The Tao of Architecture by Amos Ih Tiao Chang

Technologizing nature describes the harnessing of nature mechanically not only to increase human comfort, but also as the only way to define what is true. The sea change in learning, from competence in Confucian metaphysics to mastery of the nuts and bolts of technologizing nature, is central to the question of how to define, for lack of a better term, Chinese modernity. Up to 1905, and for centuries prior, young men (and it was always men) vied for good jobs and social standing by scoring well in civil service examinations based on the Confucian classics. What pertains for us is this: in what way was Chang an educated man? Prior to the twentieth century, neither engineering nor architecture were lines of professional pursuit in traditional Chinese culture. Chang then practiced as an architect in Thailand until taking his academic post in the architecture program at Kansas State University in 1967. ² After graduating from college, Chang worked as an engineer in China prior to going on to pursue graduate study in architecture at Princeton University he earned the Ph.D. During his college years at Chongqing University, the Japanese bombed the city repeatedly, as it was the seat of the Nationalist government during the second Sino-Japanese War. By the time he graduated from high school in 1935, the new Chinese nation had already gone through several attempts at national governance. Chang was born just five years after the fall of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, in 1911.

The formative years of Amos Ih Tiao Chang’s life (1916–1998) were tumultuous ones for China. It is a pleasure now to write this foreword to Amos Chang’s book upon its re-release, and to revisit that question I asked long ago. The Tao ¹ of Architecture was one of the first books that stirred a nascent question in me: How does philosophy relate to architecture? How indeed! That was well over thirty years ago.

Princeton Classic Edition paperback ISBN: 978-1-3ġ0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 FOREWORD TO THE PRINCETON CLASSICS EDITION

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960851 In the United Kingdom: Princeton Univeristy Press,Ħ Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TRįormerly titled The Existence of Intangible Content in Architectonic Form Based upon the Practicality of Laotzu’s Philosophyįirst Princeton Classics Edition, with a foreword by David Wang, 2017 Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Copyright © 1956 Princeton University Pressįoreword to first Princeton Classics EditionĬopyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press

The Tao of Architecture by Amos Ih Tiao Chang