A journey into China's architectural wonders

By BRENT CUNNINGHAM
Reporter Staff

Many of the photographs Beverly Foit- Albert brought back from China are of centuries-old sites that soon will disappear from the face of the earth. When the Chinese government finishes the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, some of the temples she visited and many of the steep gorges she passed through will be submerged under a vast lake.

The construction of the dam added a poignant note to Foit-Albert's UB at Sunrise presentation on Nov. 19. An associate professor in the Department of Architecture and a leading Western New York architect, she showed slides of temples and mountains, describing her visit to some of the most stunning natural and architectural wonders in the world.

Foit-Albert focused on the connection between Chinese architecture and Chinese thought, especially the value Chinese religious thought places on harmony with nature, balance and social order. These ideas, said Foit-Albert, are all implied by the concept of "chi." "The Chinese philosophy," she said, "holds that the universe is in a never-ending process of change, and that change has its order."

Photographs of a 200-foot-high Buddha carved out of stone helped Foit-Albert make her point about integration. "In this case," she said, "the temple is the sculpture, and the sculpture is the temple."

These ideas of harmony, she added, also show up in the Chinese architectural tendency to integrate the structure with the site. Foit-Albert showed slides of temples carved from rock cliffs; temples built on sheer, column-like peaks, and roofs constructed to symbolize the surrounding hills and valley. Referring to a temple anchored into the side of a cliff like a barnacle, she drew attention to "the way solid and void supplement each other."

Harmony with heaven, earth

According to Foit-Albert, another duality that Chinese architecture seeks to harmonize is that between heaven and earth. In most Chinese temples and many Chinese buildings, space spreads out horizontally and equally, creating a domain between earthly delights and the "place where the supreme being dwells." The latter often is symbolized by domes and roofs, or by the suggestion of "heavenly mountains," another dwelling place for the supernatural.

Not everything in Chinese art and architecture is about peace and harmony, Foit-Albert pointed out. She showed slides from her visit to the army of life-size, terra-cotta warriors that were buried near Qin Shi Huang Ti's tomb in the third century B.C. Qin Shi Huang Ti was the first emperor of a unified China and built the Great Wall of China. Only discovered in 1974, Foit-Albert said there are more than 6,000 uncovered warriors and possibly as many as 20,000 still buried.

Cyclical design of buildings

"I don't know if you've ever had the experience of having your breath taken away," she said, "but I have, and this place did it."

The title of Foit-Albert's talk, "The Silent Music of Chinese Architecture," referred to the cyclical design of many Chinese temples and buildings. In many cases, she said, there is a symbolic journey through the structure, as well as a literal journey. The visitor begins outside, in silence, and passes up or through the structure, often reaching a point where the structure faces back into the initial void, into silence and the infinite, the music of the cycle of life and death. As an example, Foit-Albert showed a series of slides taking the viewer through a Buddhist temple wedged in the space between two gigantic slabs of rock, which she compared to hands praying. The building turns back on itself, drawing the visitor's gaze back out of the fissure, in the direction of the sunlight and the temple's entrance.

In imitation of this cyclical "silent music," Foit-Albert ended her slide show where it began, with a photograph of one of the gorges along the Yangtze. The "silent music" she referred to might also be applied to the music of that gorge, as well as the music of hundreds of temples and archaeological treasures, all of which are destined to be silenced by the Three Gorges Dam.