The character of traditional sites in contemporary Chinese design projects

Abstract

China is the land of huge sprawling building projects, dense skyscrapers and brutal demolitions of entire city districts. How can a culture which acts under premises such as these, approach the ideas of restoration and preservation? On what basis can we set in motion a fruitful exchange of knowledge between our Schools and theirs? But we need to understand which values we are talking about.Briefly, this lack of perception of aura diminishes the value of the material nature of a building, that is – in other words – its physical support, the stones and the wood of which it is built. On the other hand, the high value placed on the copy indicates a clear recognition of the value of the image of a building, that is its form, which is regarded as being the more estimable the more often it is reproduced.