【Editor’s Note: Today marks the 39th Chinese Teachers' Day – a festival celebrating the 2,300-year tradition of respecting teachers and education in China. In this episode of Dialogue@ZJU, we explore the unique class of ZHANG Yuyu, an associate professor at the College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University. She has developed a distinctive method for teaching the History of Chinese Architecture to sophomore Architecture students. What can you learn from this course? How unique is Chinese architecture? What challenges come with creating scaled-down models of Chinese traditional wooden pavilions by hand? Let's now dive into her innovative teaching world and hear what ZHANG Yuyu and her students have to say in this insightful interview video.】
Quotes from the interview:
- In this course, we use theoretical learning combined with model making to help our students better understand Chinese architectural traditions.
- We hope that students, through making scaled-down models of wooden buildings, can gain a deeper understanding of the correlations between materials, structures, techniques, and design mindset of traditional Chinese architecture.
- Chinese architecture is actually very unique. It represents our culture and history. For over two thousand years, we have been using the same traditional construction techniques. Wooden buildings are an integral part of our Chinese culture.