Why can China s ancient architecture be harmoniously integrated with the natural environment?

In modern times, due to the conflict between design and nature brought about by the Industrial Revolution and the Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as human reflection on modernism, environmental pollution, and other factors, the post-modern architectural design trend is more inclined to the spirit of place, anti-globalization, and unity with nature.

Ancient Chinese residential architecture is often permeated with mystical ideas of feng shui culture. Because Feng Shui has obvious feudal superstitions, it often obscures its reasonable humanistic and scientific connotations, and conceals its unique aesthetic implications. Today, when we re-examine this phenomenon from the perspective of the scientific concept of development and the aesthetic relationship between man and the ecological environment, we find that although there are some feudal and superstitious elements in the concept of feng shui in ancient Chinese residential buildings, under the coat of "feng shui" it contains the ecological beauty appeal of the ancient Chinese to pursue the harmony of man and nature, and the high integration of ecological wisdom and poetic mastery.

Architecture in harmony with nature has its significance in line with the development characteristics of the times, and it does not mean that all architectural designs have to be related to this kind of thinking, for example, the huge landmark buildings themselves have the will to be anti-natural and flaunt human merits.

Although the building is a part of nature, the will it presents can be anti-natural, or conform to nature, the former emphasizing the difference between man and nature, and the latter emphasizing identity.

Eighty percent of the building's space is buried underground, thanks to the fact that the ground is a nature reserve, modestly hidden in the midst of greenery, in harmony with nature.

The living tree is formed, and the metal frame guides the growth trajectory of the branches, and the guides are removed after they grow into the architectural form. You can think of it as a rather peculiar-growing tree.

The environment has three levels: the neighborhood, the city, and the planet. The courtyard is integrated with the first level of the environment.

Someone mentions the Flowing Water Villa, and frankly speaking, the pursuit of this so-called integration purely from the form is not at all like the depth that an architect should have, and you are not a sculptor or a painter.

If you travel to Suzhou, you will see a very modern building sandwiched between the Humble Administrator's Garden and the Zhongwang Mansion, but integrated with the two classical gardens around it.

This building, which is submerged by nature in the mountains, is a public building, and the Mishu Art Museum is an organization in Japan that encourages people to pursue beauty spiritually.

Walk along a long, winding path to a thatched cottage in the mountains, hidden in seclusion ...... only the sound of a waterfallThat is a fairyland far away from the earth.

Ancient Chinese architecture places great emphasis on the relationship with the environment, and the so-called "unity of man and nature" embodies the idea of harmony between man and the environment. In the concept of Feng Shui with witchcraft overtones, there is also a relationship between man and the living environment, and there is a supernatural understanding of the direction of the mountains and the location of the river, so as to make this supernatural thing related to the good fortune and misfortune of man. The so-called "looking up at astronomy, looking down at geography, taking everything from close to the body, and taking everything from afar" is the ideal and belief that people and the environment develop in accordance with local conditions and in harmony.

We can feel the embodiment of this belief in a large number of poems and texts in ancient Chinese literature that praise pavilions, platforms, buildings and pavilions, such as "A Fang Gong Fu", Hail Lao's "The Story of Yueyang Tower", "Preface to the Pavilion of King Teng" and "Dream of Red Mansions" about the Daguan Garden, all of which have left us with a deep impression of the harmony between architecture and the environment, and we can also get the confirmation of the field eggplant stalls in the temples, palaces, houses and gardens left in China.