ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — Architect Beverly Foit-Albert’s photography exhibition “Chinese Buildings and Sites: Architecture of Heaven and Earth” has opened in the Mezzanine Gallery of The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at St. Bonaventure University.
Foit-Albert will lecture on her experiences in China that led to the creation of the exhibition and the writing of a book, “China’s Sacred Sites,” in a public lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 11, at The Quick Center.
Foit-Albert, founder and president of the architectural firm Foit-Albert Associates in Buffalo, frequently travels internationally to study and provide advice about the historic preservation and adaptive reuse of buildings in parts of the world experiencing rapid economic development.
In 1995, she and photographer John Valentino traveled with a Chinese professor to many historical sites in the People’s Republic of China including Beijing’s Forbidden City and the Shibaozhai Temple, a 12-story wooden structure that clings to a towering rock wall along the Yangtze River.
The photographic exhibit takes visitors to these and other sites, revealing philosophical tenets that hold lessons for those involved in the design and appreciation of buildings.
There is a fundamental difference between Chinese and Western religious architecture, Foit-Albert asserts in her book. In the West, builders inspired by the biblical mandate to take dominion over the earth have designed towns in which architectural elements visually assert ownership over the landscape. In China, by contrast, where man is seen as an organic part of nature, buildings merge with their sites.
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