Architecture and domestic culture in eighteenth-century China

This thesis examines architectural discourse and spatial practices as manifestations and experiences of order in eighteenth-century Qing dynasty China. It reviews the development of the historiography of Chinese architectural history as an academic discipline, and proposes that in the Qing there was an unprecedented rupture between domestic architectural style from that of the court. An alternative design strategy in spatial planning and detailing was adopted. It is argued that the Qing architectural discourse, its intertextuality, was implicitly linked to the historical formation of the Qing self, and that it was pivotal to the rise of domestic culture. The study approaches architecture as historical statements and arguments, and focuses on the production of space, human agency, gender, and subject positioning in early modern China. The study analyzes the Yugong mansion, Beijing, the Rong mansion in the Qing novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, and the Manchu imperial city, as examples