Journal articles on the topic 'Views on Neo-Confucianism'

Lipset (1960) denotes legitimacy as “the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate ones for the society.” All political powers, including Chinese dynasties in history, needed legitimacy to ensure their governance. In general, Western thinkers who discuss political legitimacy could be identified into two groups (Habermas, 1979). The “empiricists”, likes Max Weber, studies legitimacy in an empirical method, focusing on the types, constitutions, functions, and evolutions of legitimacy. The second group consists of “normativists”, such as Plato and John Rawls, who tend to base legitimacy on various normative values such as justice or democracy. Pre-modern Chinese views on political legitimacy have the similar approaches like west. The first one pays attention to different empirical factors of legitimacy. For instance, the pre-Qin philosopher Zou Yan (305-240 BCE), and Western Han thinker Liu Xin (50 BCE-23 CE) view a dynasty’s legitimate by its adoption of rightful dynastic phase (Wang 2006). The Song Dynasty (960–1279) historian Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072) argues that the just position and the unification of China make a legitimate dynasty (Rao 1996). The second approach bases legitimacy on normative values. For example, Confucius (551-479 BCE) indicates that the rightfulness of a ruler relies on his properly practicing both “benevolence” (ren ), and “rites” (li ). Many present scholars give us their studies on the legitimacy in Chinese history. For instance, Rao Zong (1996) provides the general overviews of legitimacy in the Chinese tradition, with an extensive collection of relevant primary sources. Hou Deren (2009) introduces most relevant present-day Chinese studies on that issue. For English readers, general studies of traditional Chinese views on legitimacy can be found in the writings of Hok-lam Chan (1984) and Richard Davis (1983). Nevertheless, it is notable that the question of legitimacy became pressing from the 13th century onwards in China, when China was ruled by non-Chinese ruling houses, such as the Yuan Dynasty 元 (1272-1368) and Qing Dynasty (1889-1912). Scholars during that period showed a great interest in discussing the question of what makes a legitimate ruler of China. In general, these scholars approached that question in two ways; they introduced the prevailing Neo-Confucianism to define the virtuous rule as the principal value of legitimacy (Bol, 2009), or they defined a Chinese ruled dynasty as legitimate. To reveal these scholars’ distinct views on legitimacy, this paper investigates two of them, the Yuan literatus Yang Weizhen (1296-1370) and the Ming (1368-1644) scholar-official Fang Xiaoru (1357-1402). For English readers, only Richard Davis (1983) gives a brief introduction on Yang Weizhen’s views on legitimacy. Few studies focus on Fang Xiaoru’s relevant views. Following the text analysis way, this article proves that Yang Weizhen and Fang Xiaoru acted as two representatives of scholars in the late imperial China. Both of them adopted Neo-Confucianism to discuss legitimacy, viewing the discussion of legitimacy as a moral evaluation of the dynasty and monarch. They also shared the idea that Chinese ruled dynasty should be viewed as legitimate.

Лейбниц был основателем Академии наук в Берлине, выдающимся математиком и человеком глубоких знаний и широких взглядов. Он стал одним из лучших знатоков китайской философии в Европе. Это произошло потому, что он помогал христианским миссионерам, которые жили в Китае, интерпретировать философские китайские тексты. Но возникает вопрос: можем ли мы сказать, что идеи неоконфуцианства в какой-то степени повлияли на философию Лейбница? Статья предлагает размышления на эту тему. Leibniz was the founder of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, outstanding mathematician and man of deep knowledge and broad views. He became one of the best experts in Chinese philosophy in Europe. It happened because he helped Christian missionaries, who were living in China, to interpret Chinese philosophical texts. But the question arises: can we say, that the ideas of neo-Confucianism to some extend influenced Leibniz’s philosophy? The article offers reasoning on this topic.

The article undertakes the analysis of the receptions of liberty in China on a sample of the translation of John Stuart Mill's “On Liberty” by Yan Fu. It is shown that in the Yan Fu' interpretation of liberty undergoes fundamental semantic changes in accordance with the ideological Chinese traditions, in particular with neo-Confucianism. Yan Fu puts collective liberty above the individual one, views the citizen only as part of a united nation. To understand the process of adaptation the new European concept, it is important to bear in mind that the translation and understanding of European thought were conducted within the framework of power relations between China as a colony and Western countries as metropolises. The linguistic aspects of the reception of liberty do not simply reflect the cultural and political realities of China in the late XIX - early XX centuries; it also changes them. Yan Fu tried to combine different types of European and Chinese ideas, in order to change the collective Chinese identity and process the collective memory.

I show that Neo-Confucianism is practiced in two ways: (1) deontologically and (2) as a virtue ethical theory. When fully appreciated, Neo-Confucianism is a virtue ethical theory, but to set out on the path of the sage and behave like a junzi, Neo-Confucianism must first be practiced deontologically. I show this by examining the importance of Neo-Confucian metaphysics to ethical practice and by drawing out the major practical differences between “lesser learning” and “higher learning.” In my view, Neo-Confucianism can be practiced deontologically because some adherents may never move to practicing Neo-Confucianism as a virtue theory.

In this article, I discuss the Song 宋 Neo-Confucian Cheng Yi's 程頤 (1033–1107) interpretation of two related controversial passages in the Analects, the recorded sayings of Confucius. The term “neo-Confucianism” was coined by Western scholars to refer to the Confucianism of the period from the Song dynasty to the Ming 明 dynasty (and sometimes through the Qing 清 dynasty). Among Chinese scholars, neo-Confucianism is most commonly referred to as the Learning of Principle (li xue 理學). Although before Cheng Yi and his brother Cheng Hao 程顥 (1032–1085) there were three other philosophers who are normally also regarded as neo-Confucians— Shao Yong 邵雍 (1011–1077), Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (1017–1073), and Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–1077)—we can justifiably regard the Cheng brothers as the real founders of neo-Confucianism in the sense that principle becomes the essential philosophical concept for the first time in their works. There is no consensus among scholars as to the relationship between the philosophies of these two brothers. The traditional view regards them as substantially different due to the two different schools of neo-Confucianism that developed from their teachings, the realistic school synthesized by Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) from the teachings of Cheng Yi and the idealist school culminating in Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1529) from the teachings of ChengHao. I, however, tend to think that the philosophical positions of the two brothers are largely similar. Unfortunately, since Cheng Hao did not live as long as Cheng Yi, there is insufficient material to create a systematic picture of his view of the Analects passages with which this article will deal.

This essay offers an analysis of the writing and practices of Song Siyŏl as a way to explore the philosophical concepts and philosophizing process of Confucian ritual in relation to women. As a symbolic and influential figure in Korean philosophy and politics, his views contributed to shaping the orthodox interpretation of the theory and practice of Neo-Confucian ritual regarding women. By demonstrating and analyzing what kinds of issues were discussed in terms of women in four family rituals, I delineate the ways in which Song Siyŏl positioned women in his ritualist metaphysics and to examine his philosophizing process.

In modern times, under the dual crisis of nationality and culture, Zhang Junmai returned to the internal philosophy of “Inner Sage,” whereby he started the global exploration of “Outer King” and constructed his own categorized Neo-Confucianism thoughts based on the contents of Yangming’s philosophy of mind as well as western philosophies. Therefore, by probing into the foundation of Zhang Junmai’s philosophy of mind, this paper explores the educational significance of the view of life based on honesty, the methodology of giving equal importance to learning and doing, and the world’s point of view contained in it, which may serve as a certain reference for the current education development.

Relative decline of the United States, rise of the rest, challenges posed by the non-state actors, proliferating violent crises in different regions, unstoppable environmental degradation, and the unabated growth of the populist tendencies are few of the issues transpiring at the system level. This paper tries to dissect this transformation, while also highlighting that how and why is China trying and willing to take on the leading role in the regional and international milieu. How does China view the world and what is the Chines image of the world order? The study elaborates Neo-Confucianism and Tianxia (All under Heaven) systems in order to enlarge upon the Chinese view of the world.

It is generally accepted that Qing China (1644–1912) was a straitlaced, sexually repressed society. Robert H. van Gulik, for example, ended his study of sexual life in China with the fall of the Ming dynasty, in part because he believed that Chinese attitudes toward sexuality became much more repressive after the Ming, and the generalizations he made in his book were not appropriate for the Qing (1961:333–36). This dramatic change in attitude has been attributed to the resurgence of Cheng- Zhu Neo-Confucianism, with its strict view of sexual relations in general, and female sexuality in particular (Ropp 1981:120–24).

“Zunwang jianba” 尊王賤霸 (Honoring the [Three] Kings and Denunciating the [Five] Hegemons) is commonly regarded as the principal idea of the Confucian Conception of History. However, Zhang Zai 張載 (1020-1077), the founder of North Song’s Neo- Confucianism, expressed his unique view of history by interpretingYijing(The Book of Changes) in his workHengqu Yishuo橫渠易說 (An Explanation of the Meaning of Yi), which departed from the ancient Confucian tradition. This article offers an account of Zhang’s philosophy of history, which has been overlooked for a long time. Zhang Zai’s historical philosophy ofYijingcan be summarized in two sentences: “Histories existed before [the advent of] historical records書前有史,” and “Tools existed prior to [the invention of] hexagrams卦前有器.”

Fang Dongmei (1899–1977) is among the most influential Chinese philosophers who lived and worked in Taiwan during the second half of the 20th century. The present article aims to clarify his view on the basic nature of the human Self. This assessment is more multifaceted than it seems at a first glimpse, for Fang’s philosophy is also more complex than it seems. As a member of the so-called neo-conservative streams of thought, he criticized the Western-type modernization and aimed to revive the holistic onto-epistemology of classical Confucianism. On the other hand, he highlighted the importance of its basic paradigm which underlay the Confucian discourses from their very beginning, i.e. since the Book of Changes, namely the principle of creative creativity (shengshengbuxi 生生不息). The alleged contradiction between his advocating of holism and creativity, has been reflected in the apparent dichotomy between the social and relational essence of the Confucian Moral Self on the one side, and individual uniqueness on the other. The paper aims to show that both seeming contradictions are actually parts of the same theoretical principle defining the complementary interactions of binary oppositions.

Phạm Nguyễn Du’s influential text Humble Comments on the Analects (Luận Ngữ Ngu Án 論語愚按) is an outstanding example of a Vietnamese adaptation and reworking of an East Asian intellectual tradition. In organizing his work, Phạm departed from convention by rearranging the extant chapters of the Analects into four “books”: “Sage” (Thánh 聖), “Learning” (Học 學), “Official” (Sĩ 仕), and “Politics” (Chính 政). Moreover, Phạm placed particular emphasis on the “Learning” book, and thus underscored his contention that the classic text was especially relevant and meaningful to eighteenth-century Vietnam. This paper attempts to read Phạm’s work in the contexts of both Confucian tradition and contemporary education. First, it examines Phạm’s composition of the Humble Comments based on Jack Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning. Phạm’s writing process in this work presents a fascinating case of transformative learning, in which the author questions received assumptions about the world and himself, puts forward new propositions, and elaborates these via an original reading of a classic. Through the analysis of Phạm Nguyễn Du’s life and his preface to the Humble Comments, one can also gain a better view of the Vietnamese reception of Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism, and more particularly, of Zhu’s dictum of “learning for the sake of one’s self” (weiji zhi xue 為己 之學). Lastly, this dictum will be reappraised to show its validity in contemporary educational contexts.

The article is devoted to the study of the formation and development of neo-Confucianism in China. The relevance of this work is dictated by the need to put the right accents in the understanding of the term “neo-Confucianism”. Its interpretation is often ambiguous in relation to the “time periods” and the direct “carriers” of this philosophical trend. So, for example, the term “neo-Confucianism” is often referred to the conditionally modern stage of the development of Confucianism (starting from the twentieth century). On the contrary, it is sometimes customary to track neo-Confucianism, bringing it “from the depth of ages” (starting with the first indirect followers of Confucius). Diametrically opposed approaches are often used in “Western” and “Chinese” philosophical literature. We tried to clarify the use of this concept to specific philosophical personalities. The stages of the formation of neo- Confucianism proposed by various authors are considered. The development of neo- Confucianism can be divided into the following stages: 1) Precinus Confucianism (historically before the formation of the Qin Dynasty); 2) the neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming dynasties; 3) The present stage of development of neo-Confucianism. After analyzing some of the approaches used in the Chinese philosophical tradition. We conclude that such a trend as “neo-Confucianism” is taken to “deduce” from “canonical Confucianism” (the texts of Confucius himself and his direct interpreters). Although this view is often criticized and can be rethought. Historically, Confucianism close to us received the designation “new neo-Confucianism”. We analyzed the main provisions of the leading representatives of this trend (Xiong Shili and Liang Suming). In turn, neo-Confucianism basically breaks down into two directions. The first of them is “appealing” to the revival of “canonical” Confucianism at the present stage of the social development of Chinese society. The second, on the contrary, "calls" for "deep modernization of Confucianism." Its “synthesis” with prevailing ideological (for example, Buddhism) and philosophical (for example, Marxism) trends.

I have decided to launch a campaign against the skyscraper, that hideous, mediocre form of architecture…. Today we only have an empty version of it, only competing in height.— Rem Koolhaas, “Kool Enough for Beijing?”Figure 1: The CCTV Headquarters—A Courtyard in the Air. Cher Coad, 2020.Introduction: An Anomaly within an Anomaly Construction of Beijing’s China Central Television Headquarters (henceforth CCTV Headquarters) began in 2004 and the building was officially completed in 2012. It is a project by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) headed by Rem Koolhaas (1944-), who has been called “the coolest, hippest, and most cutting-edge architect on the planet”(“Rem Koolhaas Biography”). The CCTV Headquarters is a distinctive feature of downtown Beijing and is heavily associated in the Western world with 21st-century China. It is often used as the backdrop for reports from the China correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Bill Birtles. The construction of the CCTV Headquarters, however, was very much an international enterprise. Koolhaas himself is Dutch, and the building was one of the first projects the OMA did outside of America after 9/11. As Koolhaas describes it: we had incredible emphasis on New York for five years, and America for five years, and what we decided to do after September 11 when we realized that, you know, things were going to be different in America: [was] to also orient ourselves eastwards [Koolhaas goes on to describe two projects: the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia and the CCTV Headquarters]. (Rem Koolhaas Interview) Problematically, Koolhaas claims that the building we created for CCTV could never have been conceived by the Chinese and could never have been built by Europeans. It is a hybrid by definition. It was also a partnership, not a foreign imposition…. There was a huge Chinese component from the very beginning. We tried to do a building that conveys that it has emerged from the local situation. (Fraioli 117) Our article reinterprets this reading. We suggest that the OMA’s “incredible emphasis” on America—home of the world’s first skyscraper: the Home Insurance Building built in 1885 in Chicago, Illinois—pivotally spills over into its engagement with China. The emergence of the CCTV Headquarters “from the local situation”, such as it is, is more in spite of Koolhaas’s stated “hybrid” approach than because of it, for what’s missing from his analysis of the CCTV Headquarters’ provenance is the siheyuan or classical Chinese courtyard house. We will argue that the CCTV Headquarters is an anomaly within an anomaly in contemporary Beijing’s urban landscape, to the extent that it turns the typologies of both the (vertical, American) skyscraper and the (horizontal, Chinese) siheyuan on a 90 degree angle. The important point to make here, however, is that these two anomalous elements of the building are not of the same order. While the anomalous re-configuration of the skyscraper typology is clearly part of Koolhaas’s architectural manifesto, it is against his architectural intentionality that the CCTV Headquarters sustains the typology of the siheyuan. This bespeaks the persistent and perhaps functional presence of traditional Chinese architecture and urbanism in the building. Koolhaas’s building contains both starkly evident and more secretive anomalies. Ironically then, there is a certain truth in Koolhaas’s words, beneath the critique we made of it above as an example of American-dominated, homogenising globalisation. And the significance of the CCTV Headquarters’ hybridity as both skyscraper and siheyuan can be elaborated through Daniel M. Abramson’s thesis that a consideration of unbuilt architecture has the potential to re-open architecture to its historical conditions. Roberto Schwarz argues that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). Drawing on Schwarz’s work and Abramson’s, we conclude that the historical presence—as secretive anomaly—of the siheyuan in the CCTV Headquarters suggests that the building’s formal debt to the siheyuan (more so than to the American skyscraper) may continue to unsettle the “specific social relationship” of Chinese to Western society (Schwarz 53). The site of this unsettlement, we suggest, is data. The CCTV Headquarters might well be the most data-rich site in all of China—it is, after all, a monumental television station. Suggestively, this wealth of airborne data is literally enclosed within the aerial “courtyard”, with its classical Chinese form, of the CCTV Headquarters. This could hardly be irrelevant in the context of the geo-politics of globalised data. The “form of data”, to coin a phrase, radiates through all the social consequences of data flow and usage, and here the form of data is entwined with a form always already saturated with social consequence. The secretive architectural anomaly of Koolhaas’s building is thus a heterotopic space within the broader Western engagement with China, so much of which relates to flows and captures of data. The Ubiquitous Siheyuan or Classical Chinese Courtyard House According to Ying Liu and Adenrele Awotona, “the courtyard house, a residential compound with buildings surrounding a courtyard on four (or sometimes three) sides, has been representative of housing patterns for over one thousand years in China” (248). Liu and Awotona state that “courtyard house patterns could be found in many parts of China, but the most typical forms are those located in the Old City in Beijing, the capital of China for over eight hundred years” (252). In their reading, the siheyuan is a peculiarly elastic architectural typology, whose influence is present as much in the Forbidden City as in the humble family home (252). Prima facie then, it is not surprising that it has also secreted itself within the architectural form of Koolhaas’s creation. It is important to note, however, that while the “most typical forms” of the siheyuan are indeed still to be found in Beijing, the courtyard house is an increasingly uncommon sight in the Chinese capital. An article in the China Daily from 2004 refers to the “few remaining siheyuan” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). That said, all is not lost for the siheyuan. Liu and Awotona discuss how the classical form of the courtyard house has been modified to more effectively house current residents in the older parts of Beijing while protecting “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” (254). “Basic design principles” (255) of the siheyuan have supported “a transition from the traditional single-household courtyard housing form to a contemporary multi-household courtyard housing form” (254). In this process, approaches of “urban renewal [involving] demolition” and “preservation, renovation and rebuilding” have been taken (255). Donia Zhang extends the work of Liu and Awotona in the elaboration of her thesis that “Chinese-Americans interested in building Chinese-style courtyard houses in America are keen to learn about their architectural heritage” (47). Zhang’s article concludes with an illustration that shows how the siheyuan may be merged with the typical American suburban dwelling (66). The final thing to emphasise about the siheyuan is what Liu and Awotona describe as its “special introverted quality” (249). The form is saturated with social consequence by virtue of its philosophical undergirding. The coincidence of philosophies of Daoism (including feng-shui) and Confucianism in the architecture and spatiality of the classical Chinese courtyard house makes it an exceedingly odd anomaly of passivity and power (250-51). The courtyard itself has a highly charged role in the management of family, social and cultural life, which, we suggest, survives its transposition into novel architectural environments. Figure 2: The CCTV Headquarters—Looking Up at “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020. The CCTV Headquarters: A New Type of Skyscraper? Rem Koolhaas is not the only architect to interrogate the standard skyscraper typology. In his essay from 1999, “The Architecture of the Future”, Norman Foster argues that “the world’s increasing ecological crisis” (278) is in part a function of “unchecked urban sprawl” (279). A new type of skyscraper, he suggests, might at least ameliorate the sprawl of our cities: the Millennium Tower that we have proposed in Tokyo takes a traditional horizontal city quarter—housing, shops, restaurants, cinemas, museums, sporting facilities, green spaces and public transport networks—and turns it on its side to create a super-tall building with a multiplicity of uses … . It would create a virtually self-sufficient, fully self-sustaining community in the sky. (279) Koolhaas follows suit, arguing that “the actual point of the skyscraper—to increase worker density—has been lost. Skyscrapers are now only momentary points of high density spaced so far apart that they don’t actually increase density at all” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). Foster’s solution to urban sprawl is to make the horizontal (an urban segment) vertical; Koolhaas’s is to make the vertical horizontal: “we’ve [OMA] come up with two types: a very low-rise series of buildings, or a single, condensed hyperbuilding. What we’re doing with CCTV is a prototype of the hyperbuilding” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). Interestingly, the “low-rise” type mentioned here brings to mind the siheyuan—textual evidence, perhaps, that the siheyuan is always already a silent fellow traveller of the CCTV Headquarters project. The CCTV Headquarters is, even at over 200 metres tall itself, an anomaly of horizontalism amidst Beijing’s pervasive skyscraper verticality. As Paul Goldberger reports, “some Beijingers have taken to calling it Big Shorts”, which again evokes horizontality. This is its most obvious anomaly, and a somewhat melancholy reminder of “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” now mutilated by skyscrapers (Liu and Awotona 254). In the same gesture, however, with which it lays the skyscraper on its side, Koolhaas’s creation raises into the air the shape of the courtyard of a classical Chinese house. To our knowledge, no one has noticed this before, let alone written about it. It is, to be sure, a genuine courtyard shape—not merely an archway or a bridge with unoccupied space between. Pure building entirely surrounds the vertical courtyard shape formed in the air. Most images of the building provide an orientation that maximises the size of its vertical courtyard. To this extent, the (secret) courtyard shape of the building is hidden in plain sight. It is possible, however, to make the courtyard narrow to a mere slit of space, and finally to nothing, by circumnavigating the building. Certain perspectives on the building can even make it look like a more-or-less ordinary skyscraper. But, as a quick google-image search reveals, such views are rare. What seems to make the building special to people is precisely that part of it that is not building. Furthermore, anyone approaching the CCTV Headquarters with the intention of locating a courtyard typology within its form will be disappointed unless they look to its vertical plane. There is no hint of a courtyard at the base of the building. Figure 3: The CCTV Headquarters—View from “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Figure 4: The CCTV Headquarters—Looking through the Floor of “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Visiting the CCTV Headquarters: A “Special Introverted Quality?” In January 2020, we visited the CCTV Headquarters, ostensibly as audience members for a recording of a science spectacular show. Towards the end of the recording, we were granted a quick tour of the building. It is rare for foreigners to gain access to the sections of the building we visited. Taking the lift about 40 floors up, we arrived at the cantilever level—known informally as “the overhang”. Glass discs in the floor allow one to walk out over nothingness, looking down on ant-like pedestrians. Looking down like this was also to peer into the vacant “courtyard” of the building—into a structure “turned or pushed inward on itself”, which is the anatomical definition of “introverted” (Oxford Languages Dictionary). Workers in the building evinced no great affection for it, and certainly nothing of our wide-eyed wonder. Somebody said, “it’s just a place to work”. One of this article’s authors, Patrick West, seemed to feel the overhang almost imperceptibly vibrating beneath him. (Still, he has also experienced this sensation in conventional skyscrapers.) We were told the rumour that the building has started to tilt over dangerously. Being high in the air, but also high on the air, with nothing but air beneath us, felt edgy—somehow special—our own little world. Koolhaas promotes the CCTV Headquarters as (in paraphrase) “its own city, its own community” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). This resonated with us on our visit. Conventional skyscrapers fracture any sense of community through their segregated floor-upon-floor verticality; there is never enough room for a little patch of horizontal urbanism to unroll. Within “the overhang”, the CCTV Headquarters felt unlike a standard skyscraper, as if we were in an urban space magically levitated from the streets below. Sure, we had been told by one of the building’s inhabitants that it was “just a place to work”—but compared to the bleak sterility of most skyscraper work places, it wasn’t that sterile. The phrase Liu and Awotona use of the siheyuan comes to mind here, as we recall our experience; somehow, we had been inside a different type of building, one with its own “special introverted quality” (249). Special, that is, in the sense of containing just so much of horizontal urbanism as allows the building to retain its introverted quality as “its own city” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). Figure 5: The CCTV Headquarters—View from “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020.Figure 6: The CCTV Headquarters—Inside “The Overhang”. Cher Coad, 2020. Unbuilt Architecture: The Visionary and the Contingent Within the present that it constitutes, built architecture is surrounded by unbuilt architecture at two interfaces: where the past ends; where the future begins. The soupy mix of urbanism continually spawns myriad architectural possibilities, and any given skyscraper is haunted by all the skyscrapers it might have been. History and the past hang heavily from them. Meanwhile, architectural programme or ambition—such as it is—pulls in the other direction: towards an idealised (if not impossible to practically realise) future. Along these lines, Koolhaas and the OMA are plainly a future-directed, as well as self-aware, architectural unit: at OMA we try to build in the greatest possible tolerance and the least amount of rigidity in terms of embodying one particular moment. We want our buildings to evolve. A building has at least two lives—the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward—and they are never the same. (Fraioli 115) Koolhaas makes the same point even more starkly with regard to the CCTV Headquarters project through his use of the word “prototype”: “what we’re doing with CCTV is a prototype of the hyperbuilding” (“Kool Enough for Beijing?”). At the same time, however, as the presence of the siheyuan within the architecture of the CCTV Headquarters shows, the work of the OMA cannot escape from the superabundance of history, within which, as Roberto Schwarz claims, “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). Supporting our contentions here, Daniel M. Abramson notes that unbuilt architecture implies two sub-categories … the visionary unbuilt, and the contingent … . Visionary schemes invite a forward glance, down one true, vanguard path to a reformed society and discipline. The contingent unbuilts, conversely, invite a backward glance, along multiple routes history might have gone, each with its own likelihood and validity; no privileged truths. (Abramson)Introducing Abramson’s theory to the example of the CCTV Headquarters, the “visionary unbuilt” lines up with Koolhaas’ thesis that the building is a future-directed “prototype”. while the clearest candidate for the “contingent unbuilt”, we suggest, is the siheyuan. Why? Firstly, the siheyuan is hidden in plain sight, within the framing architecture of the CCTV Headquarters; secondly, it is ubiquitous in Beijing urbanism—little wonder then that it turns up, unannounced, in this Beijing building; thirdly, and related to the second point, the two buildings share a “special introverted quality” (Liu and Awotona 249). “The contingent”, in this case, is the anomaly nestled within the much more blatant “visionary” (or futuristic) anomaly—the hyperbuilding to come—of the Beijing-embedded CCTV Headquarters. Koolhaas’s building’s most fascinating anomaly relates, not to any forecast of the future, but to the subtle persistence of the past—its muted quotation of the ancient siheyuan form. Our article is, in part, a response to Abramson’s invitation to “pursue … the consequences of the unbuilt … [and thus] to open architectural history more fully to history”. We have supplemented Abramson’s idea with Schwarz’s suggestion that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53). The anomaly of the siheyuan—alongside that of the hyperbuilding—within the CCTV headquarters, opens the building up (paraphrasing Abramson) to a fuller analysis of its historical positioning within Western and Eastern flows of globalisation (or better, as we are about to suggest, of glocalisation). In parallel, its form (paraphrasing Schwarz) abstracts and re-presents this history’s specific social relationships. Figure 7: The CCTV Headquarters—A Courtyard of Data. Cher Coad, 2020.Conclusion: A Courtyard of Data and Tensions of Glocalisation Koolhaas proposes that the CCTV Headquarters was “a partnership, not a foreign imposition” and that the building “emerged from the local situation” (Fraioli 117). To us, this smacks of Pollyanna globalisation. The CCTV Headquarters is, we suggest, more accurately read as an imposition of the American skyscraper typology, albeit in anomalous form. (One might even argue that the building’s horizontal deviation from the vertical norm reinforces that norm.) Still, amidst a thicket of conventionally vertical skyscrapers, the building’s horizontalism does have the anomalous effect of recalling “the horizontal planning feature of traditional Beijing” (Liu and Awotona 254). Buried within its horizontalism, however, lies a more secretive anomaly in the form of a vertical siheyuan. This anomaly, we contend, motivates a terminological shift from “globalisation” to “glocalisation”, for the latter term better captures the notion of a lack of reconciliation between the “global” and the “local” in the building. Koolhaas’s visionary architectural programme explicitly advances anomaly. The CCTV Headquarters radically reworks the skyscraper typology as the prototype of a hyperbuilding defined by horizontalism. Certainly, such horizontalism recalls the horizontal plane of pre-skyscraper Beijing and, if faintly, that plane’s ubiquitous feature: the classical courtyard house. Simultaneously, however, the siheyuan has a direct if secretive presence within the morphology of the CCTV Headquarters, even as any suggestion of a vertical courtyard is strikingly absent from Koolhaas’s vanguard manifesto. To this extent, the hyperbuilding fits within Abramson’s category of “the visionary unbuilt”, while the siheyuan aligns with Abramson’s “contingent unbuilt” descriptor. The latter is the “might have been” that, largely under the pressure of its ubiquity as Beijing vernacular architecture, “very nearly is”. Drawing on Schwarz’s idea that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships”, we propose that the siheyuan, as anomalous form of the CCTV Headquarters, is a heterotopic space within the hybrid global harmony (to paraphrase Koolhaas) purportedly represented by the building (53). In this space thus formed collides the built-up historical and philosophical social intensity of the classical Chinese courtyard house and the intensities of data flows and captures that help constitute the predominantly capitalist and neo-liberalist “social relationship” of China and the Western world—the world of the skyscraper (Schwarz). Within the siheyuan of the CCTV Headquarters, globalised data is literally enveloped by Daoism and Confucianism; it is saturated with the social consequence of local place. The term “glocalisation” is, we suggest, to be preferred here to “globalisation”, because of how it better reflects such vernacular interruptions to the hegemony of globalised space. Forms delineate social relationships, and data, which both forms and is formed by social relationships, may be formed by architecture as much as anything else within social space. Attention to the unbuilt architectural forms (vanguard and contingent) contained within the CCTV Headquarters reveals layers of anomaly that might, ultimately, point to another form of architecture entirely, in which glocal tensions are not only recognised, but resolved. Here, Abramson’s historical project intersects, in the final analysis, with a worldwide politics. Figure 8: The CCTV Headquarters—A Sound Stage in Action. Cher Coad, 2020. References Abramson, Daniel M. “Stakes of the Unbuilt.” Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative. 20 July 2020. <http://we-aggregate.org/piece/stakes-of-the-unbuilt>.Foster, N. “The Architecture of the Future.” The Architecture Reader: Essential Writings from Vitruvius to the Present. Ed. A. Krista Sykes. New York: George Braziller, 2007: 276-79. 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Stockholm, Sweden: Royal Institute of Technology, 1996: 248-60. <https://iaps.architexturez.net/system/files/pdf/1202bm1029.content.pdf>.Oxford Languages Dictionary. “Rem Koolhaas Biography.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 20 July 2020. <https://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ge-La/Koolhaas-Rem.html>. “Rem Koolhaas Interview.” Manufacturing Intellect. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 2003. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW187PwSjY0>.Schwarz, Roberto. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. New York: Verso, 1992. Zhang, Donia. “Classical Courtyard Houses of Beijing: Architecture as Cultural Artifact.” Space and Communication 1.1 (Dec. 2015): 47-68.