Sharawadgi and Penetrating Space in Chinese Classic Gardens

Abstract

This work tries to explore some hidden feature in Chinese Classic Gardens by the perceptual space graphic analysis. Since 17th century, due to Sir. William Temple’s first time and initial introduction, Chinese Classic Gardens had been generally known possessed a remarkable space feature, namely sharawadgi, at western architecture and art field in its time. But by the previous researches, it is a linguistic misunderstanding that sharawadgi was original from a certain speciality Chinese phrase. However, it reflected the surface truth that the artful irregularity and asymmetry in Chinese garden. Moreover, it implied the essential difference between western and Chinese spatial design attitude and principle. This work begins with seeking the reason of the sharawadgi misreading issue, to reveal the special design logic in Chinese Classic Garden. The basic physical data in this paper is collected from Liu Dunzhen’s famous orthogonal drawings, which was done in 1970s, strongly influenced by western classic graphic representation of architecture. While, nowadays, it was criticized that this kind of graphic representation distorted Chinese Classic Gardens’ feature. Therefore, in this work, borrowing the perspective of perception-phenomenology and ideas of visual psychology, by adding the perceptual spatial elements, it tried tries to translate the typical feature, general known as Sharawadgi, to visible graphical diagrams. This will improve its understandability and clean the babel of mutual incomprehension. Moreover, it might provide some innovation ideas for the graphic representation of contemporary architecture, and also for nowadays spatial design.