Having suffered several external invasions and internal wars in its long history, China has been taking steps to make up for losses from aggression and war in economy and infrastructure construction since modern times. The stimulus of globalized capit...
Having suffered several external invasions and internal wars in its long history, China has been taking steps to make up for losses from aggression and war in economy and infrastructure construction since modern times. The stimulus of globalized capital prompted China to want to stand out on the international stage and pursue more excessive economic development and commercialization. These situations have contributed to frequent appearance of buildings that value only economic purposes and visual expressions in modern architecture.
It is difficult for these buildings to meet the spiritual needs of modern people who values various aesthetic pursuits or emotional experiences since they mostly pursue only the efficiency of capital, functionality and visual expression at a material level. At the same time, modern architectural aesthetics are facing new challenges due to the development of digital design. It is difficult to judge modern architecture by conditions of classical western architecture such as proportionality and geometric shapes.
In light of this situation, the architectural community has been looking for a new method of research from a different point of view of other studies, and has been constantly thinking about new methods of architecture. Philosophy, semiotics, psychology, and literature began to be mentioned in the architectural world in the late 20th century, as well as the study of architecture and narratology. This combined study of architecture and narratology can help regain the identity of architecture and improve the situation in the atmosphere of modern Chinese architecture.
Narratology originated from literature and has many things in common with literature. Liu Jiakun, an architect representing Chinese modern architecture and gaining international recognition, has the background of a novelist, and his architecture and literature are closely related. His architecture, influenced by the novelist background, is showing a strong architectural narrative. Through the study of architectural narrative about Liu Jiakun, the study of architecture and narratology can be achieved.
This study deals with the relationship between architecture and narratology, and then examines the relationship between Liu Jiakun’s architectural thoughts and the architectural narrative that emerged from his architecture. Next, this study divides Liu Jiakun’s architectural works into periods and analyzes the characteristics of architectural narrative in each architectural work to find out the way Liu Jiakun reveals architectural narrative.
The results of the study are as follows. From the viewpoint of the narrative, Liu Jiakun's architectural thoughts and tactics permeate his architecture, which makes his architectural works have the strong narrative. Looking at the narrative in his architectural works from three perspectives, narrative theme, content, and structure, Liu Jiakun gives architecture the consistent narrative with the themes of humanism, the obvious spatial structure as a novel, and architectural elements combined with domestic elements and traditional techniques. He initially focused on narrative structure and gradually changed into narrative expression. His artist's workshop series was most influenced by the novelist background. Centered on the spatial structure, novel-like narrative structures were evident in architecture. In 1999, Liu Jiakun founded his own architectural firm. The early days of this time was the turning point for him because there was a change in his architectural narrative. His works of this time such as Luyeyuan Stone Carving Museum and the Clock Museum of Chinese Cultural Revolution still showed novel-like narrative structure, but the expression of the narrative content had become richer than that of the series of artist workshops. Since then, he has been more interested in content expression than narrative structure in architectural works. In particular, Liu Jiakun, who works as a local architect, had a major earthquake in his hometown of Sichuan, after which he paid more attention to architectural materials and narrative content expressions. From the whole flow, his focus of architectural narrative has changed from the narrative structure into the narrative content.
It is regrettable that the scope of the study is limited. This study deals with only modern architecture which has organized relationship between architecture and narratology. However, even before the particular terms were established, there had been architectures that revealed narratology in modern China or even ancient period. In particular, the traditional Chinese Garden Architecture, which has been boasted of by China, borrowed many literary works such as old poems and old advisors and used their expressions and the composition of sentences for the buildings of traditional Chinese Garden Architecture. Subsequent complementary studies on this part are needed.