Title
Dramatizing Architectural Space: The Case of a 14th Century Chinese Temple
Abstract
Chinese timber-frame architectural tradition underwent a drastic change in its spatial conception during the Song-Yuan period, also known as China’s Middle Period. This is best exemplified in religious architecture, which produced megastructures with unprecedentedly large interior spaces. Using the early 14th-century main hall of the Water God’s Temple in Hongdong, Shanxi, as an example, this talk by Prof. Wei-Cheng Lin (University of Chicago) demonstrated that architectural modifications orchestrated a multisensorial experience of the interior that is structurally counterintuitive but spatially dramatized. He explained how the dramatic quality of the timber-frame architecture during the Song-Yuan period was not so much ignited by the ritual performance or building technology as by the broader visual culture and drama tradition of the period.
This talk was co-sponsored with the Art History department and moderated by CEAS faculty, Yuhang Li.
Biography
Wei-Cheng Lin is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the history of Chinese art and architecture during the medieval periods. His primary interests of research are visual and material cultural issues in Buddhist art and architecture and China’s funerary practice through history. He is the author of Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai, which was published by the University of Washington Press in 2014.