POLYMORPHISM OF “CHINESENESS” IN TEXT DESCRIPTION OF BUILDINGS AFTER 2000

<p> When designing buildings, architectural designers interpret elements from Chinese civilization, such as China's ancient literature, Chinese metaphysics, Chinese paintings and the theory of Confucianism to form buildings in a direct or abstract manner. The latent "Chineseness" exist in buildings created from the interpretation of such elements. Therefore, the latent "Chineseness" of buildings is shown in various aspects and could be recognized in the text description of buildings. In this research, the objective is to reveal how architectural designers envision "Chineseness" in their design processes and embody it in buildings through analyzing the text descriptions of the architectural designers.</p><p> </p><p> The flow of this research is as below:</p><p> 1. The subject of this research is 1,090 samples from the text descriptions that architectural designers refer to "Chineseness" in the architectural magazine, Architectural Journal (Jianzhuxuebao) during 2000-2017.</p><p> 2. Extract the sentences that contain words: Typical Chinese Element, Disposition, Building Component and Operation. Typical Chinese Element is the word that indicates objects and events as Chineseness. Disposition is the word attributes of Typical Chinese Element. Building Component is the word of architectural components or materials reflecting Chineseness. Operation is the word described as the act to Building Component by architectural designers.</p><p> 3. Analyze and unscramble correspondence relationships between Typical Chinese Element and Disposition, Building Component and Operation.</p><p> 4. Based on the tendencies of correspondence analysis, frameworks of semantic content are derived. Using the tendencies to make a matrix to identify aspects of "Chineseness", categorize the subject into types and provide insights of them to derive the conclusion.</p><p> </p><p> Through the investigation of the matrix between Typical Chinese Element, Deposition, Building Component and Operation, 23 different types of polymorphism of "Chineseness" were derived. From the viewpoint of Chinese civilization, these types show 6 aspects: the aspect of introverted characteristic, the aspect of the influence from ancient theories and regulations such as Chinese metaphysics and etiquette, the aspect of narration which could not be understood by a glance, the aspect of embedding feelings in ancestor's heritages, the aspect of expounding of shapes, and the aspect of respecting and following the ancestor's traditions.</p><p> </p><p> Consequently, it could be said that the architectural designers extracted "Chineseness" from behavior, the imagination to the ideal life, theories and thoughts, and physical objects in the history of Chinese civilization, and endued them to contemporary buildings in a new form via operations related to the visual effect of buildings, or spatial operations that aim to induce certain user experience and ambiance. Furthermore, it could also be said that the act itself shown a feature of Chinese civilization, which means that the "Chineseness" appears not only in the substantial buildings but also in the design processes. Overall, it revealed that the architectural designers consider the building as a medium to express and keep in conversation the uniqueness of the cultural and intellectual heritage to impart the story of the once glorious civilization.</p>