Preliminary Exploration of the Impact of Ancient Eastern Space Concept on Contemporary Architecture

Ancient East held another way for spatial representation and spatial design that was different from the current mainstream way, which was mainly dominated by projected geometry and linear perspective, which led to the cross-scale phenomenon, for example, in the ancient Chinese landscape. This latest research result will provide us with a new perspective to re-examine the impact of the Eastern space concept on contemporary architecture during the early cultural interaction between the East and the West from the 18th to the 19th centuries, the possible limitations at that time, and the remaining issues. In the present paper, through the historical tracing of the fragments of Laozi’s texts inscribed in the auditorium of Taliesin West, and the reductive analysis of relative texts and specific cases, the research tries to clear some ignoring and guide some more possibilities to a certain extent. The investigation will help not only to interpret the Chinese landscape, to bridge the previous misunderstanding of East-West cultural interactions under the influence of post-colonialism; but also to show more possibilities of the ancient Eastern space concept, including their extensions to contemporary landscape architectural design.