Architectural Discourse and Design Practice of Transplanted Modernity: Wang Dahong and the Polemics, 1950-70s

The cultural agent- Wang Dahong plays a significant role in Taiwan‘s modern architecture history. In order to investigate the transplanted modernity mediating of Taiwan’s modern architecture during 1950 to 1970s, This research tries to focus on Wang’s “oriental aura”; the cultural subjectivity representation project which proposed by Wang as the ideal form of situating functionalism with national identity topic in the polemic between eclecticism and modernism. After World War II, the Republic of China government, KMT, migrated from mainland China to Taiwan. In the meantime, the American Modernism which mention technical reasons, monumentality (publicity of social architecture), and housing project (social utopia) was the main reference model of Taiwanese architecture cultural transformation. This research also explores how the key issues of the American Modernism transferred to Taiwan. According to the imaged ideological concern, this research structures on the time frame of depicting identity projects of KMT: from Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum (1929) in Nanjing, China to National Father Monument in Taipei, Taiwan (1971). These buildings symbolize how the identity projects had been built and rebuilt, how the publicities had been handle, and what were the epistemology instruments of eclecticism approach and modernism oriented. In spite of the public identify projects, Wang Dahong’s private space; his dwelling is one of the holy places of Taiwan’s Modern architecture. His dwelling reflects his creating desire; it also plays a role of cultural transformation which created the “new domesticity”. Wang’s auto-biology novel “Do Lian-grey” mentions about the notions of modernist’s Utopia.
Wang’s ideal Chinese modern dwelling project appears the “The Noble Savage” concept. This concept considers that the building is an instrument of social utopia. This social utopia is the cure of the society’s pathological condition, which co-existed with Confucianism’s moral discourse of the floating spatial organization into a typical life stage. The architect is the creator and the seer of national spirits who indulged in the silent and alienated situation from the real world. Wang’s social utopian mission was indulged in reclusion. therefore, the prophetic mythology is crushed.
The Chapter three in this research swishes Wang’s identity topic (his dwelling project) to the public sphere of national monumental architecture program, Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. The eclecticism approaches in Wang’s team effectuated this project by the spirits of “towards classicalism.” They tried to represent the ideas of “spiritual orient” (cultural subjectivity) and to develop the national style discourse of Chinese Renaissance movement. The professionals mixed up the historicism’s scientific approaches and the social progressive organisms to create a culture and a taste of the Public.
Furthermore, they combined this new culture and taste with the technical wills of the structural rationalism. They articulated the notion; “Han’s racial/Confucianism is the only cultural organic essence of China,” with national history discourse, and extended the idea of “Chinese learning for essence, Western knowledge for function”. They developed Chinese architecture discourse by structural rationalism. They used the “rational principles” for catching up the essence of “tradition.” In addition, they clothed monumental building by humanist approach and “outside in” formal analysis rules to respond the dual hypothesis of “searching for Chinese classical formal aesthetic and concerning modern technical improvement.” Their strategy was “Modern is the re-interpretation of the past legitimated eclecticism approach.” Their notion of “tradition” had already transferred the status of mimesis into the rational principle of modern experience, and then created the opportunity of re-creating tradition.
In order to explore the content of transplanted modernity, this research tries to compare the oriental moral Utopia: “Wue-Guan” with the western Messiah. Due to concerns of “Wue-Guan” lacked the national institutions, the power bloc tried to employed national soul idea to cross over every collective organization as well as followed Fascist regime governance. Their strategies decreased civil society concerns which existed in the Chinese Architectural Renaissance movement and transferred the main issue into the technical reason. The notion of “tradition” (Chinese leaning-spiritual orient) became the “time space comparison” of the modernity experience.
Chapter Four tries to shift this research into the national identity rebuild project, the case study of National Father Monument in Taipei (1967-71), to explore the content of modernist regionalism. This project based on the Brutalism in Abstract Expressionism approach and the Physiognomic Expressionism to deliver a kind of abstract new monumentality. Furthermore, Wang also referenced this project with the industrial society and the national identity context. He found out the “new monumentality”, a de-constructed semantic structure, is one kind of modern experience that shaped by new cultural time which is a “back to future project”. Therefore, the “oriental aura” of modernist regionalism is a universal homogenous Disney. The single national culture system discourse shaped a wave of cultural inner colonial phenomena. Due to the civil society and the public space project were failed by Fascist governance, the dialogue of both modernists’ publicity/monumentality and the eclecticism approaches indulged into the formal expression circle.
Finally, this research tries to find out the specialty of “type/social use” idea of the public housing programs in Taiwan. The architectural schools considered this idea is the organization of spatial arrange and the formal expression. The humanists’ planning theories and public housing topics were destroyed by land speculation, government didn’t propose national collective consumption service, and the active housing market was produced by private developmental company (public housing is not the main supporter in housing market). Base on this context, Taiwan’s modern Architecture discourses lack the existing spaces of modernity-reflexive thinking of production relationship when they face on the process of land use capitalization, de-constructed the relationship of lands and clans, and the single family housing and housing property right program of modernity projects. Therefore, when the modernists faced to this non constructed public service program, the social utopia idea was dying. This research explores and presents the dejected destiny of the modernism and responds why the Modernizing Chinese Architecture polemic had became the main issue of this period.