Beaux-Arts Composition and Its Evolution in China's Architectural Education A Case Study of Architectural Education at Nanjing Institute of Technology

As the primary architectural design approach before the Modern Movement, architectural composition maintained its global influence on practice and pedagogy due to the wide influence of Beaux-Arts education. Composition was transplanted into China's architectural education in association with social-political reform in the early 20th century. Changes in the content and principles of composition practice reflected the far-reaching modernization of China's architectural education. Despite criticism of composition as an irrational design strategy, its evolution is inevitably a documentation of the past and a reinterpretation of the present. This paper begins with a literature review of composition and then concentrates on its evolution in China's architectural education, especially in the case of the architecture department of Nanjing Institute of Technology. By analyzing the work of students from Nanjing Institute of Technology, this paper assumes that the context of nationalism accelerated the formation of the characteristics of China's architectural education. Finally, the paper concludes that genius and creativity permeated the entire procedure of modernization, which was doubtless beyond a simple repetition of the Western process.