In search of alternative traditions in architecture.

This thesis was undertaken to unravel hitherto unattended histories of the built
environment with particular reference to traditional East Asian architecture and the
German organic tradition in the Modern Movement in 1920s Europe. The thesis paid
attention to an unclassifiable discipline of feng shui with respect to architecture and
urbanism within the intellectual tradition of East Asia. The thesis has elucidated that
feng shui can properly be considered neither an art nor a science from the Western
epistemological viewpoint, but a melange of arts and sciences which governs diverse
human interests inclusive of architecture and urbanism, and is also the vehicle to
embody an ancient cosmology.
As opposed to the East Asian paradigm in architecture, the thesis intended to reveal a
historical meaning of modern traditions in architecture in its emerging period,
examining exactly how the dynamic forces of modern architecture could thread into
Western modernism in general. The Puginian Gothic Revival and the Instrumentalism
of J. N. L. Durand are considered as emerging currents of the Modern Movement in
architecture: an attitude still subscribing to a transcendental mode of existence, as
against an opposing current which takes scientific rationality as its ultimate virtue.
Two opposing yet complementary tendencies within the Modern Movement are thus
recognised; Geometric versus Organic. The significant intellectual enterprise of
organic architects, such as Theodor Fischer, Hugo Häring and Hans Scharoun, often
mistakenly viewed as Expressionism, is studied in particular. The German organic
tradition is further compared with the work of Frank Lloyd Wright whose concept of
organic architecture included a keen interest in Japanese art and architecture,
especially in art printing. In response to the call for alternative traditions in
architecture, this thesis suggests that a paradigm beyond modern science and
Orientalism is needed for the synthesis of East and West and of old and new.