The Chinese garden architecture is one of the four essential factors for garden landscaping. It’s a kind of architecture used for providing a place for rest and sightseeing to people. The essential buildings of Chinese garden architectures include halls，pavilions，corridors and bridges, etc. The garden architectures should satisfy the requirements both for practical purposes and aesthetics purpose. They should blend with the environment within the garden and the natural environment, either as a central scenic spot or as an individual small scenic spot easy to access.
One of outstanding characteristics of Chinese garden architectures is taking advantage of the environment so that the natural scenes and human interest could be merged. The classic garden architectures are often embellished with calligraphy of poems and paintings. They shun symmetry along an axis and adopt an irregular and complicated layout with plenty of large and small spaces. The appearance of a garden building should be aesthetic and expressive, and enhance the beauty of the surroundings. In its details, exquisite decorative means should be made use of, such as pretty guardrails, patterned windows, grilles, etc. A garden building is a place for viewing the scenery within or beyond the garden and is a key point of the garden. So both the direction of the building and the positions of its doors and windows should take into consideration the viewing angles and the routes.
Chinese garden architecture
Style in North China and South China
The styles of garden architectures are different in north China and south China. Gardens in south of China are mainly private gardens, while in north of China are mainly imperial gardens. Besides the scale and natural environment are different, the main difference is the architecture’s form. Gardens in north of China is magnificent and stress the intense colors of paintings, and the structure is much more official. Elaborate gardens in south of China, with green tiles and white walls is totally different from magnificent colorful gardens in north of China. And it’s common to see that elaborate wood carvings are used to decorate the gardens in south of China.
Representative Garden Architecture
•Suzhou Gardens
Suzhou gardens reflect the artistic characteristics of Chinese garden architecture. Suzhou garden has a history of two thousand years. There are still some famous gardens in Suzhou. Suzhou gardens wield all resources to express the beauty of garden landscaping, combining Chinese landscape and flowers and birds and adding the Tang poem Song poem’s ideal condition to increase the cultural connotation. The famous garden architectures in Suzhou include Canglangting Garden, Shizilin Garden, Zhuozhengyuan Garden, Liuyuan Garden, etc.
Yuanmingyuan Garden
•Yuanmingyuan Garden
Yuanmingyuan Garden is the most famous imperial garden in China. It’s regarded as garden of gardens by Chinese people. The garden combines different styles of garden art and use western architecture style for reference. Unfortunately, the Yuanmingyuan Garden was destroyed by British and French troops in 1860. People only have to imagine its beauty from the relics. At least, it’s the most eminent gardens in China at that time and it was famous to Europe by missionary’s letters and introductions. To some extent, the style of garden architecture in Europe was affected by Yuanmingyuan Garden in 18th century.