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Book reviews
A Chinese Philosophy of  Architecture: Past, Present, 
Future 
David Wang 
New York: Routledge, 2017.
Hardcover: $180. Paperback: $50

In this book, David Wang attempts to derive a 
philosophy of  architecture from Chinese sources. 
The attempt is made at a moment when revivals 
of  old ways in China are once again discussed in 
academic literature (for example, Billioud and 
Thoraval in their The Sage and the People: The Confucian 
Revival in China, which appeared in 2015). Wang’s 
book cannot be read as a textbook showing how 
to systematically apply certain Confucian or Daoist 
ideas to modern architecture. Instead, it should be 
read as a philosophical reflection on contemporary 
architecture delivered from a Chinese point of  view. 
The book contains many fresh considerations and 
provocative ideas about how non-Western sources 
can challenge well-established Western architectural 
theories. 

The book is divided into three parts: Past, 
Present, and Future. The first part explains traditional 
Chinese architecture and contrasts it with Western 
paradigms. The “Present” part is concerned with 
the opening of  China towards the West and the 
influence of  postmodernism. The “Future” part 
talks about influences like virtual reality but also 
about the possibility for future development of  a 
Chinese philosophy of  architecture.

On the one hand, the book is inspired by Jianfei 
Zhu’s Architecture of  Modern China: A Historical 
Critique (2009), which suggests a new “criticalist” 
approach to architecture. On the other hand, 



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Wang does not address the theme of  criticality that was important 
not only for Zhu but also for critics of  Chinese architecture like Peter 
Eisenman who had once declared Chinese architecture conservative 
and accommodating because it lacks a tradition of  resistance. For 
Eisenman, the critical consciousness linked to European Enlightenment 
is missing in the Chinese tradition.1 Wang’s comparative approach has 
a different starting point, which is not The Enlightenment but Plato. 
Wang wants to go back to the roots of  all differences, which is Plato’s 
essentialism and its absence in China. In particular, Wang employs 
Plato’s distinction between matter and spirit to contrast Chinese 
philosophies of  architecture with Western ones. Wang makes the 
following four distinctions: 

First, in China, “excellence of  being is not always dependent on 
infusions of  moral value into material objects” (65) because the Platonic 
distinctions between matter and spirit do not exist in Chinese culture. 
This assertion put Chinese architecture on a completely different track 
missed by most Western architects. 

Second, while the Confucian notion of  the morally perfected 
person is important, the value of  that person is entirely internal and 
will not manifest itself  materially. Wang puts much weight on the 
quotation of  a certain Wan Juren (source not documented) who would 
have written about Confucius’s notion of  ren that the virtuous nature 
is purely internal. According to Wan Juren, Confucius does not suggest 
that one should “externally pursue any kind of  technical perfection or 
realization of  material end,” (5, the source is referenced as Zuangzi). 
The essence of  things is not defined philosophically (as it was by 
Aristotle) and, as a consequence, no values or virtues can act on material 
or on architecture. Instead, “in China moral instantiation [remains] in 
between relational social roles” and the “moral focus is on people and 
their social enactments.” (5) Chinese architectural conceptions are fluid 
because there are no essences like beauty or the good but everything 
depends on the social situation. 

Third, in the West, spirit is individual, while in Chinese architectural 
thought spiritual components appear as constellations. Feng shui, for 
example, “is about losing human individuality into the larger cosmos.” 
What matters is not the essence, but the “positioning alone assures 
beneficial outcomes” (5). 

Fourth, the Platonic idea of  reason leads to a concept of  time-
dependent progress towards ideals, which does not exist in China 
either. Due to its Platonic idealistic heritage, Materiality held negative 



Book reviewconnotations as it is always opposed to the spiritual 
and non-material truth and able to retard progress. 
Therefore, Western architects attempted to 
introduce much non-material light, a goal not found 
in Chinese architecture, which is most obvious in 
Western religious architecture. (43) 

Thus, with these four contrasts, Wang draws a 
sharp distinction in intent between Western Platonic 
essentialism and Chinese relational truths. But such 
an orientation invites the question: without such 
Platonic essences, some essential foundations, will 
those purely “relational” truths not lead to relativism? 
Wang offers a few provocative conclusions. For 
example, what is called pastiche style in the West 
cannot be called such in China because “Chinese 
philosophy accommodates this style of  affairs.” 
(6) Logically, you cannot have a pastiche unless 
you have some theoretical framework that informs 
what is not pastiche. There is no ideology of  style 
in China, which means that anything goes as long as 
it is “relationally” justified: “prior to 1840, Chinese 
structures were not motivated by an ideology of  
style.” (7) After 1840, there is a proliferation of  
styles but no indigenous theoretical tradition to 
guide design thinking. This is how the Chinese 
could reinvent postmodern hybridity without being 
postmodern. The hybridity we find in China is 
“not a self-conscious choice” and therefore not 
really postmodern (124) in conception. Instead it is 
simply due to a lack of  purified aesthetic ideologies. 

This relativism is pushed one step further 
when Wang legitimizes an aesthetics of  clutter. 
Since there is no aesthetic ideology of  proportion 
and since the wen (cultural pattern) is clearly open-
ended, clutter becomes a positive term. The Chinese 
notion of  wen is an untranslatable term meaning, in 
different contexts “pattern,” “structure,” “writing,” 
and “literature.” The pattern of  wen is found not 
only in culture but also in animals, vegetation, 
and cosmological phenomena. Wang applies this 



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in an unusual context. The clutter on Chinese sidewalks is “teeming 
with activity” (66) and Wang holds that wen can be understood as “a 
cluttered array of  things.” (80)

In Chinese architecture, everything moves towards a fluidity-
based paradigm, which can be contrasted with the essentialist styles of  
Western architecture in which purified or fixed notions of  style tended 
to be justified by essentialist concepts of  styles based on (Platonic-
Aristotelian) philosophies. Chinese architectural reality is fluid as it is 
determined by the ying and the yang, which produces no essence but just 
qi. Qi is a cosmological notion providing coherence among all things. 
It translates as “breath” and is used in the sense of  “energy flow” in 
traditional Chinese culture, especially Chinese medicine and martial arts. 

After all those considerations of  fluidity and interrelatedness one 
could perhaps conclude that Chinese architecture is organic. If  this is 
the case, Wang could have developed this line of  thought further. A 
fluid and dynamic perception of  architectural space is precisely what 
organic architecture, initiated by Frank Lloyd Wright and developed by 
generations of  architects, always wanted. Organic architecture promotes 
harmony between all elements, natural and architectural, precisely in the 
way in which Wang describes the qi flowing out of  the play of  ying and 
yang.  As is, those tantalizing connections between East and West go 
unexplored.

It is in the context of  fluidity that Wang also makes interesting 
statements about different preservation cultures in East and West. 
Fluidity-based architectural paradigms will find the preservation 
mentality pervasive in the West too restrictive: “In a correlative world in 
which fluid change is fundamental, wood gives way to fire, fire to soil, 
in a cyclical process.” (23) Is the Daoist penchant “to let things be” (67) 
favoring preservation or against preservation? There is no clear answer 
to this in Wang’s book.

However, in all his elaborations on fluidity and dynamism there is 
a paradox. European styles change while Chinese styles have remained 
relatively constant until the modern era.  If  architecture is so fluid in 
China, why did styles remain constant? Instead they evolved in non-
fluid Europe. Stylistic evolution in the West owes much to an artistic 
self-consciousness arising out of  the tradition of  resistance of  which 
Eisenman spoke. Wang acknowledges the stable character of  Chinese 
architectural styles. His answer to the paradox of  fluid architectural 
conceptions not bound by Platonic essences that nevertheless led to 
stylistic stasis is to explain the idea of  fluidity within an overall largely static 



Book reviewconception by reference to the cosmic fabric called 
fen, which Buddhism-informed neo-Confucianism 
saw as a familial-social cosmic system guaranteeing 
unchanging social roles. (52) Each fen conducts 
itself  in correct li-rituals. Similarly static are the 
Yingzao Fashi, (營造法式) a 12th century manual 
of  Building Standards, which formalized imperial 
construction as an expression of  social hierarchy. 
Another reason for stasis is the imperative of  moral 
excellence that philosophies about the li tended to 
express in the form of  theoretical logic. Here Wang 
points to Xunzi, who believed that architecture can 
be subsumed under the embrace of  li-ritual: “A 
benefit of  this approach is that moral excellence is 
embedded in the theoretical logic.” (143)

What seems to matter most for Wang is that 
there is no Platonic essence in Chinese thought 
able to formulate the good and the beautiful. Since 
nothing philosophical could be said about the 
goodness and beauty of  material, Chinese literati 
never embraced architecture as a contemplative 
pursuit. Architecture was seen as a craft, which gave 
it a lot of  freedom. This is possibly true. However, 
was the West that unfree? Ideas concerning the 
good and the beautiful have changed a lot over the 
centuries in the West. True, European culture tended 
to justify aesthetic truths in terms of  philosophical 
truth (since Plato), which is not the case with the 
more vague Buddhist-Confucian prescriptions. At 
the same time, this lack of  philosophical back-up 
might be the reason why, as Wang points out, 
modern Chinese architecture has not yet found its 
own vocabulary. (123) 

I want to conclude by returning to the concept 
of  the organic. Jianfei Zhu’s “relational critique” 
seems to point more consistently to the idea of  
an organic whole. Wang also mentions Liu Xiaohu 
from Wuhan who uses terms like feng shui and 
xiao (filial peity) in organic contexts (143). The 
Hangzhounese architect Wang Shu is also often 



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mentioned as a protagonist of  the “fluency” inherent in Chinese 
architectural culture. Would a real alternative architectural thinking 
moving beyond Platonism but incorporating “criticality” with the 
organic not be the next step in this search for a philosophy of  Chinese 
architecture? Wang does not take this step. He derives a critique of  
the Western tradition from Chinese sources. However, calling this a “a 
Chinese philosophy of  architecture” seems to be too ambitious. An 
aesthetics of  clutter and fluidity-based paradigms can inspire interesting 
critiques but it will take more work to develop those critiques into real 
philosophies.

ENDNOTES

1. Peter. Eisenman,  “Critical Architecture in a Geopolitical World” 
in Cynthia Davidson and Ismail Serageldin (eds). Architecture Beyond 
Architecture: Creativity and Social Transformations in Islamic Cultures. London: 
Academy Editions, 1995.

Thinking like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy After the End of  Nature
Steven Vogel 
Boston: MIT Press, 2016.
Paperback: $24
reviewed by Tom Spector

Steven Vogel agrees with what Warwick Fox called attention to two 
decades ago, a view which I believe all we architecture-philosophy types 
share: that an environmental ethic is both incomplete and of  little effect 
without a robust account of  the human-made environment incorporated 
into it. Thinking Like a Mall attempts such an account, not so much 
by describing the relationship between the built and self-determining 
environments as by dismantling the divide between them. Vogel takes 
his title from Aldo Leopold’s treatise “Thinking Like a Mountain,” in 
which Leopold describes his personal journey out of  an ego-centric 
view of  nature to one understood in more relational terms. If  Vogel can 
make the case that that a shopping mall (that much unloved building 
type) is no less and no more natural than Leopold’s mountain, then he 
can well extend the argument to include all built environments. While 
he makes progress on these fronts, we may yet hesitate to agree he has 



Book reviewlaid the problem to rest.

     Vogel argues that mainstream environmental 
ethics has tried to create a sense of  separation 
between humanity and nature to justify its 
prescriptions. “What ends nature is nothing other 
than the human touch, a touch that, rather Midas-
like, has the uncanny ability to transform the 
natural into something outside of  nature.” (11) 
This divide creates an insoluble contradiction 
for environmental ethics in its current 
formulations. It seems that either we think 
of  nature as everything that exists by and for 
itself  without the interference of  humans, or 
else we make room for a larger conception of  
nature that also includes what humans do as 
being part of  nature. But here’s the problem: 
if  we consider humans as part of  nature, then 
there’s no reason to consider, say, hydroelectric 
dams as any more unnatural than beaver dams 
and cities are no more or less than the habitats 
we create that are most natural for us. But if  we 
leave human activity out of  the equation, then 
it becomes problematic to find untouched 
nature, and to determine how far back we have to 
go before the influence of  mankind spoiled it. After 
all, it appears highly likely that humans caused the 
extinction of  the wooly mammoth in Pleistocene 
times. 

     Environmentalists have avoided this contradiction 
by trading on an equivocation. They use “nature” 
to mean “wild, untouched and self-determining” 
when it suits them, but then they make an about-
face and insist that humans are part of  nature 
when it comes time to formulate an action plan. 
He sees an “odd inconsistency” if  the nature we 
are called on to preserve is nonhuman nature. The 
environmentalists who worry about the destruction 
of  nature also believe that “humans need to learn to 
live more in accordance with nature.”(11) Human 
anthropocentrism, the unwillingness to accept that 



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we should live more within the natural order of  things rather than seek 
to transform them more to our liking, is the source of  the problem. 
“But if  the production of  a toaster or the changing of  a temperature 
or the restoring of  a prairie involves the transformation of  nature into 
something that is no longer natural, then it is not at all clear that humans 
are embedded in nature.”(12) Here is the crux of  the contradiction: If  
human actions are outside nature, then what could it possibly mean 
to advocate that we live more in tune with nature?  Conversely, if  we 
humans are in fact part of  nature, then so are our buildings—and this 
leaves the environmentalists without a cause. There is no basis for 
bemoaning technology.  

     Some Environmentalists would have it that the value of  untouched 
nature is its independence.  Others, its diversity or richness. Therefore, 
we have an obligation to help preserve its diversity. But how do we 
get from this definition to an obligation? What if  we try to assert that 
there is something wrong with human-created global warming that 
extends beyond its effect on other humans and into its effect on the 
natural order of  things? We could say, “yes, but its going to be very 
destructive,” but in the larger sense, this assertion is simply untrue. It 
will be just as productive as it is destructive. So we could amend that 
statement and say that it will be very disruptive, which is certainly true, 
but disruption is itself  entirely natural and goes on all the time out in 
nature. So we could amend it still more and say that it will be disruptive 
at a speed and scale rarely found in nature, and that is also certainly true, 
but then that is not always the case either—nature can be astoundingly 
disruptive- and in short order: Every time a volcano blows, for example, 
or a 100-year drought occurs. So, if  there’s nothing we are doing or 
causing that nature doesn’t already, then where is the foul? 

     Thus, Vogel thinks we do well to abandon the word “nature” altogether 
as a source of  guidance for an environmental ethic. But he notes one 
last way the word nature is used, and this is why environmentalists have 
been resistant to abandoning it: it is often used normatively, natural 
is associated with what’s right, and unnatural is associated with what’s 
wrong. But taking nature as a guide for right and wrong human action 
is going to lead to some pretty odd results. Think of  what a spider does 
with its prey. So, he says, trying to act more ‘naturally’ in this sense 
scarcely seems like a good idea. 

     Vogel concludes that Nature is a useless concept, not only because 
there seems to be so little of  it remaining, not only because we cannot 
seem to decide whether we are part of  it or not, but also because it 



Book reviewprovides no moral guidance—only circularity. It 
becomes something more like a religion based in 
a set of  unprovable assumptions and less like a 
set of  rational reasons underlying prescriptions 
for how we should act. He wants to drop nature, 
and adopt “environment,” which includes the built 
environment, into an environmental philosophy. 
Thus, if  we want to ground an environmental 
ethic, it will have to be that certain actions and 
products are bad or good for us humans—and 
we will just have to bring the rest of  nature along 
with us. It is logically impossible to protect nature’s 
independence from us. All environment—shopping 
malls as well as the Amazon river basin are equally 
potentially capable of  moral consideration. 

     Part of  my hesitation in fully embracing this 
line of  thought lies in how Vogel analyzes the 
concept of  nature: much like a blender analyzes an 
avocado. You hate to congratulate him for liquifying 
a perfectly useful idea (within its limits) into 
something unrecognizable. Most any concept can be 
found to contain contradictions and irrationalities 
when pushed to its limits, but this should not 
cause us to abstain from the entire notion—
which is what Vogel wants us to do. His point that 
environmentalists conveniently equivocate is well 
taken, but should that not be a reason to demand 
clarity from them and not necessarily a reason to 
abandon the term “nature”? I still think there is a 
commonsense meaningfulness to being in touch 
with or alienated from nature that finds expression 
in such useful antidotes as the Boy Scouts, the 
National Parks, treks into wilderness, dismay when 
native species are overrun by invaders, the desire 
to clean up roadside trash, immense sadness at the 
barrenness caused by coral bleaching, and so many 
more instances. Are we really supposed to give up 
on the idea that getting to appreciate what goes 
on outside of  human purposes provides a source 
of  moral import even if  not a source of  moral 
guidance? 



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     Where I really want to take issue, however, comes in the last chapters, 
where he reduces environmental ethics to democratic politics. He says 
that since mountains and wolves cannot speak for themselves, then only 
humans in dialogue can speak up for them. This idea seems to leave 
no point of  triangulation from which to critique what those humans in 
dialogue decide for the wolves. In fact, I find this surprisingly naive—
philosophically as well as socially. It almost seems a desperate move. 
Apart from this disappointment, however, he does quite a nice job 
analyzing the tragedy of  the commons in relation to global warming. 
He argues that the problem is not that any individual’s contribution 
to the problem is negligible, and therefore futile to hold accountable, 
but rather it is the lack of  mechanisms by which individuals can band 
together to act for the common good that lead to tragic results. As I was 
reading this section, I realized that the tragedy of  the commons just is 
the state of  nature.   


