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Cultural impacts on traditional Chinese garden design: A configurational comparison between traditional Chinese imperial and private gardens using space syntax
Based on former qualitative studies, traditional Chinese imperial garden (TCIG) and private garden
(TCPG) arguably have different cultural backgrounds and spatial properties. However, few studies
have analysed configurational differences between TCIG and TCPG quantitatively and linked their
different cultural contexts to these differences.
This research thus tries to reveal the cultural impacts on the spatial configuration of traditional
Chinese gardens by comparing TCIG and TCPG cases quantitatively. The study is processed in
two sections: theoretical exploration and comparative case studies. In the first section, we try to
link the different cultural backgrounds of TCIG and TCPG with corresponding garden spatial
properties and use proper metrics to match these spatial properties. Four dimensions of traditional
Chinese garden spatial properties are identified qualitatively based on previous studies: strong and
weak programme, wayfinding system, visual relationship and spatial depth. During the process,
four corresponding hypotheses about the spatial property differences and predicted results of
quantitative studies are proposed. In the second section, four hypotheses may be demonstrated
through visibility graph analysis (VGA) in space syntax theory by comparing three samples from
each garden type. Our results indicate that TCIG and TCPG differ in all four dimensions, which
are further explained by their respective cultural contexts.
This research has two main contributions. Firstly, it has demonstrated configurational differences
of TCIG and TCPG quantitatively and linked these differences to related cultural backgrounds.
Secondly, this study has built a framework to analyse traditional Chinese garden space with space
syntax, which can be used in further studies
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