The Tao of Architecture by Amos Ih Tiao Chang

During his college years at Chongqing University, the Japanese bombed the city repeatedly, as it was the seat of the Nationalist government during the second Sino-Japanese War. By the time he graduated from high school in 1935, the new Chinese nation had already gone through several attempts at national governance. Chang was born just five years after the fall of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, in 1911. The formative years of Amos Ih Tiao Chang’s life (1916–1998) were tumultuous ones for China. It is a pleasure now to write this foreword to Amos Chang’s book upon its re-release, and to revisit that question I asked long ago. The Tao ¹ of Architecture was one of the first books that stirred a nascent question in me: How does philosophy relate to architecture? How indeed! That was well over thirty years ago. Princeton Classic Edition paperback ISBN: 978-1-3ġ0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 FOREWORD TO THE PRINCETON CLASSICS EDITION Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960851 In the United Kingdom: Princeton Univeristy Press,Ħ Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TRįormerly titled The Existence of Intangible Content in Architectonic Form Based upon the Practicality of Laotzu’s Philosophyįirst Princeton Classics Edition, with a foreword by David Wang, 2017 Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, This article will explore the notions of compression and reduction in the selected works of Mies.Copyright © 1956 Princeton University Pressįoreword to first Princeton Classics EditionĬopyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press An architect known for his silence, the compression of space and the reduction of elements became for Mies van der Rohe a tool for altering perception and for disseminating his architectural ideas on new ways of living in his time. In this light compression could be considered to be structuring a new way of living. Within this landscape, compression works on many different levels digitally as in the compression of electronic files to ensure optimized speed of communication and also physically as in the compression of living space in light of lessening material needs.

Physical space is being affected by the virtual domain in such an immediate way that most previous notions of spatial needs – sizes, level of comfort - are being questioned and again linked to the ubiquitous presence of the digital. The current age is heavily reliant upon digital technology as the means for communicating and sharing to the extent that the apparatus for constant communication is structuring our physical existence.

The Tao of Architecture by Amos Ih Tiao Chang