Research On Protestant Church Building In Fuzhou

Fuzhou is one of the earliest five treaty ports in China, and it is also one of theearliest developed cities in modern architecture. It plays an important role in Chinesehistory. With the defeats of the Qing government and the subscriptions of thoseunequal treaties, modern architectures which represented western classic revival styleconcerning with religion, administration, living, education and health were cominginto forth after the Opium War in1840,among which Protestant churches were one ofthe representative buildings. They were not only witness of conflicts and combinationbetween Eastern and Western cultures and architecture, but also valuable modernarchitecture heritage in Fuzhou. Studies of the Protestant church buildings in Fuzhouwould deepen our understandings of the history, architectural characteristics andcultural connotations of the modern church buildings, and they would accumulatefoundation information for Fuzhou Modern Architecture Research systematically. Itwas an analysis of Western church building localization process at the same time, inwhich we could extract active elements to provide reference materials for the regionalcreation of contemporary Protestant church buildings.The thesis studied the Protestant church buildings in Fuzhou. Firstly, it sortedout British and American missionary contexts in Fuzhou through the collection andresearch of relevant historical documents, and engendered a macroscopic recognitionof the development of Protestant buildings. Secondly, in order to give acomprehensive understanding of development course of the Protestant churchbuildings in Fuzhou, the thesis based on the first hand information of surveying andmapping and studied the architectural characteristics of the buildings in differentperiods and various sects in the following aspects: site selection, layout, space,structure, style and materials technology and so on. Thirdly, on the above bases,considered the architectural designs`deficiencies on the contemporary Protestantchurch by comparison, unearthed the regional characteristics in the process ofevolution of the buildings and explored the principles and methods of the Protestantchurch of regional design in the context of contemporary architecture. Finally, help to guide the creation of “perceptive culture, communicable memory” Protestant churchbuildings.The thesis explored the process of the conflicts and combinations of Eastern andWestern architecture in modern time from the perspectives of architectural history,which had positive significance on the in-depth study of Eastern and Western culturalinteraction. Meanwhile, we tried to recruit the architectural materials of modernProtestant church and made them perfect so that we could protect and renew thosehistoric buildings better still. In addition, the regional creation of Fuzhou Protestantchurch buildings was an opponent in the church buildings towards historicism, and itwas also a beneficial attempt to the contemporary church buildings`design.