La definizione spaziale attraverso l'ornamento. La qualità superficiale nella cultura progettuale dell'architettura cinese d'avanguardia

In the field of Western design culture, the relationships that exist between the quality of the internal and external space and the material and superficial component of architecture seem to have a conceptual and theoretical continuity for at least three hundred years. On the other hand, the common thread that links the frame described by Laugier, which is the cornerstone of Western design culture, to the wooden post-and-beam skeleton that characterizes traditional Chinese architecture has never been considered systematically by historiography, theory or even architectural criticism, despite the media massification that has affected avant-garde Chinese architecture in the last decade. At the basis of both design cultures is the pragmatism of the act of building frames using wooden poles: structures that, in the specific case of Chinese architecture, are subsequently infilled and hidden, so as to be transformed into septa. The most representative Chinese architectures of the last twenty years demonstrate in a striking way how the septum has gradually lost its mere function as a boundary in the genesis of spatial sequences, and represents the device through which to transmit the perception of the quality of architectural space through the design of the surface and the sensorial effects caused by the light, natural or artificial, that impacts on it. It is therefore an extension and exploration of the very concept of boundary, implemented through the design of the building’s ornamental apparatus. The methodological approach to spatial definition developed by avant-garde Chinese architects through the instrumental use of patterns and textures on structural elements or in the assembly of skeleton infillings, designed themselves as devices capable of altering the perception of the atmosphere of the inner dimension, thus opens up new theoretical paradigms inherent in the concept of ornament in the foundations of a contemporary design culture. The highlighting, exaltation and translation into ornamental language of a tectonic process thus becomes the design expedient that makes it possible to control the determination of the concept of boundary and the perception of the sensorial atmospheres of space; all this takes place both through the creative process of spatial definition and through an attention to detail that includes the exaltation of the accidental construction defect. These parameters generate the specificity of the surface during the elaboration of the executive project and in the construction site phases. In this way, distinctive compositional paradigms take shape that place their most salient trait in the emphasis of a constructive hyper- craftsmanship linked to a territoriality derived from the use of locally sourced materials and labour.