Thursday, February 4, 2010

beijing-winter visit

temple of heaven is one of my favorite building in beijing, as it looks as if it is in the heaven with it dominating the skyline without any landscapes or other building around it. I described this to one of my sister in church but she didnt quite get it, probably this could only best explained by visiting it yourself!
i visited the birdnest. Though this iconic building has been both praised and criticised by many, i cant deny that it does fascinates me at some point, although sometimes i wonder why they need foreign architects to design instead of the local architects!
the forbidden city is really huge and magnificent. I am truly awed by it and vowed to study more about chinese architecture and how it developed. The building itself is a great history and i was very impressed how the architects as well as the government gone so far to restore and conserved the building. There are 2 schools of thoughts : to spent money on new architecture or to spent money on conserving old architecture. There are great debates on this. For one, cultural and heritage architects strongly feels that heritage architecture should be well preserved for younger generation and are of great value. UNESCO, for instance has spent great sum of money to preserve historical buildings as well as site.

On the other hand, there are also some young and new architects that feel that old buildings should give way to odd and modern architecture which explore more on form rather than the site context itself. This is, however, covered by their explanation on how the building could sustain itself. There are different ways of tackling this issue, depending on how we think. Birdnest may be very a little contradicting to the land of China which is previously well symbolised by its regional architecture, Nowadays, China is represented by the Birdnest. Many years later, people might go as far as they could to preserve the birdnest.


School of thoughts change as time changed. History continues to develope. What happens today becomes a history in the future. So does the trend of architecture, that's why there are many periods of architecture. The timeline continues, so does the style of architecture continues to develope. We need to move forward gracefully, in terms of transforming the style gracefully in regards of context and environment, not just of pride and vain. In my point of view, practical can be humble and lovely. Comfortable and clean design is favoured. Overdesign is pride and self-centred.


3 comments:

  1. well done, good to see you sketching. only one sketch from China? it's such a big place!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Cynthia! Love your sketches! They're so meticulous.

    ReplyDelete
  3. min : thanks. i did some but i didnt have time to upload it:) will find time to do so.

    Ru Hui : thanks:) i like yours too.

    ReplyDelete