| In recent years, as a research field, the history of Chinese modern interior design has been challenged by academic circles gradually. On one hand, historical view of traditional art and design history cannot explain the essential difference among modern times, ancient times and the contemporary era in this field. On the other hand, currently, the progress in this field is slow because of excessive dependence on existing scholarship of Chinese modern architecture history. In this academic context, further studies from new views should be carried out immediately.Consequently, by taking macroscopical Chinese interior design during the period from 1845 to 1953 as the research object, this thesis studies the history of Chinese modern interior design from the perspective of modern architectural institution. It should be noted that "interior design" in this study means not only materialized interior spaces and decorations but also an industry and construction activities. To be more exact, focusing on the combination of foreign influence and the self-modernization of domestic interior design, this thesis put Chinese interior design in modern transformation into the whole social-cultural context, to study with a large number of historical documents.According to the development features of Chinese interior design in different regions and different periods, this thesis tries to argue that the transformation of Chinese interior design was related with modern architectural institution closely. Firstly, modern architectural management system led the transition of the relationship between interior design and the state. Secondly, when managing construction activities, modern building rules also managed interior design indirectly. Thirdly, the emergence of modern construction groups and modern architects promoted the refinement and professionalization of social work in the industry of interior design. Especially in the 1930s, many relevant industries began to engage in interior decoration and design. It demonstrates a preliminary independence of interior design from construction industry in China at that time. After the establishment of PRC, modern architectural institution of capitalist nature ended in the early 1950s. Then Chinese interior design continued to transform under new architectural institution.With this perspective, Chinese interior design transformed in a great number of aspects, such as design projects, theory research, social division of labor, materials and technology, drawings, terms, operation mode of the whole industry and so on. As a result, this thesis proves that Chinese interior design developed with relatively independent ways from 1845 to 1953. At the same time, it establishes a research framework for the history of Chinese interior design based on modern architectural institution which is differ from the past views. |
