Session 1 - October 13

[Emily Zimmerman]

I found Dr. Vinayak Bharne's ten levels of influence on the construction of Asian cities a very helpful framework worth recapping.  As I recall, the ten levels are:  1) Ancient sites on the virgin landscape;  2) Intra-Asian hybridities (e.g., the Taj Mahal, in India but influenced by Persian culture;  3) Colonialism (e.g., Portuguese influence in Macau);  4) Self-imposed Westernization;  5) Modern urbanism;  6) Illegal, informal habitats such as slums with significant economic activity;  7) Rural indigenous communities (such as the Fujian Hakka fortress-like villages); 8) Ambivalence to modern ubanism and cultural conservation efforts;  9) Instant megacities;  10) Post-industrial models of sustainability and new urbanism.    I also appreciate the three overarching themes -- traditions, tensions, and transformations -- that he provides to help structure how we can start to sort through all this complexity.

[Thomas Pineda]

From the readings, it is an interesting concept I never noticed about the North-South-East-West layout of the cities. I’ve noticed while visiting and living around East Asia, all of the emphasis on Chinese characters and names based on north, south .etc; The names of cities in China for the capitals like Beijing & Nanjing- northern and southern capital. Also, in Seoul, each gate was named by the particular side of the city it protected. It was another theme that was mentioned about design of art- that nature was emphasized, as opposed to individuals. Rather than naming a gate or important part of the city after a person or event, they are named after location as well (ex. Bukhansan in Seoul- mountains north of the Han river). Culturally, it is such a departure from how places are identified in our lands. Grand Canyon vs. West-flowing River. Rocky Mountains or Sierra Nevadas vs. Western Mountains. 

[Yan Liu]

It was so nice meeting everyone this evening. I enjoyed the discussion, especially our discussion about "stereotypes about Asia/East Asia" and "sustainability". To be honest, I haven't seriously thought about "What is Asia/East Asia" even though I was originally from China. I know that Asian/East Asian countries have much in common whereas each country is unique in my ways. Maybe because I value the differences too much, I used to identifying myself more as a Chinese than an East Asian. But the question of “What is Asia/East Asia” is really intriguing. I hope to find an answer or multiple answers to this question in this seminar. I also enjoyed the discussion about the stereotypes about East Asian countries. Many thanks to those people who shared their ideas/experience. Their sharing provided me with different perspectives of understanding East Asia. I think one of the most important take-aways for me is that stereotypes are not always negative. It can serve as a great stimulus for us and for our students to explore other cultures or even other subjects. Last but not least, I really appreciate that Prof. Bharne pointed out that sustainability was a complex concept. When I talked about the sustainability, I only thought of the environmental aspect of it, but I didn’t think of the social and economic aspects of it. I look forward to knowing more about “sustainability” and how it is defined by or conveyed through architecture and urbanism in this seminar course.

[Denis Vovchenko]

I agree that Vin usefully complicated "sustainability" by emphasizing social justice as its necessary dimension. However, I fear that the trend is going in the opposite direction as we see in Asia or the US ("gentrification") with green nice spaces for the elites and rundown polluted areas reserved for middle and lower classes. Someone mentioned the original "Bladerunner" but "Elysium" is an even more graphic illustration of that real dystopia.

[Denis Vovchenko]

It was easy to connect our discussion, the video lectures, and the “Framing the Asian City” reading. I could discern Vin’s philosophy of accepting even less aesthetically appealing styles of urbanism. He described slums as one of its ten types. I may be wrong to assume that most educators (like myself) typically do not include the coverage of slums into their units on Asian art and architecture. I am sure Vin emphasized the slums out of his concern for social justice that also came through in his comment on sustainability during the discussion last night.

Vin’s comments about Disneyfication were also eye-opening. As he mentioned, most experts decry or ridicule cookie-cutter ultra-modern skylines and shopping malls mushrooming worldwide as examples of “Coca-colonization.” But as Vin said, local developers and government agencies demand that kind of style as reassuring symbols of Western order and new openness to the world.

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

Now I feel even more strongly than before that we should not be shying away from such aspects to sensitize the students to the plight of urban poor worldwide. In particular, in a unit on globalization I would play an excerpt from The Slumdog Millionaire to help students relate to the slum images that Vin included (the slum hill in Lebanon is stuck in my mind).

Vin’s perspective on “Disneyfication” would help me in a post-colonial unit showing continuity and acceptance of Western influences from Victorian administration buildings to modernist “monstrosities” like the Kyoto train station.

The second reading by Paul Wheatley could be assigned in an upper-level college course on early Asian history. Students should have easier time absorbing concepts like geomancy and astrobiology in classical Chinese urbanism because the author provided examples of the same from ancient Greek, Roman, and Christian traditions.

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

Questions for Vin and others?

What religion informed ancient Chinese “astrobiological” urban patterns? The reading by Wheatley mentioned that they had started as early as the Zhou period or earlier. I don’t think Confucianism or Daoism were already so entrenched at the time.

Why was Vin not using the concept of postmodernism when discussing 10 styles of architecture? From my limited understanding, that trend supposedly emboldened Asian architects and urban planners to be less imitative of Western styles and appreciative of their native patterns (according to at least this article I used in my globalization class - Botond Bognar, “Surface above All? American Influence on Japanese Urban Space,”  Uta Poiger ed., Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan (New York: Bergbahn Books, 2000), pp. 45-74

Is the book where “Framing the Asian City” serves as the introduction already published? I would be curious to read the essay about Soviet models for the reconstruction of Beijing in the 1950s.

 

[Denis Vovchenko]

Great points! We often read and teach students that Chinese were and are less "serious" about religion especially afterlife etc. From the Wheatley reading, it seems that well before Confucianism and Daoism ancient China had established religious views that informed their urban design. How developed were they? Did anyone describe those views in a systematic way? 

[Denis Vovchenko]

Great points about the diminishing stigma of imperialism among formerly colonized nations! The Brits themselves began to feel less bad about that legacy probably earlier than other former empires - remember the anti-Roman conspiracy scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979). More recently, BBC produced a 5-episode series trying to balance negative and positive aspects of imperialism.

• “Doing Good” Episode 5 in Empire (BBC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5tM_X3Grhk

Maybe, there is a generational cycle in popular reactions and memoreis - now there is a renewed attack as we see in the war on monuments as it spills over from the US into Western Europe. 

[Shaolu Yu]

Right now, the building I am teaching at in Memphis, TN, is part of Trail of Tears. Having been travelling to Oklohoma and New Mexico, seeing how indegious people's struggles and generations of pain and healing, I see colonialism not subjective but material. It is material in de-indigenization in South America, it is material in Nanjing which is still healing from the Nanjing massacre, it is material in my city which was colonized first by Germans then Japanese, it is material in the westernization and homogeneity of urban landscapes in many modern Asian cities at the cost of history, locality, and distinctiveness.  

[Thomas Pineda]

 As you and Dennis both mentioned, it was a very intriguing take on 'sustainability' mentioned in the discussion. I hadn't thought or framed sustainability in that sense before, if it doesn’t serve human lives then the point of it is moot. The idea of this is that the goal of sustainability is amalgamous and that it doesn’t always have to serve the the wealthy or elite that is marketed now in our country. This is a struggle philosophically for myself. As our Next Generation Science Standards state, we need to examine how humans impact our environment. But if we were looking for ways to have little to no impact at all, then we might as well not exist- then at that point, it is not sustainable for us. Taking into account the human factor and seeing ways our development can remain sustainable from different global perspectives is a challenge. I am excited to learn more about how sustainability is approached in East Asian design.

[Jennifer Lee]

Glad I'm not the only one who found the second article difficult to read.  😀

[Elizabeth Rosales]

The Astro-biological toolkit that Paul Wheatly finds evidence of in many civilizations around the world is so fascinating. I have read about delineation of sacred space, but I have never read an article like this that shows cities and large kingdoms using that tool. I imagine that the use of cardinality is still a common practice in places that have always used it, but I am also curious as to whether this practice of designing buildings, cities,  and spaces is used currently in "Western" cultures. I have been to Stonehenge, and have read a bit about how even "Western" civilizations used the electro-magnetic currents and energy vortexes in ritual and in construction, and that what used to be an energy center with a true ability to heal the body, later became church buildings oriented to the flow of energy. In our modern state, we have forgotten that we are part of the earth and that the magnetic field of the earth affects us. Anyhow, I look forward to more study of this nature.

[Kimberly de Berzunza]

Within a day or two of our class, my husband happened to be flipping channels and watching something on PBS that showed these massive projects in China where land that had been destroyed for CENTURIES was cleaned up, re-terraced, re-irrigated, planted, and now is productive land for the previously destitute farmers who were trying to eke out a living before and now not only have food and a decent home, but were able to send their sons to college.  They showed another project that restored the Yellow River to the point where it was no longer yellow (at least in that part that they showed.)  It was interesting timing to see this after our discussion, and I told my husband what we had learned. He was surprised! (At the information- he's used to me learning things and bombarding him with it!)

[Jaclyn Pop]

I am wondering something similar in regard to Thames Town, outside of Shanghai.  In the video, it seems like Vinayak is saying that when we look at these towns that have gone through a "Disney-fication" through a visual lens, focused on the town’s aesthetics, then we tend to think of them as something that is inauthentic, but when we look through a different lens and focus on the town’s performance standards and how the town makes people feel, we might be able to understand these types of places in a different way.  I searched Thames Town on Google and the first few websites that came up were travel sites and blogs.  An article on huffpost.com described Thames Town as a “deserted, fake English town in China” that is mainly used “as the backdrop for English-themed wedding photography.  I guess I am wondering, how exactly does Thames Town make people feel?  What is the performance standard of Thames Town?  I am interested in learning more!

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