China's garden culture is very rich. Next to the three halls of the Forbidden City in Beijing, there are three seas, and there are Yuanmingyuan, Summer Palace and so on in the suburbs. This is the emperor's garden. Folk old houses always have patios and yards, which can also be regarded as a small garden.

For example, Zheng Banqiao described a courtyard like this: "Ten yards of Mao Zhai, one patio, several bamboo poles, and several stalagmites. The land is not much, and the cost is not much. There is sound in the wind and rain, there is shadow in the sun, the moon and the moon, there is love in the wine in the poem, and there is companionship in the leisure. I am not the only one who loves bamboo stone, that is, bamboo stone loves me too. He spends a lot of money to build a garden pavilion, or to travel around the country, but he can't enjoy himself in the end. And we want to visit famous mountains and rivers, but we can't go there for a while. What a room with a small scene, full of affection and flavor, lasting forever! For this painting, if it is difficult to collect it, it will be hidden in the secret, and it can also be restored. " ("Zheng Banqiao Collection Bamboo Stone")

We can see that this small patio has given Zheng Banqiao a rich feeling! Space can be gathered and released with the artistic conception in the heart, which is fluid and illusory. How rich the art of space organization is.

China's ancient art took Tao as its design principle, and it was culturally compatible with landscape design. The reason why China's classical gardens have a long history lies in the beauty of space reflected in them.

As Lao Tzu said, "Planting a tree as a vessel, when it has no vessel for use, chiseling a household as a room, and when it has no room for use, is to benefit from it and not to use it." In fact, the essence of clay-kneading utensils is no longer soil, and there is a "no" space in it, and the use of the room is due to the space in the room. China's gardening art also realizes the pursuit of "space" through the treatment of landscape.

1. Looking at the habitat:

On landscape painting, Guo Xi of the Song Dynasty said, "Landscape is feasible, promising, tourable and habitable." (Lin Quan Gao Zhi) Feasibility, hope, travel and residence are also the basic ideas of garden art. There are also buildings in the garden, so people should be able to live and have a rest. But it is not just for living, it must be swimable, feasible and hopeful. Among them, "hope" is the most important.

all art is "hope" and appreciation. Not only "swimming" can play the role of "looking" (the promenade of the Summer Palace not only leads us to "swim", but also leads us to "look"), that is, "living" and "looking" as well. The window is not only for air, but also for looking out to a new realm, so that we can get a beautiful feeling.

windows play an important role in the art of landscape architecture. With windows, communication takes place inside and outside. Bamboo or green hills outside the window, looking through the window frame, is a painting. There are windows on almost four sides of Le Shou Tang in the Summer Palace, and many small windows are arranged around the powder wall, facing the lake view, and each window is equal to a small painting (Li Yu said, "a window with a ruler, no intention of painting"). Even if you look at the same window from different angles, the scenery is different. In this way, the realm of space is infinitely increased.

People in the Ming Dynasty have a poem that can help us understand the aesthetic function of windows. "A piano a few idle, a few bamboo garden outside the window. The curtain door is silent, and the spring breeze blows in. "

this small room is isolated from the outside, but it is connected with the outside through the window. No one appeared, but it highlighted the space beauty of this small room.

Not only corridors and windows, but also all buildings, platforms, pavilions and pavilions in China gardens are for "looking" and for gaining and enriching the feeling of beauty in space.

there is a plaque in the summer palace, which is called "the first floor of mountains, lakes and light". That is to say, this building absorbs the scenery of a large space.

Zuo Si's San Du Fu: "Eight poles can be surrounded by an inch of eyes, and everything can be gathered in one day."

Su Shi's poem: "It depends on high-rise buildings to gather far away, and tidy up with idle people for a while." That's what they all mean.

There is also a pavilion in the Summer Palace called "Traveling in a pictorial world". "Traveling in a pictorial world" does not mean that the pavilion itself is a painting, but that the large space outside the pavilion is like a big painting. When you enter the pavilion, you will enter the big painting. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty Ji Cheng said in "Yuanye": "The porch is Gao Shuang, the window is empty, and the Wang Yang with a thousand hectares is magnificent at four o'clock."

These show the national characteristics of China gardens. The ancient Greeks didn't seem to have discovered the natural scenery around the temple, and they mostly isolated the building itself to enjoy it. People in ancient China were different. They always contacted the outside nature through buildings, doors and windows.

"The window contains autumn snow in Xiling, and the Dongwu Wan Li boat is moored at the gate" (Du Fu). The poet goes from a small room to the snow of a thousand years and the ship of Wan Li, that is, from a door to a window to infinite space and time.

there are many such poems. Like "cutting green to open doors" (Du Fu);

"The mountains and rivers bow down to embroider households, and the sun and the moon are near to carve beams." (Du Fu)

"The eaves fly over the stream, and the windows fall over the Jingting Cloud." (Li Bai)

"When the mountains are green and the mountains are heavy, the water and light come from thousands of miles to hold the city." (Xu Hun)

and so on, these are all small things, and moving from small space to large space enriches the feeling of beauty. No matter how magnificent foreign churches are, there are always limitations. But when we look at the altar in the Temple of Heaven, this table is not facing the roof, but an empty sky, that is, taking the whole universe as its own temple.

2. Creating a scene by borrowing:

In order to enrich the aesthetic feeling of space, various techniques are used to arrange, organize and create space in landscape architecture, such as borrowing scenery, dividing scenery, isolating scenery and so on. Among them, borrowing scenery includes borrowing from afar, borrowing from neighbors, borrowing from others, borrowing from the mirror and so on.

The landscape in the garden is dizzying because it plays a guiding and indicating role in space. Contact up and down, echo back and forth, and create a fascinating landscape effect. Many modern landscape designers regard the horizon space as the design scope and the horizon as the spatial reference, and form the integration and coordination between the landscape and the surrounding environment by borrowing the scenery, which is to borrow the infinite extension of the spatial visual effect pursued by China traditional gardens and achieve the same effect.

The tower of Yuquan Mountain seems to be part of the Summer Palace, which is a "borrowing scenery". Guanyunlou in Suzhou Lingering Garden can borrow the scenery of Tiger Hill, and Humble Administrator's Garden can build a rockery against the wall and build a "Liangyi Pavilion" to get a panoramic view of the partition wall and break through the limitations of the fence, which is also a "borrowing scenery". The promenade of the Summer Palace divides a landscape into two parts, one is the vast lakes and mountains close to nature, and the other is the pavilions and pavilions close to man-made. Visitors can look out from both sides, enriching the impression of beauty. This is a "split view".

In the novel A Dream of Red Mansions, the Grand View Garden uses gates, rockeries, walls, etc., resulting in twists and turns in the garden, and the realm is deep at different levels. Like different notes in music, visitors have different emotional appeal, which is also called "scene separation".

The humorous garden in the Summer Palace is a courtyard of its own, which creates another space and is another kind of interest. The small garden in this big garden is called "isolated scenery". Hanging a large mirror against the window, the scenery of the large space outside the window is reflected in the mirror, becoming a luminous "oil painting".

"Clouds on clothes through the window, in the mirror of the mountain spring". (Wang Wei)

"The sails and shadows all pass through the window gap, and the stream is looking at the mirror." (Ye Lingyi)

This is the so-called "mirror loan". "Borrowing from the mirror" means borrowing the scenery from the mirror, so that the scenery can be reflected in the mirror, turning it into a virtual reality (Suzhou Yiyuan's side-wall pavilion is in a great situation, hanging a large mirror, including the opposite rockery and snail pavilion in the mirror, expanding the realm). This is also the intention of chiseling a pool in the garden to reflect the scenery.

whether it's borrowing scenery, facing scenery, separating scenery or dividing scenery, it enriches the feeling of beauty and creates artistic conception by arranging space, organizing space, creating space and expanding space. China garden art has a special performance in this respect, and it is an important field to understand the aesthetic characteristics of China people. To sum up, as Shen Fu said: "The big and medium see the small, the small see the big, the virtual is real, the real is empty, or hidden or exposed, or shallow or deep, not only in the cycle of twists and turns." (Six Chapters of a Floating Life)

III. Seeing the scenery in a small way:

Building an infinite space with a limited area has become the goal pursued by China traditional gardens, which is the same as the French classical gardens' pursuit of the infinite and far-reaching central axis landscape effect. "Fake natural scenery, creating landscapes is really interesting."

Chinese classical gardens are space-time arts that emerged and developed in the course of thousands of years of Chinese civilization with Han culture as the main body. Zong Baihua summarized them as "concentrating on emptiness" and Zhang Jiaji summarized them as "eternal, universal", which profoundly reflected the fundamental influence of the category of "neutralization" in China's classical aesthetics on the formation of China's classical garden art style, and in essence reflected the natural philosophy and simplicity of "harmony between man and nature" in ancient China.

"Seeking infinity in the finite" is a contradictory problem that China classical gardens have to face in every period, and it also contributes to the formation of its unique artistic charm.

As David Silbert said, "No problem has ever touched people's emotions as deeply as infinity, no concept has ever inspired people's reason as effectively as infinity, and no concept needs to be clarified as urgently as infinity."