Architectural drawing’s modern transformation in China: the changing visual forms and the rise of the architectural profession

Abstract

Chinese ‘architectural’ drawing (drawings that are concerned with the built environment) underwent profound transformation regarding their compositional rules around the beginning of the twentieth century, from a unique set of geometric principles to Western Euclidean geometry. This research firstly analyses and compares the different geometrical forms and other related visual expressions in three Chinese ‘architectural’ drawings representing the premodern, the modern, and the intermediate developmental period. Secondly, the changing visual forms reveal a brief history of the development of ‘subjectivity’ in Chinese ‘architectural’ drawing, from the anonymous craftsmanship that conveyed a collective subjectivity by representing Chinese cosmology to the beginning of the projection of the self as an intellectual, and finally to the modern professional architect. This article argues that the changing subjectivity is the key mechanism that has led to the profound transformation across these periods time.