Post on 03-Jan-2016
transcript
Beijing: Lost in Translation?Presentation prepared for
International Conference onChina’s Urban Land and Housing in the 21st Century
Centre for China Urban and Regional StudiesHong Kong Baptist University
December 13th – 15th, 2007
by Eric J. Heikkila, ProfessorUSC School of Policy, Planning, and Development& Chinese University of Hong Kong (AY 2007-08)
An exploration of three premises
1. Material urban form constitutes a formal but implicit language through which cultural expression is manifest
2. Beijing’s hutongs are a language form intrinsically expressive of traditional Chinese culture
3. As hutongs are replaced by more modernistic urban forms, an important part of Chinese culture is, quite literally, lost in translation
First premise:
Material urban form constitutes a formal but implicit language through which cultural expression is manifest
1. The linguistics of urban form
a. From semiotics to semantics
b. Alexander: Pattern language
c. Hillier: Space syntax
d. Chomsky: Psychology of language
e. Bierwisch: Language and space
f. Stiny: Shape grammar
g. Constructing spatial sentences
Urban semiotics
Semiotics (“semiosis”) as a “sequence of interpretants – interpretants being a collective, public observable product laid down in the course of cultural processes, even though one does not presume the existence of a mind that admits of, uses, or develops them
Umberto Eco
“The city is a discourse ...
... and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, wandering through it, by looking at it.”
Roland Barthes
Pedestrian speech acts
“The act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered ... a rhetoric of walking ... the long poem of walking manipulates spatial organizations”
Michel de Certeau
Patterns as nodes in a graph
Patterns may be identified with nodes in a graph, and the graph is connected by edges of different lengths ... A pattern is an encapsulation of forces; a general solution to a problem. The "language" combines the nodes together into an organizational framework.
Nikos Salingaros (2000), after Christopher Alexander et al (1977)
lower level patternscombine to formhigher level patterns
Generative grammar
Generative grammar is the explicit theory proposed to account for linguistic competence
Intrinsic to this theory is a model of the process by which language competence is acquired
Generative grammer describes the transformations by which linguistical competence at a “deep structure” is manifest at the “surface structure” of language.
The deep structure of a language accords with its internal representation
-- Chomsky, 1979
“I-space”
How are spatial concepts accomodated within a linguistical framework?
Bierwisch (1999) postulates an I-space corresponding to Chomsky’s I-language
“I-space is accomodated by semantic form in terms of primitives interpreted by strictly spatial concepts”
Shape grammar
“In a shape grammar, the shapes in the set S and the symbols in the set L provide the building blocks for the definition of shape rules in the set R and the initial shape I … shapes generated using the shape grammar are also built up in terms of these primitive elements”
-- George Stiny (1980), Introduction to shape and shape grammars, E&P:B
Semantic primitives
“It may be reasonable to suppose that at least traditional notions like ‘agent of action’, ‘instrument’, ‘goal’, ‘source’, and so on, are part of universal semantics; then such notions would be available for semantic representation”
-- Chomsky (1978, p.141)
Constructing “Spatial Sentences”Example from Kyoto: Borrowed view
object
subject
adjectives
adverbverb
(“Shakkei”)
Revisiting the first premise:
Material urban form constitutes a formal but implicit language through which cultural expression is manifest
While by no means conclusive, the preceding analysis appears to provide sufficient grounds for proceeding on the basis of a conditional acceptance of the first premise
Second premise:
Beijing’s hutongs constitute a language form that is intrinsically expressive of traditional Chinese culture
The old city of Beijing is characterized by a bewildering yet intimate labyrinth of a myriad hutong (alleyways) and traditional siheyuan (courtyards) housing
Beijing’s hutongs
This traditional configuration defines “us” and “them” with progressive levels of intimacy as one penetrates inner courtyards
Semantic progression
There are intriguing parallels between the construction of Chinese written language and basic courtyard structures
In both cases, simple structures (“patterns”) can be combined to form higher order structures
“wei” – the Chinese radical meaning“to surround”
from WuLiangyong(fig. 5.11)
Simple progressions of semantic complexity
“borders” “field”“to surround”
“selfish/cocoon” “coil”
“small”
“silk”
“tired”
Inspired by McNaughton (1979)
Simple housing complex
Courtyard housing follows a similar semantic progression, with complex expressions of form being assembled from simple components
Figure 5.12from WuLiangyong
Self-replicating fractal structures
The basic interlocking form of enclosures and delimiters replicates itself with fractal-like regularity from the smallest scale (individual rooms) to the largest scale (the city)
Courtyard structure of Old BeijingFigure 1.2 from Wu Liangyong
Resulting hierarchy of urban spaces
City walls
adapted from Wu Liangyong(1999, figure 5.7)
Main roads
Hutong
Outer walls
Bldg walls
Partitions
Furniture
Room
Building
Courtyards
Block
City
Sub-blockenclosures
anddelimiters
Revisiting the second premise:
Beijing’s hutongs constitute a communicative form that is intrinsically expressive of traditional Chinese culture
Third premise:
As hutongs are replaced by more modernistic urban forms, an important part of Chinese culture is, quite literally, lost in translation
The new Beijing
Contemporary Beijing is not being redeveloped so much as it is being replaced
Traditional hutong neighborhoods have disappeared with astonishing speed, and the remaining neighborhoods are increasingly isolated and seemingly out-of-place
China’s new ideology: “2-0-0-8” Modernistic structures and supporting urban forms are
flaunted as “proof” of China’s newfound status as an economic powerhouse
Chinese modernity
This phenomenon of urban form is appropriately viewed in the context of a much wider discussion about the nature of Chinese modernity
Fashion plates circa 1935from Leo Ou-Fan Lee, Shanghai Modern
Linking architectural patterns to social patterns
Traditional architectural patterns combine with social patterns to form higher-order pattern
Modernistic architecture as an anti-pattern
-- Salingaros (2000)
de Certeau revisited
For Michel de Certeau, it is the use of a language rather than merely its form that constitutes culture
He uses as his “theoretical model the construction of individual sentences with an established vocabulary and syntax ... the act of speaking (with all the enunciative strategies that implies) is not reducible to a knowledge of the language”
More generally, we should not under-estimate human ingenuity nor over-estimate the deterministic qualities of over-arching (linguistical) systems
“Chineseness”
Likewise, contemporary studies of overseas Chinese suggest that “Chineseness” is as robust and multifaceted as it is elusive
Yeh Wen-Hsin (2000) speaks of “a culturally defined Chinese universe with negotiated boundaries, in which the attributes of “Chineseness” are not culturally predetermined and immutable, but are the products of an ongoing historical process
From this perspective it may be both trite and misleading to associate some essential quality of “Chineseness” with the physical form of an architectural artifact
Imposed quaintness
A related pitfall is that of scholars (especially those from the West) admonishing Chinese to forego the perks of modernization in order to retain the quaintness of traditional practices
The essence of such a message is one of cultural imperialism in the sense articulated by Edward Said
What is gained by the linguistic argument?
In the absence of a linguistic model, one is left with the replacement of one surface structure (in the sense articulated by Chomsky) by another surface structure
It is only with a linguistic model that one can explicitly posit that something important is said in a source language
From this perspective, questions of translatability follow immediately, naturally, and inevitably