Architecture to stress aesthetics, not just function

The seventh International Symposium on Teaching and Research of the History of World Architecture was held from Sept. 9 to 10 in Guangzhou. Architecture was once seen as the mother of art, but today the history of architecture has gradually become estranged from the history of art, said Wu Qingzhou, an architecture professor from the South China University of Technology. As society develops and industrializes, the practical function of a building becomes increasingly emphasized, weakening the bonds between architecture and art, said Liu Songfu, an architecture professor from the Harbin Institute of Technology. Chen Yuheng, a young scholar from Southeast University, said China’s first generation of modern architects integrated Chinese and Western ideas into their artistic tastes and architecture styles. Traditional Chinese aesthetic philosophy and Western classical aesthetics have different, often conflicting value orientations, creating, to some extent, more possibilities, Chen said.