
places in which one feels a desire to stay within landscape surroundings and to explore more
towards a farther end.

Figure 95. Cedar wood boards used for courtyard façade (Building No. 5).

362
Zumthor, Atmospheres, p. 40.

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Figure 96. Cedar wood windows on courtyard façade (Building No. 5).

◼ Regional techniques and materials

Cedar wood boards cover the courtyard-side façades, from bottom to top, of the courtyard
buildings; each courtyard is surrounded by three-sided, four-floor-high cedar wood walls.
These cedar wood boards serve as doors on the ground floors and as large windows on upper
floors, and these doors and windows can be opened or closed as one pleases. When all boards
are closed, the simple and pure façade brings a temporary sense of silence and solemnity;
when some of the boards are opened randomly, it brings a sense of lightness and liveliness.
Hooks and bolts for the doors and windows are all forged by a local blacksmith.

Besides regional techniques, Wang is also fond of using abandoned and regional materials and
assembling them in a way that expresses their new value. Since ancient times, Chinese
constructors have kept reusing recycled bricks and tiles, such that this sustainable construction
method has become a convention in Chinese constructional techniques.363 Wang follows this
tradition. There are over 3 million tiles and bricks of different ages that have been collected
from demolished structures and reused in the Xiangshan project. They are creatively reused
in roofs, walls and pavements in new buildings.364 This sustainable construction method has

363
Wenqing Sun (2013), “Translation of Symbols – Taking Xiangshan Campus as an Example to Discuss
Regional Characters in Wang Shu’s Project” “符号的转译 – 以象山校区为例谈王澍建筑的地域性特征”,
Shandong Industrial Technology, 2013 (7), pp. 114–116, p. 116.
364
Wang & Lu, “Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art”, p. 51.

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decreased costs and reflects a Chinese view of regional construction. More beneficially, this
recycling technique, combinging with concrete frame structure, has resulted in an effective
insulated wall and roof system.365

In addition, the appearance of dark grey tiles accompanied by white walls recollects traditional
Chinese wash painting, especially when it is rainy; the wet tiles reflecting the sky’s light provide
a strong sense of poetic beauty. Regional materials, such as bamboo, have been taken into
consideration. As the southeast part of China abounds in bamboo, a great deal of bamboo has
been used as an architectural material. Moreover, Wang is also interested in the revival of
regional techniques. He adopted the techniques of free stone masonry and rammed earth
technology in the project. The lower exterior walls in some buildings are constructed with
stone masonry, based on one of the construction techniques used in local tea gardens.

Figure 97. Abandoned materials reused in the new building (Building No. 16).

365
Ibid., p. 52.

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Figure 98. Bamboo is used for rail boards (Expert building).

4.3.3 Summary

As this shows, Wang Shu started from the principles of humanism and regionalism. He believes
that the local materials and constructional techniques used widely have a less negative impact
on the environment. Hence he chose to use these local techniques, and spread them into
large-scale production. Therefore, Wang’s project has transcended both the individual’s
creation and the engineer’s profession, and has become a collective work of handcrafted
construction. Construction techniques originated in traditional handcraftsmanship, but were
further modified and carefully transplanted into this modern project. What those traditional
techniques and tangible regional materials confer on Xiangshan Campus is about calling
attention to a tactile sense and expressing a feeling of nostalgia and a desire to return to a
simpler life.

Picturesque sense is also an essential point of what Wang explores in order to achieve a sense
of poetry. His picturesque sense references traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy. How
to draw each stroke well and organise them into the best relationship is of vital importance in
Chinese painting and calligraphy. Brush strokes are varied; even different parts of a single
stroke vary according to the changing mood of the artist. Wang has abstracted the beauty of
the line from Chinese painting and calligraphy and practised applying this sense of beauty in
his architectural project. These lines run throughout the buildings, from curved roofs, to
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framed façades, to the zigzagging passages circling around buildings, and even to the randomly
arranged plan as a means of adapting the hilly terrain, resembling in spirit the freewheeling
strokes of painting and calligraphy. The beauty of lines is performed in two-dimensional
traditional painting and calligraphy, but Wang brings this sense of beauty into three-dimension
architectural spaces.

What Wang Shu seeks is a type of “aesthetic sense” and a way to generate this sense in
architecture. He attempts to find “aesthetic sense” from traditional art and architecture
through his own bodily senses in everyday life, and then tries to produce the sense he finds in
contemporary architectural practice, aspiring to the perception of “aesthetic sense” in the
everyday use of architecture. What Wang borrows from traditional art and architecture is the
spatial form of the courtyard, the state of half-landscape and half-architecture space, the paths
frequently created in gardens, view from outside and inside, the idea of views which vary with
the movement of the body, Chinese black-and-white wash painting, the spiritual sense of
brush strokes in painting and calligraphy, and nostalgia for countryside life and for traditional
handcrafting techniques. By re-interpreting these elements in the form of contemporary
architecture, Wang succeeds in providing for an “aesthetic sense” which will only take form in
actual experience, when the body is fully engaged with real spaces. Therefore, the “aesthetic
sense” that Wang tries to approach is about a sense of intimacy between body and landscape,
the ambiguity between architectural constructions and landscapes, a yearning for the free
lifestyle of living at one’s own will, a sense of wandering in scroll-painting scenery with varied
views and spaces, and a sort of simple and pure countryside life. The way to achieve these
feelings is simply through bodily senses, perceptions and everyday experience. Poetry, to the
Chinese, lies in these sensitive and emotional feelings coming from experience in everyday life.
The architect imagines certain kinds of feelings and experience in the spaces he is designing
and, based on such imagination, he designs physical spaces aiming to make these feelings
happen in the people who engage with the spaces. Only for those architects who succeed in
fully integrating bodily senses into their design practice will the “aesthetic sense” be evident
in the physical spaces they create. Only for those people who fully involve their bodily senses
in their experiences in actual spaces will it be possible for the “aesthetic sense” to be gained

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and the poetry of everyday life to be perceived while they are experiencing the space.

According to John Dewey’s aesthetics, aesthetic value is not fixed in theory, but can be sought
from everyday needs and practical activities, and from the interaction between a living
organism and its environment. This is what his concept of “somatic naturalism” basically
means. Aesthetic value is always found by reflecting pragmatic value and satisfying everyday
life in a more practical sense. Where there is a dynamic accumulation of the interaction
between living circumstances and living intentions in everyday life, there is pragmatic
aesthetics. The design of Xiangshan Campus is a kind of responding to Dewey’s pragmatism.
The value of the design resides in one’s sensuous experience and the practical activities of
everyday life. A certain “aesthetic sense” can only be aroused when one’s bodily perceptions
are fully open to the environment, and thus the body and the environment interact fully. When
one is walking along the passages leading up towards the roof, one might find that it is a lovely
place to relax the body with the fresh air, mild sunlight and attractive views in the distance.
When one is seated at the waterside by the water house, one might find oneself drawn in by
the slight smell of aquatic plants and want to stay to have a cup of tea or read a book. When
one is taking a nap in a courtyard, one may feel pleased to be accompanied by the singing of
birds. These are the moments in which the body is in close contact with the landscape and
environment, the moments in which a kind of “aesthetic sense” will arrive, and where the
value of Dewey’s pragmatic aesthetics lies.

“Aesthetic sense” has for a long time been the highest pursuit for Chinese men of letters in
artistic creation, no matter whether in poetry, painting, calligraphy or gardening. Chinese
culture does not have a definite intellect–body dualism traditionally, but thinks that the world
is an extension of the body: bodily senses are lenses through which we look at the world and
shape the mind. This idea largely accords with Richard Shusterman’s “somaesthetics”, which
asserts that beauty (knowledge) is not absolutely constructed through intellectual thinking,
but through bodily experience. Tschumi’s emphasis on the sensorial and experiential pleasure
of architecture is also in accord with somaesthetics, as it sees the ultimate pleasure of
architecture in the junction of concept and immediate bodily experience – the concept needs
the experience to before it can be fully realised – and this idea is applied in his design of Parc
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de La Villette. Tschumi intended for bodily pleasure to emerge from the body’s engagement
with the structures and landscapes in the park. This emphasis on experiential pleasure is in
some ways connected with Wang Shu’s idea of “aesthetic sense”; Tschumi looks at the joint
between architectural concept and bodily pleasure, while Wang is interested in pleasure and
aesthetic feelings, but their ideas both involve a dynamical process in which the body is
engaged with the space.

In the design of Xiangshan Campus, “conceptual meaning” refers to a pragmatic way of

designing focused on everyday life experience – an attempt to design a perceptual space
where bodily sensations and emotions are centred. This “conceptual meaning” was generated
from the architect’s mind, from his attempt to borrow a kind of “aesthetic sense” from
traditional arts and architecture, and from his encounter with the traditional philosophy which
lays much emphasis on the body, its perceptions and everyday life. “Pragmatic meaning” might
emerge at such times as the body is experiencing the space so that life is happening. As a result,
it seems that “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning” engage with each other at some
point – the point where the design concept does not separate itself from the sensuous
perceptions, but means to embrace and reinforce those sensuous perceptions and thus echo
a kind of traditional understanding of “aesthetic sense” in everyday life.

4.4 How Architectural Designs Respond to Traditional Chinese Philosophies and Pragmatic
Aesthetics

At different times, traditional philosophies have more or less influence on and are reflected
more or less by design ideas in some way, especially when architects intentionally try to find
design concepts from traditional ideas. As we know, in Chinese ideologies there is an
ambiguity in black-and-white dualism. Both of the two projects considered in this chapter
treat the landscape and buildings as complementary elements that each play a vital role in
defining the other. Dong Yugan believes that it is impossible to design building and landscape

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separately, as they are a whole as a Yin–Yang unit.366 In his Red Brick Art Museum, building
façades help to enclose and provide an entrance to the garden from both the ground floor
and the loft floor, while the garden offers landscape views from the buildings through
windows on the façades. Wang Shu also responds to this ambiguity by means of integrating
landscapes and buildings. Neither the building nor landscape dominates, but rather they are
merged to become an organic whole. Buildings are designed according to terrains and the
relationship with the mountain, so that the overall layout of buildings looks organic, flexible
and freewheeling, corresponding to their environment. Wang has summarised three
typological patterns of building – mountain house, water house and courtyard – which
represent different relationships between landscape and architecture. Each of them provides
one interpretation of how landscapes interact with buildings. The most intimate contact with
the landscape will be achieved when one is experiencing artificial spaces designed according
to these typological patterns.

Regional culture has always been given the same weight as royal or orthodox culture. The
preference for regional materials and techniques can be found in both of the projects
discussed above. Dong adopts old tiles and bricks for constructions in the garden. Old bricks
and tiles have been piled up to be used as new walls, fences and rails. Larger numbers of old
tiles and bricks have been used in Xiangshan Campus, and regional materials and construction
techniques, such as stone masonry, are also considered in the design, which altogether
creates a sense of nostalgia for folk culture. Moreover, the favouring of countryside life is also
related to the idea of ambiguous duality. Unlike other universities, Xiangshan Campus has not
been located in a government-planned university district, but has chosen to stay in an
incompletely developed city fringe where wild fields and farmlands still remain. A well-
developed city area, where high-density high-rise buildings are preferred, is not considered
to be superior to wild fields and farmlands; rather, in Xiangshan Campus, wild fields maintain
harmony with the newly added buildings, and farmlands are still run by local people. The
simplicity and purity of countryside life is presented and advocated so as to memorialise

366
According to the personal interview I conducted with Dong in Beijing, 13 November 2015.

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regional rural life in the past.

The body’s perception is a significant concern in Chinese tradition, as The Book of Changes
believes that all our understandings of the world come from bodily perceptions and intuitions
of the surrounding environment. This idea agrees with Shusterman’s somaesthetics. It is by
perceiving and observing with our bodily senses that we shape the world that we know and
create philosophies, the laws of the world. Therefore, the intellect is something neither
superior to bodily senses nor absolutely apart from the body, but something relying on and
being assisted by the body. The pursuit of “aesthetic sense” is about approaching certain
emotional feelings. The gaining of these feelings requires the body to participate fully in real
experience. Architectural design is about designing spaces in which certain feelings and bodily
experiences can take place. The architect can decide what feelings he/her would like to
approach and what physical spaces could generate these targeted feelings, by imagining
himself/herself in possible spaces. For instance, the sense of being intimate with the
landscape could be realised by placing buildings adaptively on particular terrains or with
mountain views, by setting courtyards and implanting the landscape between buildings, and
by linking the landscape with buildings as an organic whole using continuous passages. After
these physical spaces have been built, the kind of “aesthetic sense” anticipated by the
architect will hopefully be felt by the bodies of the people who actually access the physical
spaces. The body acts as an intermediary linking physical spaces and “aesthetic sense”.

Chinese architectural theories are basically not about pure concepts, but refer more to
conventions which are shaped and evolve through practical experience and empirical
evidence. Chinese tradition prefers actual practice to purely intellectual theories. Pragmatic
aesthetics also agrees that the beauty does not come from linguistic description or concepts,
but rather come through bodily perceptions and actions in the dynamical way of creating the
art work and the dynamical experience of perceiving the art work. The concept of Red Brick
Art Museum is exactly about a pragmatic approach to dealing with concrete problems
according to current circumstances – “following rather than altering the object’s original
features”. As the delivering of this method, the building has been given form and the form
acts as the consequence resulting from decisions about how to cope with practical matters
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in real spaces. The value of pragmatic aesthetics of the building lies in the dynamical process
through which the building was created, while the value of pragmatic aesthetic of Xiangshan
campus lies in the dynamical experience when we perceive the space, which is what the
architect intended to achieve. The design of Xiangshan Campus pursues a kind of “aesthetic
sense”, and this sense can only be perceived through the body’s experience in real spaces,
through which “pragmatic meaning” might emerge. Hence, both of the projects discussed in
this chapter required pragmatism to be engaged in design, in the search for their design
concepts. This way of finding concepts from pragmatic concerns echoes Chinese tradition’s
preference for pragmatism.

Chinese philosophies do not regard everything as static, but rather view things as always
changeable and all the time ready to generate new things if Yin–Yang interaction occurs. This
is consistent with the pragmatist’s idea that things are always changing afresh, without
monistic truth. This idea is very much manifested in both of the projects considered here. For
Red Brick Art Museum, there was no pre-imagined picture for the final form before the
building was actually built. The form of the building gradually came into being in accordance
with changing circumstances and the solutions to these circumstances. The consequence of
the building form comes out of various balanced solutions in design process. The idea of
scenery varying in accordance with the movement of the body has been taken into account
in the design of Xiangshan Campus. Views are neither stable nor entirely exposed in front of
the eyes, but rather they vary as the body moves through spaces, and the body is required to
actively explore the spaces with its sensory system. This echoes the idea of change. The idea
“to generate” has rooted impact on the “conceptual meaning” of Red Brick Art Museum,
since the architect Dong insisted that if the existing circumstances matched with certain
appropriate imagery, design solutions would be generated and the building form would be
shaped. Similar to Red Brick Art Museum, in the design of Xiangshan Campus, the
architectural form was also generated by matching a kind of “aesthetic sense” with certain
physical spaces. The ambition of such architecture, then, is to generate certain expected
senses and sensations when the body is actually involved in the spaces created.

The architects who are interested in pragmatic aesthetics could visit some contemporary
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projects designed by Chinese literary architects. There are currently a group of Chinese
literary architects who are seeking concepts from classical philosophies and try to apply that
in their contemporary projects. Wang Shu and Dong Yugan are two important architects
involved in this trend. They are interested in architectural tectonics, gardening, somaesthetics,
traditional philosophies and arts, the relationship between building and landscape, and
regional culture. However, not only Chinese examples are connected to pragmatic aesthetics.
For architects such as Peter Zumthor, the design could also manifest the idea of pragmatic
aesthetics. To Zumthor, a building has sensuous connections to life. A building “is being itself,
being a building, not representing anything, just being”.367 The being of the building, as stated
by Zumthor, can be sensitively perceived by the body. When one comes across a building, if
one’s body is actively and intuitively in contact with the space in which the body is situated,
the body will immediately realise the presence of the building; thus, at that point, one might
perceive the being of the building. In this sense, the body is linked to the materiality of the
building. Moreover, Zumthor is interested in the ways of realising buildings, corresponding to
pragmatist’s idea that aesthetics exists in the dynamical experience of creation. One of
Zumthor’s smallest projects, the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, clearly shows the way that he
attempts to connect the sensuousness of the body with the materiality of the building. What
the body comes across within this small chapel is a series of carefully designed spaces,
structures and materials, which come from unique construction methods. A very sombre and
reflective feeling would be aroused during one’s encounter with the chapel that makes the
building sensuously connected with the body. 368 The particular ways through which the
pragmatic aesthetics is embodied in Zumthor’s works and the comparison between Chinese
examples and Zumthor’s works could be one of my future research directions.

367
Anca Mitrache (2012), “Ornamental Art and Architectural Decoration”, Social and Behavioural
Sciences, vol. 51, pp. 567–572, p. 569.
368
For details of Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, please see Chapter 1.
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 Chapter 5. Conclusion: Architecture Is Not a Written Concept Only

The preceding chapters discussed the two ways of meaning in architecture, referring to the
major themes of pragmatic aesthetics, semiotics, the architecture of deconstruction, and
traditional Chinese philosophies, architecture and landscapes, all of which aimed to clarify one
point: that architecture is not a fixed written concept only. It can be seen that architecture is
at times considered to be equal to a conceptual idea, presented in design drawings and other
forms of presentation. Though ideas and drawings can to some degree manifest the
significance of the architecture and reflect architectural context and history, they are still only
part of architecture; the rest lies in the dynamic process of creating the space and the dynamic
interactions between the body and the space. Conceptual ideas can look towards the end, but
can never predict and guarantee what happens next.

The Conclusion will further address the differences between the two ways of meaning –
namely, the different approaches to producing them and their different roles. It will reclaim
the gap between written concepts and actual perceptions and try to identify the reasons for
this gap. Pragmatic aesthetics requires architecture to be the dynamic process of creating and
experiencing spaces, so that building form is considered not the purpose but the consequence
of design practice. Building form should not be envisaged at the beginning but should be
shaped through the process of creating a space and finished only at the end of the building
work. Pragmatic aesthetics also suggests that architecture should be a living art. This kind of
art does not come from musing over a static art work, but from daily activities, integrated with
dynamic bodily feelings. Pragmatism is a sense of everydayness. Only when one pays full
attention to everyday life, when one’s intellect is immersed in bodily experience, will this kind
of aesthetics emerge.

5.1 Distinctions between “Conceptual Meaning” and “Pragmatic Meaning”

Distinctions between “conceptual meaning” and “pragmatic meaning” can be made according
to the case studies considered above. The first distinction is the way in which meaning is

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produced in architecture. “Conceptual meaning” is generated from the architect’s mind, from
his/her encounters with the context of the site, the culture, the requirements of the brief, the
function of the building, regional materials and technologies, and his/her design aesthetics. A
good architect might approach a commission with the intention of developing a concept which
represents a balanced combination of his/her own preferences and the complexities of the
project. A concept is supposed to be formed as the architect tries to deal with all of these
things and the design is being shaped. Once the architect has accomplished the design, the
“conceptual meaning” will be completely formed and will never be modified. Therefore, this
way of meaning is generative and unchangeable. The concept will not be expected to be
changed through the engagement of future users: the “conceptual meaning” is fixed in the
design. In all of the cases studied in this research, from Centre Pompidou to Xiangshan Campus,
the architects began the search for “conceptual meaning” from the beginning of the design
process. For Centre Pompidou, the design concept implies the purposes of the buildings. The
architects used slogan-like descriptions as the purpose of the design, the roles that the
buildings would perform – to “liberate culture”, which was generated in the context of the rise
of mass culture. For Parc de la Villette, the design concept, deconstruction, comes from
linguistics. The architect intended to translate the idea into an architectural concept. The
purpose of the concept was to inform the building up of a deconstructive space where there
is no self-evident essential meaning, while the design is about interpreting the deconstructive
idea in terms of physical spaces and actual activities, so that the concept is what the design
aims to explain. The concept of Red Brick Art Museum is rather an idea of design methodology
than one with a definite purpose or an anticipation of the building’s final form. The concept
guided the architect to follow the original features of the existing objects instead of altering
them. Hence, the architect is more concerned with how to resolve existing problems
throughout the design process, and thus the building forms come into being simultaneously,
rather than thinking in advance about how the final forms should look. In Xiangshan Campus,
the aim was to create a poetic place which could arouse people’s bodily senses and engender
bodily enjoyment, so that a certain “aesthetic sense” can be reached if people immerse their
bodily senses fully in the space.

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Concept is an iconic sign, according to Peirce’s semiotics, and design is the object in which the
sign lies. The iconic sign has its own peculiar interpretability before it reaches its knowers, the
future users: the “conceptual meaning” is independent from its knower. As we can see, all of
the cases discussed in this research have kinds of “conceptual meaning”, no matter how users
understand the space, these kinds of “conceptual meaning” cannot be changed. They are fixed
ideas embodied in spatial design, presented in the form of texts, diagrams, photographs,
videos and models, independent from users’ further interpretations.

In contrast, “pragmatic meaning” is a symbolic sign which relates to knowers’ dynamic and
diverse interpretations. The production of “pragmatic meaning” depends on users’ experience
in actual spaces. “Pragmatic meaning” grows in spaces when actual experience occurs. It is not
fixed, but dynamically and accumulatively emerges in spaces as people interact with them. In
Centre Pompidou, organisers try to produce “pragmatic meaning” by arranging events.
Members of the public actively seek “pragmatic meaning” in the spaces, and “pragmatic
meaning” emerges when they engage in events there. Spaces are signs to users. The
interactions between people’s experience and the spaces imply diverse kinds of “pragmatic
meaning”, and act as objects to symbolic signs. As experience changes, “pragmatic meaning”
is constantly being renewed. In Parc de la Villette, when the architect was designing the park,
he had a concept in mind that the public should be given the greatest freedom possible to
produce meaning for the spaces. Users take these actual spaces as the signs of spontaneous
events. This way of meaning is emergent and dynamically changeable. Architects can never
anticipate how future users will interact with the spaces they have created, and how diverse
the “pragmatic meaning” will be. “Pragmatic meaning” is always beyond the architect’s
imagination. Bernard Tschumi knew this, and had it in mind when he set out in search of a
design concept. Thus, in his Parc de la Villette, he did not attempt to fix a definite meaning for
each particular space, but left the meaning to be produced through users’ engagement.

The two Chinese examples focus more on the design approaches where pragmatic aesthetics
is embodied, so that trying to offer architects alternative ways of design. The design concepts
are found from traditional philosophies which have close connections to pragmatic aesthetics.
Chinese traditional philosophies are considered to be originated in I-Ching, from the intuitive
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understanding of the surrounding environment through the body’s perceptions; and thus
ideas developed from that believes that there is an unclear separation between the intellect
and bodily senses, between theory and practice, and Chinese tradition is secular, without
much concern for the permanent aspect of culture, and tends to focus on things with actual
effects, without much intention on describing the reality for any linguistic reason.

Red Brick Art Museum shows that design concept can also be a pragmatic approach to design
itself. Pragmatism resides in the architect’s practice during the design process. This approach
steers the production of design throughout the process, until all problems have been solved
and the building form has consequently come into being. Design is created as a consequence
of acknowledging the current conditions of the building, upon which spaces are updated so as
to match its future role as an art gallery, and in this way the outcome of the project evolves.
The purpose of this example is to see the way in which the architect approaches the
consequence, namely, the dynamic process of creating meaningful spaces. The design concept
of the building is neither about a concept for visual-effect intention, nor aim for any supposed
particular result in advance, but it embodies an attitude of orientation as to move the design
forward. Therefore, it at some point meets the ideas of pragmatism. Pragmatic aesthetics
emphasises on a sort of dynamic aesthetic experience, which means art does not only exist in
static artefacts displaying in galleries, but also exists in the dynamic experience that we
sensually feel it, the design of Xiangshan campus is a good example reflecting the idea of
pragmatic aesthetics from this point. The “pragmatic meaning” in Xiangshan Campus is
produced when bodies actually experience the spaces. People have to fully free up their bodily
senses in order to perceive the poetry that the architect intended them to experience on the
site.

From Peirce’s point of view, an indexical sign has connection with the senses or memory of a
person for whom it serves as a sign.369 If something is capable of arousing in a person a specific
sense or memory, that sense or memory is attached to the thing, and then the thing could be

369
Charles S. Peirce (1932), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Volume 2), Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, p. 170.

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an indexical sign to the person. When we hear a piece of music from a wedding song that we
have come across before and we know that it is about a wedding, we might feel moved
immediately, as we have previously connected the song to love and romance. The wedding
song acts as an indexical sign to us. Each time we come across the song we will be affected,
and this is the effect of the sign. When we encounter a place where we have had specific
experiences before, we might recall a specific memory or feeling that was stored in mind, and
the place that is connected to that certain memory or feeling is an indexical sign. When we
engage with Xiangshan Campus, the environmental quality gives us feelings of relaxation,
nostalgia and tranquillity; we probably call these sorts of feelings “poetry”. If the sense of
poetry is a memorable experience for us, each time we think about Xiangshan Campus the
sense of poetry will be recalled: in our minds the space has a connection with the sense of
poetry – it even represents what we call poetry – and thus Xiangshan Campus acts as an
indexical sign in this case.

Once the body is creatively interacting with a space instead of experiencing a memorial or
emotional effect only, the indexical sign will be converted into a symbolic sign, and this is when
“pragmatic meaning” grows. The poetic sense of the Xiangshan Campus makes it an ideal place
for university events. Activities occur randomly around the campus: lectures on the
environment-intimate flat roof, group discussion in the courtyard, reading by the water-bank
and dating around the mountain-like buildings. The sense of poetry brings to everyday life in
the campus more pleasure and comfortableness. Therefore, the major distinction of
“pragmatic meaning” is that it is not a static icon, but is always changing afresh. Though
architects try to have pragmatic concerns in mind, they are not able to control when and how
“pragmatic meaning” will develop in actual spaces, but rather users will take over and
dominate the space.

The second distinction is about the role of architectural forms. For “conceptual meaning”,
architectural forms serve as objects signifying a particular “conceptual meaning” that the
architect has created. Sometimes “conceptual meaning” can be evident in architectural forms,
but sometimes it is not. Architectural forms serve as the products of the architect’s design
concepts. The values transferred from the social context or from aesthetics are transplanted
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into architectural forms through the architect’s efforts at meaning production. Hence,
architectural forms are the fixed objects in which “conceptual meaning” tries to inscribe itself,
without any consideration of future changes or further interpretations. However, for
“pragmatic meaning”, architectural forms serve as a starting point, and “pragmatic meaning”
is possibly generated in buildings according to users’ experience. The architectural forms of
the cases discussed in this research all have two roles: they are both the products of design
concepts and places in which “pragmatic meaning” emerges. Architects create immaterial
ideas and material forms, what users know is the material matters, something they could
engage with and make practical use, but not the architect’s idea. The material forms of
architecture is the line with two sides, where architects live before the line, whilst users live
after.

Another distinction is about the different benefits related to the two ways of meaning.
“Conceptual meaning” is related to the personal capital of architects. That is why architects
are fond of participating in exhibitions or showcases with their conceptual designs, in order to
expand their influence and thus improve their personal reputations. The architect’s
preferences in conceptual design, drawing and exhibition is associated with the cult of genius
artists in Romanticism. Some architects would also like to be regarded, and adored, as artistic
geniuses, and so prefer to engage in architecture in an artistic way, attending exhibitions,
displaying conceptual drawings, rendering pictures and models, and participating in media
coverage, so as to create the image of artistic genius, and thus improve their social reputation.

The architect’s personal capital may then be transferred to the capital of architecture and even
the city. That is why city managers prefer to employ higher-capital architects to participate in
grand city projects, as the transference of the architect’s capital is beneficial for city branding.
Sage Gateshead music centre is a grand project in Newcastle-Gateshead, which was planned
to be international, attractive and inclusive. Norman Foster offered Newcastle-Gateshead a
shining architectural form, and the music centre’s high cultural status was reinforced because
of the participation of Foster. Now domestic and international visits are arranged in the
building frequently, the architectural concept is introduced to visitors, and thus the
architectural concept somehow facilitates the enrichment of the city’s image. Therefore,
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“conceptual meaning” is beneficial to architects’ and cities’ fortunes.

However, “pragmatic meaning” depends on seeing a building as a “thing”, since “pragmatic

meaning” emerges in buildings only when they link with everyday life, confront actual
problems, empirical matters and bodily perceptions, and serve the people who experience
their spaces instead of only serving as images in magazines, exhibitions or showcases. As
people experience a space, it becomes more associated with their everyday life and they
become more engaged in living problems, emotions and common senses, and therefore the
space becomes a “thing”. To design a “thing”, we ought to consider actual demands first and
link those demands to the design of spaces. The aim of design is to achieve something which
can meet empirical needs. For example, the self-supporting function of a jug is related to the
need for a vessel in which to serve food or drink, the system of lines in Parc de la Villette meets
the need of the movement of the body, and the walkable roof in the northern garden of Red
Brick Art Museum responds to the need to have more landscape views from a distance. People
can find these kinds of “pragmatic meaning” when they actually experience these particular
spaces.

One issue this research has to stress is that architecture should never be a written concept
only. We can find plenty of design concepts presented in the form of brilliant texts, diagrams,
images, videos and models in architecture magazines and exhibitions and on websites.
However, it is questionable to what extent these beautiful concepts can be practically
transferred into actual spaces or can be perceived by users in their experience. It seems that
there is a gap, or misalignment, between what the design concept claims a building to be and
the impression that the building makes when it is encountered. If architecture acts as a written
concept only, then the designs will be reduced to being an armchair strategy. The design might
have a good start, but a poor end. The attitude this research holds towards architectural design
is that finding a concept is undoubtedly important as a good start for a project; however, a
pragmatic ending should weigh more than the concept, since “pragmatic meaning” is more
closely connected to daily life, and serves users rather than being played out merely within the
architectural circle. Therefore, the way we evaluate a design ought not to depend only on
“conceptual meaning”, but “pragmatic meaning”, the good ending, ought also to be
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considered. The following will provide a more detailed explanation on the gap between written
concepts and actual perceptions and the desirable attitude towards design suggested by this
research.

5.2 The Gap between Written Concepts and Actual Perceptions

It is quite common to perceive a gap between architects’ written ideas and users’ perceptions
in actual spaces. Written ideas are usually presented in the form of conceptual diagrams,
illustrative texts, images or models, such as the conceptual diagram of three disjunctive and
superimposed systems of Parc de la Villette. Perceptions are what users feel in actual places.
In fact, what is perceived by users in Parc de la Villette is not exactly about the systematic
relationship between these points, lines and surfaces, which the architect proposed as the
park’s approach to spatial organisation, but how a specific space can interact with their life in
the park. The building form of the Jewish Museum in Berlin signifies various forms of symbolic
meaning; for example, the scar-like windows and zigzag pattern throughout the museum were
an attempt to represent the architect’s concept of the conflictual history of the German and
Jewish peoples. However, when people are actually experiencing the spaces in the museum,
it is hard for them to be aware that they express this concept of the complex connections
between two peoples.

Symbolic meaning is a language, a kind of interpretation which is created by people, but

interpretation is merely partial explanation; sometimes our body can understand things
through actual experience without interpretation playing a part. As Shusterman recognises,
understanding is unthinking and unconscious, while interpretation needs conscious and
deliberate thoughts. There might be things that we experience and feel that are not necessarily
able to be described by conscious language. Some architects like to create a conscious
language, but people always experience spaces through the body’s understanding. When, at
times, people cannot understand the meaning of a space in the “right” way as defined by the
architect, there develops a “gap” between the architect and the people.

Architects and historians sometimes tend to judge architecture more in the light of a fine art,
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and less according to the priorities of living experience. The merit of architectural beauty
resides in the pursuit of ideal forms, such as the classical symmetry and Corbusier’s mechanical
order of architecture. Therefore, if the concept is made in this way, it will probably turn to be
an abstract description of the formalistic beauty, and thus the building will perform as an
“object” instead of a “place” to dwell. 370 Then the building is supposed merely to be admired
or to serve as a physical product for watch and sale. However, when a building is involved in
ongoing human life, it will become a “place”. The building does not become a “place” to people
unless somewhere to which they feel their lives are connected. Sometimes people occupy
buildings but cannot feel at home, because they do not dwell there.371 It is people who create
a “place”, for example when they start to think about how to decorate their offices, such as
hanging a picture on the wall, or putting some plants around windows, at this time their offices
are becoming living places for them. The phenomenological appreciation of buildings,
associated with individuals’ sensitivities of emotion and experience, offers a richer way of
describing the world than through visionary concepts. The sense of place can be connected to
the Heideggerian theory of the “thing”. The word “thing” describes life’s paraphernalia,
immersed in experience and use rather than distantly observed according to an abstract
system. “Things” are appreciated through their engagement with everyday life. Something is
distinguished as a “thing” primarily because humans have a physical and intellectual
relationship with it. Where “pragmatic meaning” grows, there is a “thing”. A building can be a
“thing” if it helps people to orientate themselves in the world by enabling them to relate to
the space around them through their own perception and experience. The conception–
perception misalignment refers to the difference between architecture acting as an “object”
and acting as a “place”. Architects may prefer the abstract conception to be involved in designs,
conceiving designs as objects, paying less attention to the importance of being. Before spaces
are actually used, designs can only be illustrated through architectural drawings, videos and
models, but it is not possible to survey their actual pragmatic value. However, when users

370
Adam Sharr (2007), Heidegger for Architects, London & New York : Routledge, pp. 37–38.
371
Martin Heidegger (2001), “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”, in Poetry, Language, Thought, New York:
Perennial Classics, pp. 143–159, p. 145.

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come into a space, they will understand the space by experiencing and perceiving in order to
turn it into a “place” related to their everyday life. Consequently, in this sense, a gap develops
as buildings are understood differently according to the different perspectives of their
designers and their users.

There has at times been a disjunction between architects’ production of concepts and users’
practice in actual spaces, which stems from the opposition of the two different forms of social
space that the architects and the users engage in. Within a certain culture, architects and users
often practise in an isolated way in their distinct forms of social space: architects are more
likely to engage in “representations of space”, while users are more often involved in
“representational spaces”. “Representations of space” refers to conceived spaces,
conceptualised spaces, which “are tied to the relations of production and to the ‘order’ which
those relations impose”, so that they are related “to knowledge, to signs, to codes, and to
‘frontal’ relations”. 372 This is the space of cultural power, the dominating part of a certain
relation of production, in which architects, planners, urbanists and other specialists with
higher cultural capital are involved, aiming to legitimate and maintain certain kinds of
conceived orders. On the other hand, “representational spaces” are lived realms, where
inhabitants’ and users’ practice is based on direct images, available sources, and the things
that can actually be perceived or described in the space.373 This is the dominated part, hence
considered as a “passively experienced” space374; but this part is filled with the opportunities
created by unpredictable changes conducted by users which cannot be controlled by architects’
conception.

In this sense, the opposition of architects’ conceptual production and users’ perceptual
experience is about the contradiction between cultural authority and the chaos of everyday
practice, between abstract knowledge and concrete life, and between legitimated language
and individual bodies. Working within the representations of space, architects are often
trapped by themselves in a narrow and autonomous speciality; users are abstracted and

372
Henri Lefebvre (1991), The Production of Space, Oxford, Oxon, & Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, p. 33.
373
Ibid., p. 39.
374
Ibid.
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identified as part of the conception, but the most lived and diverse aspects have often been
neglected by architects. They prefer to nest in this conceived realm, establish conceptual limits
on their own interests, and choose to present their ideas in architectural drawings, models,
videos and texts which are widely used as the main tools of architectural representations.
However, after a designed space has been in use, the actual experience emerging in that space
will be more specific, more individualised, more lively and more complicated than that
conceived in the architect’s imagination, and thus architects lose their authority in the lived
space.

Architects prefer to go to the most specific end of the design, so as to fully manifest their power.
Therefore, architects like to employ “system-buildings”, a conceptual way of design assertion,
attempting to be all-encompassing. Architects sometimes do not welcome “counter-projects”
– projects where the architect does not necessarily control over all of the specifics, some of
which may remain “the task of individuals and communities to invent”. 375 Counter-projects
mean that the architect’s “ownership” of a space is shared by other parties – territorial entities,
urban communities and so on – with their diverse interests, some of which might be
completely opposite to those of the architect, so that some architects would try to avoid
that.376 But only when architects give up their desire for sole “ownership” and try to approach
a collaborative way of designing can the gap between architects and users be dissolved.

Architecture traditionally has a priority of forms – the history of architecture is often

understood as a transformation of aesthetic forms. Acting as architectural language, the form
performs in the same way as language, which “is made not to be believed, but to be obeyed,
and to compel the obedience”.377 Each aesthetic form prevails over a period and is considered
an absolute rule which ought to be obeyed. The pictorial quality of the building is stressed, but
the immanent order in everyday life played out in the building often remains undiscovered. It
seems that architecture has built a closed system, a “home” for architects, where they play on

375
Nathaniel Coleman (2015), Lefebvre for Architects, Abingdon, Oxon, & New York, NY: Routledge, p.
85.
376
Ibid., p. 86.
377
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari (2004), A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London:
Continuum, p. 84.
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the basis of an agreement. This agreement can be arbitrary, because on the one hand it may
show good ability in legitimating some principles of architectural design that are seen to be
valuable, such as by contributing to the image of a city through a special focus on aesthetic
forms, but on the other hand it might imply the denial of the value of some others, such as by
focusing too much on aesthetic forms, leading to the values of the everyday life that will
happen within the space being ignored. One Deleuzian concept, “territorialisation”, refers to
a state of mind of wandering across multiple systems of ideas achieved by making
deterritorialisations and finding new reterritorialisations. 378 One’s mind can be
deterritorialised and reterritorialised as one switches from one common-sense regime to
another. If one feels “at home”, the surrounding objects with which one is interacting become
habitual, part of one’s life, and one’s territorialisation is accomplished. Architecture has been
territorialised to be a closed system, a system pursuing aesthetic forms and sole “ownership”.
But an architect has to deal with other people – moving between different common-sense
regimes – when he/she is participating in a project with other groups of people with their own
particular visions and attitudes, such as planners, engineers, builders, local authorities,
communities, etc. If the architect fails to enter other territories, a sort of barrier to
understanding occurs, which may have an impact on the way that the project proceeds. If the
architect is unable to visit the territory of local people’s daily life, he/she will not be able to
have a close dialogue within the local’s common-sense regime, and thus people’s
understanding of a building often differs from the architect’s concept.

A building can be a place with a prevailing order that tries to control every specific end of the
building. But “whenever a multiplicity is taken up in a structure, its growth is offset by its law
of combination” 379 , therefore, when a building is dominated by a singular order, the
possibilities of the growth of “pragmatic meaning” might be considerably reduced. If we
compare a building to a song, when the building is produced for the sake of achieving a
particular end, then the song is a work song, a song with clear purposes, such as marching

378
Andrew Ballantyne (2007), Deleuze and Guattari for Architects, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 38–40.

379
Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 6.

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song. 380 This kind of song can help us to get things done without us having to be engaged in
the process of events. What we do follows the formative order, moving the body without active
thinking or creation. Thus, this kind of song is actually unhelpful in everyday circumstance, and
“pragmatic meaning” cannot be produced in this kind of place, since pragmatism will only be
achieved when the place actively engages people and welcomes their creativity. The immanent
order is inherent in actual things, the things we can see, touch and feel, which is opposite to
transcendence, something outside of life. If an architecture tries to go beyond its formative
territories, to remove existing habits of thinking, to seek unformed elements and sets of affects,
then it might discover the immanent order of everyday life. A building with dynamically
emerging “pragmatic meaning” is never a closed system. It is always wondering, seeking new
interpretations, and being re-produced repeatedly as people use its spaces in various ways.
The ever-emerging “pragmatic meaning” immediately updates the system. The system always
has an unstable status; it is open, approaching any future possibilities; it moves on with the
changes of daily life, without an intention to achieve a particular end.

A building is merely a part of the organic whole of life. A building is meaningless without users’
engagement. It is users that activate the building as a live matter. The physical space of a
building alone acts as a part of a “machine”, if we consider the machine as an abstract idea
that refers to an organic whole. Once a machine is assembled, it has an identity and a life of
its own. 381 All parts of the machine act together to continue its life and production. The
building-machine will be activated and become productive when the space is in use. The
building can produce affects in users, but these affects are not produced by the building acting
alone. They are produced when the building and the users come into contact.382 The users and
the building constitute a machine. The two parts in this mechanical working system have to
collaborate properly to make the building work and to produce “pragmatic meaning”.

Parc de la Villette is a very conceptual project. Tschumi sought to achieve an abstract concept,

380
Ballantyne, Deleuze and Guattari for Architects, p. 60.

381
Ibid., p. 23.
382
Ibid., pp. 41–42.

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and did a great deal of diagrammatic analysis on translating deconstruction into the project.
The project started with abstract philosophical aesthetics, from the point of criticism of the
previous aesthetic foundation and the establishment of the organisational system of spaces.
It employed philosophy from a foreign field (linguistics), which acts as a subversive strategy for
creating aesthetic rupture. In the conceptual illustration of the project, it is emphasised
repetitively that Parc de la Villette is in the avant-garde in relation to the conservative
architectural milieu. The concept of the superimposition of the three disjunctive structures
serves as an opposite to the ideology of totality and also acts as a discrete system isolated
from the surrounding urban context. Permutation and substitution are also emphasised, as
against architectural convention, in order to achieve “a reversal of the classical oppositions
and a general displacement of the system”. 383 Therefore, it seems that the architectural
concept is generated neither from the environmental context nor from a user’s point of view.
The concept is taken to be an architect’s personal property, and the accomplishment of the
project is seen as a success of the architect’s own experiment. Although Tschumi insists on the
significance of the correlation of events and spaces, he did not take any site context into
account in the approach to developing the concept, and pragmatic concerns in the design are,
to a large degree, a means of achieving his conceptual ambition.

Therefore, Parc de la Villette was created through top-down imposition of philosophical

aesthetics. However, when users see it from a phenomenological perspective in actual spaces,
the three superimposed systems can hardly be found, and yet everybody who is experiencing
the spaces contributes to fulfilling Tschumi’s concept. From the Deleuzian perspective,
Tschumi found deconstruction as his territory. In order to explain the concepts of anti-
synthesis and decentralisation, he employed a superimposed system, an abstract formalistic
system, and the formation of this system was perfectly illustrated by his conceptual diagrams.
Tschumi set on his search for a design concept by exploiting deconstructive theory and
applying it in architectural practice, in order to accomplish his territorialisation through
practical experiments in actual spaces. The physical spaces of Parc de la Villette act as part of

383
Bernard Tschumi (1988), “Parc de la Villette, Paris”, in Papadakēs, A. (ed.), Deconstruction in
Architecture, London: Architectural Design, pp. 33–39, p. 38.

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a machine, and can be activated when users enter the spaces and “pragmatic meaning” is
produced from everyday circumstances. The park is part of a machine. But when the park is
used in different ways on different occasions, it becomes a plurality of machines. These plural
machines, juxtaposed on the park, are worked out by users who are interacting with the space
with different types of bodily effort. The park, at that point, becomes an “erotic” space, as it is
a conjunction of theoretical concept and the subtle matter of events; the ambiguous pleasure
of the combination of rationality (concepts) and irrationality (sensual experience) recalls
“erotic” concerns, in Tschumi’s understanding.

Users have perceptions and creativity when they are experiencing the spaces and these cannot
be exactly controlled by the architect. The architect’s design can merely provide an inorganic
part of a machine; users’ experience will arise and add a live part of the machine. The park
produces affects in users. Users’ experience in the space depends on their bodily perceptions,
living habits, ways of understanding the world, previous experiences, personal beliefs and
preferences. Both the physical space and the users’ personal factors participate in forming an
overall picture of the park in one’s mind. As this is the collaborative work of physical spaces
and users’ inner characteristics, the architect alone is not able to create the whole picture. If
architects are obsessed with concepts and insist on achieving particular endings, a
misalignment might be generated between conception and perception. That is the reason that
we often find a difference between what the architect describes about a building and what we
actually perceive in the building. Fortunately, Tschumi did not try to exactly define a particular
ending. What he proposed was a conceptual structure of three systems and briefly imagined
activities – point-like, linear and surface-like – leaving plenty of room for future events taking
place in the spaces; the dynamically growing “pragmatic meaning”, and thus the whole story,
was left open to further development, but will never reach a definite end.

5.3 Form Is Not the Purpose but the Consequence of a Dynamic Process of Creation

Pragmatism does not aim for any predetermined particular result, but is rather an attitude of
orientation, attempting to look towards fruits, consequences and facts. If an architect

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intervenes in a design project with this kind of attitude, the building form will act as a
consequence of the design practice instead of a purpose of the design. Richard Rorty offers a
new method of justifying philosophy. He disagrees with the way that philosophers are asked
for arguments against the intrinsic truth of reality; his suggested new method is to redescribe
things in new ways until the new pattern of linguistic behaviour is accepted among the rising
generation. This sort of philosophy does not analyse concept; rather, it works pragmatically.
It suggests that people should try thinking about things or doing things in alternative ways,
but it does not argue for the suggestion on the basis of antecedent criteria.384 It is the same
in architecture. Architects should not be asked for a clear depiction of the final building form
on the basis of any criteria, symbolic or material, before the design is fully carried out. The
building form should work pragmatically. It has to evolve through continual attempts of
designing and redesigning, until it reaches a final form. The form is the consequence of design.
Any attempt to make building form the purpose of the design practice is hard to justify.

According to tectonic concerns, architectural form should be the consequence of

construction practice, rather putting preconceived perfect ideas or idealist illusions in the
architect’s mind before construction practice. Tectonic architecture is considered as
independent from a symbolic system. The symbols concealed in iconic buildings are
manifested by the building’s masses and surfaces. Symbols are more about graphic matters,
and do not treat a building as a “thing”. “Mass, surface and plan” have become a mainstream
focus in modernist architecture since Le Corbusier stressed them in his book Towards a New
Architecture.385 But Frampton’s tectonics challenges these mainstream ideas. For Frampton,
modern architecture should first be concerned with structural and constructional techniques,
and only then refer to Le Corbusier’s spatial and abstract form. Frampton sees architecture
as a poetics of construction. There is no specific style appended to tectonics, no
predetermined form before construction, but tectonics necessarily has a relationship with

384
Richard Rorty (1989), Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge, UK, & New York: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 8–9.
385
Le Corbusier (1987), Towards a New Architecture, London: Architecture Press.

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topos and typos – the circumstances on the site and the type of the building.386

The concept of “basic architecture”, proposed by a Chinese architectural theorist Zhang

Yonghe, stands in line with Frampton’s tectonic idea that insists that form is the consequence
of constructional process instead of being fully formed before construction. “Basic architecture”
sees the meanings of architecture as residing in the pragmatic process of design, which is
embodied in three sets of relationships: building and site, man and space, and construction
and materials (the aesthetics of material, structure, constructional methods and regulations).
“Basic architecture” is concerned with the way in which the building interacts with the
environment, how users get involved in spaces so that activities are generated, and the
method by which constructional techniques collaborate with materials. Therefore,
architecture is shaped as the consequence of dealing with these relationships. Zhang also
claims that “basic architecture” is independent from any social ideologies, and that the
meaning of architecture is to be found within its constructional law. No architectural trend or
style belongs to “basic architecture”, since they are impacted by social ideologies and symbolic
systems.387 Although it is hard to agree that architecture ought to be fully autonomous from
social ideologies, nevertheless Zhang has proposed a positive value: that form should act as
the consequence rather than as the purpose of design practice, and that form is produced on
the basis of dealing with pragmatic issues instead of on symbolic meaning.

Red Brick Art Museum is a good example that sees the form as the consequence of the
dynamic process of designing and building, and this is also what pragmatic aesthetics
suggests. It provides a way in which form is gradually produced according to existing
pragmatic problems, without presupposing any fixed image of the final form before the
design practice. Reliance on existing circumstance has long been central to Chinese craft
creation. Bai Juyi’s verse which states that “the vessel should assume the shape of the
material” is the poetic portrayal of this tradition. This idea abides by the rule of “following

386
Kenneth Frampton (1995), Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and
Twentieth Century Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 2.
387
Yonghe Zhang & Lufeng Zhang (2000), “Learning from Industrial Architecture” “向工业建筑学习”,
World Architecture, 2000 (7), pp. 22–23, p. 22.

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rather than altering the objects’ original features”, so that it will result in “twice the yield, half
the work”. Designers incorporate the idea exemplified in craftsmanship into gardening and
architectural design. Red Brick Art Museum is one case demonstrating the principle of
shaping the building form by relying on the existing circumstances, following as much as
possible rather than altering the object’s original features. The concept is a method of
designing concerned with coping with real problems in the design process rather than
focusing on the final form of the building. The ultimate building form presents itself at the
end of the design, after pragmatic problems have all been resolved. The building form is the
consequence of the design, rather than any symbolic or iconic purpose. The architect did not
have any clear intentions regarding building form at the beginning. What he knew was the
existing conditions of the old factory and conventional building techniques, and what he
could imagine was how to ensure that the future museum would function well, and how the
building could be more sensuously associated with traditional garden life. The building fully
represents the substance of the building itself. In this sense, the design of Red Brick Art
Museum well echoes what Frampton called “ontological aspects of tectonic form”. 388 The
ontological tectonic form refers to the core of a building that is “simultaneously both its
fundamental structure and its substance”, while the representational aspects emphasise the
skin of a building that tries to represent a sort of symbolic meaning. Red Brick Art Museum
does not attempt to present any symbolic meaning, but rather the meaning comes from the
substance of the building itself – the materials, the constructional techniques, the spaces, the
functional problems and the design approach that ran throughout the design until the
building form was eventually finalised.

There are some other factors that architecture is concerned with that have effects on the
consequence of the form, such as non-expert agency – the users who are involved in the design
or the long-term process of evolutionary maintenance of the building in actual use. The design
of a building is not a one-off work, but an evolutionary process over its lifetime. Maintenance
techniques and strategic programming for future adaptations are crucial to a building’s

388
Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 16.

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longevity. Non-expert agency can be empowered in the process of a building’s evolution from
the beginning of the design. An intention to apply non-expert agency to design can be seen in
a social housing project of Elemental in Iquique, Chile.389 Instead of providing inhabitants with
finished houses, they were given basic raw units that they could complete later, with additional
unused external spaces that could be used for building extensions. Elemental understood the
self-build tradition and made use of it for people who were about to move into the houses,
allowing them to claim the houses as their own. 390 The forms of these houses, as a
consequence of the building work, are shaped through users’ efforts to deal with living
problems, and can be adaptively transformed over the buildings’ lifetimes as a result of users’
future changes, so that “pragmatic meaning” can be continuously emerging over the building’s
lifespan and pragmatic aesthetics is reflected in the evolutionary process. This project is an
example of the type of counter-project which Lefebvre encourages. The architect never
attempted to manifest his professional power by controlling every specific detail of the project;
rather, he empowered the inhabitants who were going to be the real owners of their living
space.

Figure 99. Social housing project, Elemental, Iquique, Chile, 2003.

389
Elemental is an architectural practice founded in 2000, which grew out of the desire to address the
problem of social housing in Chile. It has since evolved into an unusual practice that is a partnership
between a university (Universidad Católica de Santiago), an energy company (COPEC, the Chilean oil
company) and an architect (Alejandro Aravena). The Iquique housing project was Elemental's first
project.
390
Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider & Jeremy Till (2011), Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing
Architecture, Abingdon, Oxon, & New York: Routledge, p. 44.
286
5.4 Architecture Is the Dynamic Process of Everyday Experience

Pragmatic aesthetics does not equal to functionalism, although they both refer to actual
experience. Functionalism sees the building as a machine in which living factors are running
mechanically. It concerns objective ways in which spaces are employed by functional events
such as dining, sleeping and walking. However, pragmatism, as this research insists, is more
than functionalism; it is about an aesthetics of everyday life, a living art. This kind of aesthetics
does not come from God, or from a muse which is isolated from actual life. Rather, it is
integrated with daily activities. Only when one pays full attention to everyday life, when one’s
intellect is immersed in bodily experience, will this kind of aesthetics emerge. Pragmatic
aesthetics is neither a static abstraction nor a universal truth followed by everything, but a
dynamic accumulation of the interaction between environmental circumstances and living
intentions in everyday life. Dewey’s “somatic naturalism” could clearly represent the idea of
pragmatic aesthetics. “Somatic naturalism” sees that the value of art can only be found
through the intuitive senses of the body and practical activities in everyday life, from the
interaction between life and environment. Pragmatism is about not only the functional usage
of certain spaces, but also the body’s immediate perceptions and actions in response to a
particular environment. The sensorial part of culture is what pragmatism believes in, and what
premises the sense of everydayness. The sense of everydayness can be perceived through a
pragmatic way of understanding the world.

Pragmatism is always looking towards consequences, and the consequences can be both
physical and spiritual effects. Everydayness rejects a focus on either function or the spirit alone;
it is an integration of both physical and spiritual life. In traditional Chinese understanding,
physical function is inseparable from spiritual enjoyment; a sense of everydayness will be
engendered when physical use of a space combines with spiritual enjoyment. Private gardens
are typical places which show the way in which function and spirit are combined. Physical
settings are well designed and built in gardens, but people come to gardens not only for the
purpose of using these physical settings, such as resting in the shadow of a big tree in hot
weather, but at the same time in order to gain emotional pleasure; thus Chinese men of letters
have traditionally taken their leisure in gardens, so that gardens are historically favourite places
287
for artistic events.

Shusterman advocates the skills that can enhance the body’s consciousness as a means of
augmenting pleasure in everyday life.391 The first skill he mentions is “simplicity”. Our lives are
easily distracted by too many details. Attention to life is sharper and more sustained if we focus
on a limited range. The retrospective understanding of traditional countryside life in the design
of Xiangshan Campus shows a way of pursuing simplicity in contemporary architectural
practice. The farmlands retained from the original site became plain landscapes on the campus,
still running by local people, providing an austere and impressive image of the old way of life
that is harmonious with the environment. Another method Shusterman refers to is “slowness”,
which he believes can heighten the awareness of daily life. Things nowadays move too quickly
for us to engage completely, and thus it is hard to grasp and interact with what is important
with care and deliberation. It would be better for us to stop our rush and instead take enough
time to be aware of the details of life passing by, so that life might become more engaging as
there is more time for creativity. Xiangshan Campus provides wonderful places where life can
be slowed down, while walking through the passages around the buildings, staying in gardens
or having a cup of tea by the waterside within picturesque scenes. The campus thus creates
the time needed to sense every bit of the experience of wandering; the sense of the pace of
modern life, which often interrupts the ability of our bodily senses, has been removed, and
thus more pleasure can be found in “slow time”. Concentrating on the present moment can
also heighten our attention, as we avoid immersing ourselves in the complexities of the
unchangeable past and the unpredictable future. Being fully present in what we are currently
doing and where we currently are enables us to gain more from what our surroundings offer.
“Slowness” helps us to focus on the present moment by making it last longer, allowing the
activities occupying that moment to take more time and to be performed slowly and
thoroughly, so that we can possibly enjoy more within the present moment. There is another
method Shusterman advocates, a mind-directed body-consciousness, which tries to raise the
somatic unconsciousness to a level of spiritual consciousness. All of our bodily dispositions

391
Richard Shusterman (2013), “Everyday Aesthetics of Embodiment”, in Bhatt, R. (ed.), Rethinking
Aesthetics: The Role of Body in Design, London: Routledge, pp. 13–35, pp. 19–24.

288
constitute our unreflective habits, the unconscious aspects of life. By making somatic life more
consciousness, deliberate and controlled, we will be able to sublimate physical needs into an
expression of spiritual life. Traditional Chinese private gardens are spiritual places, showing the
way in which bodily pleasure is transformed into the spiritual. These are places of pleasure
especially for Chinese men of letters. They are places where we are not concerned simply with
the mundane details of living, such as the need to eat and drink, but where we are able to flee
such trifles, beyond time and fully in the present moment; in this state, one’s body is relaxed,
one’s mind is inspired, and one is receptive to works of beauty and art. Therefore, through
such ways of enhancing the body’s consciousness, and the activities that emerge from that,
we can achieve an aesthetic experience in everyday life.

Aesthetic experience and bodily perceptions are highlighted in Wang Shu’s design philosophy.
He believes that “aesthetic sense” can be approached through the body’s unconscious
responses to its surroundings. He states that life cannot be understood only through rational
thinking, but rather should be experienced and enjoyed without too much logos. 392 Logos
always refers to intellectual thoughts, set apart from sensuous experience. What Wang Shu
means to emphasise is a certain human capacity for intuitive insight, nous, to which the body
is subject. According to Aristotle, nous refers to an immediate way of accessing an object, while
logos refers to ultimate reason, which is caught in the endless retreat to fundamental
principles and is not able to be grasped through immediate contact with the object.393 The
aesthetics of everyday life is grasped through intuitive perceptions when the body is
immediately accessing its surroundings. However, functionalism starts from a utilitarian stance,
dealing with fundamental principles of spatial types and forms on the basis of “form follows
function”, but regardless of the immediate perceptions that come from humans’ internal
capacity of intuition.

Architecture ought not to be seen simply as an event machine, and users ought not to be seen

392
Shu Wang (2002), The Beginning of Design 设计的开始, Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press,
p. 57.
393
Richard Lee & Christopher Long (2007), “Nous and Logos in Aristotle”, Freiburger Zeitschrift für
Philosophie Und Theologie, vol. 54 (3), pp. 348–367, p. 348.

289
as objects physically running events with the cooperation of spaces. Rather, the body’s internal
intuitive perceptions weigh more than the body’s actions. In The Manhattan Transcripts,
Tschumi sees people who are experiencing the spaces as mobile objects. Though “pragmatic
meaning” (events) plays a key role in his theory, he prefers to take the body as a physical object
moving through spaces. Bodies are treated and analysed in the same way as spaces and
movements, so that, in Tschumi’s eyes, bodies are more like objects, equivalent to physical
spaces, rather than subjects with the capacity of bodily senses and thus able to actively
perceive spaces and produce emotions. Therefore, though Tschumi lays considerable emphasis
on events and everyday life, he is looking at everyday life through an objective eye and trying
to rationally analyse the relationship between bodies and spaces on the basis of setting himself
as an outsider, instead of sensing the living spaces from a subjective point of view. Different
from Tschumi, Wang Shu sees the body from the eyes of the body itself; the body acts as a
sensory subject, actively and effectively producing perceptions responding to external spaces.
Bodies are capable of accessing spaces immediately, sensing the surroundings and causing
emotions and feelings, thus generating a sense of poetry. It is the body’s effort that allows all
bodily senses to be fully immersed in spaces until a kind of “aesthetic sense” is aroused.

Therefore, there are basically two ways that the body is associated with the space around it.
One is a sort of mechanical connection that refers to physical correspondence between the
form and the scale of the space and the body’s position or movement. The body often acts as
a passive object in this case. When the body is encountering spaces, it usually responds with
certain bodily actions as a result. Functionalism is in this category. The second association is
about a sensuous connection between the body and the space. The body is an active subject
in this case, and this type of connection relies on the body’s sensorial system, which always
attempts to translate environmental information into a corresponding bodily emotion, so that
the body can be creative in this case. Somaesthetics is in this category, as the sense of beauty
is always worked out on the basis of the body’s affective judgement. In this sense, of “an
architecture of enjoyment”, one ideal that Lefebvre looks for, can be approached, if there is
either a direct association between the body’s pleasure and physical spaces, or a paradigm

290
established on the base of the analogical association between the body and the non-body.394
For example, the bath in ancient Rome and the dome of the Pantheon are both spaces of
enjoyment. The bath is the place where the body and mind prepare themselves for sensuality.
The luminous dome of the Pantheon can be perceived by the body and gives it a particular
sensation, and the body is aware that the dome is analogical to the grand image of the cosmos,
so that bodily perception is associated with the non-body image that means something in the
mind, and thus the dome becomes a space of enjoyment. The different types of association
between the body and the space are something that could be further explored in future
research.

“Pragmatic meaning” is produced on the basis of a background of common sense – an

understanding which is unthinking and unconscious, which it unnecessary, and at times
impossible, to interpret through conscious language. When we set out to engage with
surrounding spaces, common sense will become a background. Common sense helps people
to imagine how to use spaces and then practise in particular ways within them. For instance,
how people interact with the spaces in Centre Pompidou and Parc de la Villette, and how the
architect designed to prompt the feelings and the “aesthetic sense” people perceive in
Xiangshan Campus, all rely on common sense.

As Norberg-Schulz says, a place can become alive only when the space becomes a system of
meaningful place, but how to make a space meaningful? Any place contains certain sorts of
common features which act as references understood by all people living in that culture. We
accommodate ourselves within this system and thus we are conditioned by the system. At this
point, we know what things mean in our living place, and thus it becomes alive. For one to
participate properly and efficiently in a culture one must know how to use the common senses
in that culture. Culture is about a complex of common senses. Only when architecture
concretises such common senses in its spaces, being homogenous with the whole system,

394
Henri Lefebvre (2014), Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment, Stanek, L. (eds.), Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, pp. 137–138, 144–145.
291
does it become meaningful to us.395

It is when architects and users share the same common-sense system that the buildings can
at times work in the way the architects expected. Even though Tschumi tries not to expect a
specific “pragmatic meaning” in Parc de la Villette but leaves the meaning to be filled up by
users, he does have tendencies, such as creating points for point-like events, paths for
movements and surfaces for surface-like events. These tendencies are still derived from a
common sense shared by everybody. No matter whether a space serves as an indexical sign or
a symbolic sign, the premise of making activities happen in any particular space depends on
people’s common sense that links the space to certain results. In Xiangshan Campus, bodily
senses serve as the most common property for everybody. The architect designed spaces with
the intention of creating certain feelings in the mind – a sort of “aesthetic sense”; people may
then experience the feelings that the architect sought to create when they are engaging in
these spaces, so that a sort of “aesthetic sense” can be achieved.

It is impossible to discuss the meaning of architecture by looking at the architecture alone.

Architecture can be a physical object, a place of activities, a social organisation, an art work,
and so on. Architecture alone is impossible to define, because it is incomplete and
unproductive. Thus, the autonomy of architecture is hardly survived. It has to refer to exterior
things to make itself fully meaningful. It is always ready to approach culture, geographic
context, people and aesthetics, so that it is always becoming and reforming into a new thing.
The attitude towards design which this research leads to is that architecture ought neither to
be reduced to slogan-like concepts, the descriptions of ambitions, nor “seductive images” for
the purpose of selling itself and its products. Architecture should always be a “cultural
discourse and a frame of life”. 396 The beauty of architecture does not equal forms, and
architecture ought not to be seen as a rigid machine of events only. However, actual

395
Christian Norberg-Schulz (1969), “Meaning in Architecture”, in Jencks, C. and Baird, G. (eds.)
Meaning in Architecture, London: Barrie & Jenkins, pp. 215–229, pp. 220–225.

396
Kenneth Frampton (1991), “Reflections on the Autonomy of Architecture: A Critique of
Contemporary Production”, in Ghirardo, D. (ed.), Out of Site: A Social Criticism of Architecture, Seattle:
Bay Press, pp. 17–26, pp. 18, 23.
292
experience in real spaces needs to be a more central concern in many cases. Architectural form
should be more the consequence of the practical management of existing conditions, and
architecture ought to be appreciated as a place where the poetry of everyday life happens, a
place where people actually experience this poetry with their bodily senses. The body’s
perceptions and experience are the final answers to architectural meaning. None of the extra
symbols possible are necessary to be sought out and disguised as architectural meaning.

293
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