Chapter two case Studies

PEKING UNIVERSITY

beautiful, imperial setting. This setting Yenching was to fully exploit in the construction of its new campus, between 1921–1926.

The man who assumed responsibility for its design was an American architect, Henry Killam Murphy. He executed a number of important commissions in early twentieth-century China, personally favouring educational buildings and campus plans designed in a Chinese style. In referencing Chinese models, Murphy believed that his campuses bridged the gulf between the religious and educational values of the West and those of the Far East, thus better integrating the AngloChristian Yenching into its backdrop. The plan he devised for the campus was a Beaux-Arts inspired composition predicated upon an arrangement of perpendicular axes and three-sided quadrangles, traditional to Chinese design.³⁵

The chairman of the Grounds and Buildings Committee, Dr Galt, later recalled how the planning process was begun:

The first task was the location of an axial line which should serve as a base for the arrangement of symmetrical courts and quads. On the occasion of Murphy’s first visit to the site with this purpose in mind, he stood upon one of the artificial hills on the site looking westward toward the mountains. His gaze fell upon the highest of the Jade Fountain pagodas and he exclaimed, ‘There is the point we are looking for.’ The line of our main axis shall be directed to the pagoda on the Jade Fountain hill.³⁶

In Beaux-Arts fashion, Murphy provided a grand entrance to the campus though the brightly painted West Gate, guarded by two attendant stone lions, which revealed a lawned quadrangle approached by a small stone bridge. The three-sided Main Quadrangle was dominated by the eastern building, Bashford Hall (now the Office of the President), which was flanked to its right and left by McBrier Hall (now the Building of Foreign Languages) and a science building (Northern Chemistry Building). To the south of this grouping, was set out the Science Quadrangle, and to its north was a further quadrangle, framed by McBrier Hall to the south and Ninde Hall to the east with the remaining sides left open for future expansion. To the north of this court, four large dormitories arranged in pairs bordered a landscape of private parkland with its crowning point of a large lake known as Weiming Lake. At the

south west of campus, Murphy grouped the Women’s College. The symmetrical, axial plan of the buildings has resulted in a lucid campus linked by a network of paths, in which the pedestrian, not the car, has supremacy.³⁷

In stylistic terms, the design embraced ‘the splendid heritage of Chinese Architecture…in an adaption [sic] of the native style, as exemplified in the beautiful buildings within the “Forbidden City”’.³⁸ The university’s newly appointed first president, John Leighton Stuart, fully concurred with Murphy’s reflections on the use of the Chinese architectural mode for its symbolic and aesthetic currency. ‘We had determined from the outset to use an adaptation of Chinese architecture for the academic buildings’, he recounted:

Graceful curves and gorgeous colouring were designed for the exteriors while the main structures were to be constructed throughout of reinforced concrete and equipped with modern lighting, heating and plumbing. Thus the buildings were in themselves symbolic of our educational purpose in preserving all that was most valuable in China’s cultural heritage.³⁹

The campus buildings largely assumed a palatial guise, resplendent in their colour, ornament and general luxury. In vernacular tradition, the buildings were rectangular in plan with robust pillars and beams carrying overhanging roofs of hipped or hip and gable types, decorated with carved creatures suspended from the ridges. Dark red pilasters stood out against the white walls upon granite pedestals, while the whole was treated to vivid paint work in sumptuous colours (Figure 2.28).

The most striking architectural element of the composition was the Boya Tower. Rising to a height of 40 metres, the tower was located on the banks of the lake. In fact a water tower, Murphy cloaked the utilitarian structure with a pagoda-like exterior. The pagoda was, he espoused ‘the most purely symbolic of Chinese buildings and the most distinctive man-made feature of the Chinese landscape’. Modelled on the octagonal Ming Dynasty structure at Tung-chou, east of Beijing, the tower immediately invested the campus with a historic presence and a visual landmark, emblematic of the institution. Murphy similarly applied a Chinese veneer to the original library building. Adopting local traditions, it was designed as a rectangular

building with columns supporting a tiled roof. Yet fusing Western methods, the columns are embedded into plastered walls that divide the interior spaces in a Western way and Chinese grillwork shades western-style windows. Whereas in traditional Chinese structures, interior spaces flow into exterior ones, Murphy’s plastered walls firmly separate the inside and out.⁴⁰

Murphy’s Beaux-Arts approach to planning continued to hold sway, when, in 1984, the university decided to expand the campus in response to rising student numbers and growing academic programmes. Consequently, the campus saw the construction of new facilities for the Geophysics Department, Law Department, Guanghua School of Management, Centre for the Study of Chinese Archaeology and a new university library. All were predicated upon the traditional Chinese aesthetic of the original buildings, yet reflective of their modern context in their simpler, more sober exteriors and contemporary construction methods.

The Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology was sited so as to form the third side of the quadrangle to the north of the Main Quadrangle. Completed in 1993 to designs by Prentice & Chan, Ohlhausen, it complemented the Ming Dynasty style of the surrounding buildings in its architecture and its siting around a central courtyard. The new university library (1998) provided a spacious eastern addition to the 1970s existing library. Designed by Guan Zhaoye, it evinces a thoughtful response to the surrounding landscape and structures. It was sited on an open green space near the south bank of the lake, adjoining the eastern side of the old library. Two classroom buildings were demolished to make way for a green lawn opening out from the library steps. The lawn has achieved popular status on campus as a venue for studying, student activities and socializing. The building incorporates many of the features of the historic buildings, such as an overhanging tiled roof supported by tou-kung brackets. The Guanghua School of Management (1997), to the south-east of the library, espoused a similar creed. Designed by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, it harmonizes well with the campus environment. Conforming to the architectural idiom, the building’s four dark grey sloped roofs with coloured glazed tiles are


supported upon grey and white exterior walls. The complex is set around a courtyard, surrounded by buildings on three sides. Internal and external courts provide spaces for interaction.⁴¹

Predominantly, therefore, Peking’s campus has grown in holistic fashion, with its modern approaches to layout, architectural styles, and landscape remaining attuned to those of the 1920s. Notably, its buildings have consistently responded to the campus’s garden setting, integrating functional units into the surrounding landscape. The campus espouses Chinese landscaping traditions sensitive to the natural topography. The informal landscape is stunningly beautiful. Around the lake, foot paths meander between trees and pools, while at its centre, a graceful octagonal structure with scarlet pillars, the Luce Pavilion, sits upon an island reached by an arched bridge (Figure 2.29). Interspersed within this setting is a wealth of notable Chinese relics. Many objects previously housed in the YuanMingYuan – a large complex of palaces and gardens to the north-west of Beijing’s old city walls destroyed in the nineteenth century – found their way to the campus, including the two towering marble columns carved with entwined dragons that stand on the lawn before the Office of the President Building (Figure 2.30). Believed to date to 1742, they used to stand in YuanMingYuan’s Ancestral Temple. The two stone unicorns standing guard outside the office building also have a YuanMingYuan origin.⁴²

Such treasures vitally enrich the campus, cultivating a compelling sense of place and ancestry that distinguishes Peking within the collection of universities in the Haidian district. Creating a memorable sense of place is a feat at which the university has excelled. The luxurious west gates, with their vivid red doors and pillars and dazzlingly coloured cornices superintended by two marble lions, provide an eye-catching entryway and immediately demarcate the university’s grounds. Its institutional identity is further underscored by the harmonious treatment of landscape and architecture, with its palette of evergreens, willows, cherry blossoms, and overhanging tiled roofs sloping gracefully down to deep-red columns. The result is an accessible and edifying academic environment.