A Comparative Study: Eastern and Western Architectural Approaches

This essay delves into a comparative analysis of Eastern and Western architectural approaches, highlighting the diverse influences that shape each style. It begins by contrasting the courtyard house, a prevalent structure in both regions, showcasing the variations in design and cultural significance, particularly in China and Rome. The essay further explores the aesthetic components, including color harmony, material usage, and spatial layouts, emphasizing the differences in how nature and human beings are perceived and integrated into the architectural design. The discussion also touches on the evolution of architectural styles, such as Gothic and Baroque, and their impact on the overall character of buildings in both Eastern and Western contexts, supported by references to various scholarly articles.

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Comparisons between Eastern and Western approaches to architecture
Architectural work has been in existence since the middle Stone Age period of mankind.
Progressively several changes have taken place in various parts of the world in regard to the
nature of the requirements or the demand of the environment (Cozzolino 2018). As a result, there
has been a specific characteristic of the architectural work that is associated with the west while
the east has its unique architectural work. Although the primary purpose of architectural work is
to assist in the provision of proper housing and other structures need satisfaction, the variation
has been in terms of tastes which basically constitute the aesthetic components. One of the
significant structures that clearly defines the difference between western and eastern architecture
is a courtyard house.
A courtyard refers to a large house that has private open spaces and in which the main part
of the building has its disposal around the central courtyard. These kinds of houses are actually
prevalent in the architecture of the residential structures across the world. In eastern architecture
particularly China, this particular structure dates back to 3000 BC. Prior to the existence of the
courtyard, the central parts of very many homes used to have a fireplace (Chen et al. 2017). This
part has a small hole on the ceiling which was meant to provide passage for the smoke. It is this
opening that has been expanded today and properly advanced to be called courtyard. The houses
f the courtyard usually have a central place which remains open to the sky while the other main
rooms of the house remain open to the courtyard. Majority of the windows used to be open while
facing this point. Chinese Courtyard used to be surrounded by four houses in total. In fact, the
typical layout has four major buildings whose positions are long east-west and north-south axis.

This is not the case with the Roman courtyard which is basically constructed around an "atrium"
commonly used word for domestic.
The western traditional art of architectural style particularly in China includes the
beauty of color harmony. Even though buildings of high Taiwan have been adopted in Qin
Dynasty construction, it was after Confucian persuasion and thinking that the beauty of the
magnificent, masculine majestic and palace was acquired.
In Asia for example, Malaysia had its own ways of laying out courtyard. Extension of
varied eastern traditional architecture more specifically in Malaysia was done to a flat-planed
group, and following the individual was also in harmony (Celeste and Leitner 2016). As was
suggested by an Eastern architecture, reduction in the usage of wood and the rise of
independence totally has no relation to the reasons for constructing a building for a single
individual but rather to building characteristics, flat materials, interconnections, and the huge
space. It is anxious about the organic planning of the numerous constructions. Although it was
centrally located, the surrounding building had their windows directly facing each other on the
opposite direction.
The operation of American disagreement among nature and human beings has been
stressed on by the art of western classical architectural design. The art has also highlighted
concrete, stone texture as well as other materials for construction either thick rational color, stiff,
or cold with no handling by human beings. In construction, the overstated designing of this
architecture through the noble and external structure presented by the awesome scale signalize
the immense power of physical structural masses (Bruno et al. 2017). The detailed geometric
scopes, ones composed of tension dome, pointed arch, any place with an indication of conflicts

and attacks instill doubt within individuals, pleasure, and fear of aesthetic feelings. The eastern
architectural style of Heaven is also as a result of the natural beauty which opposes the
operational features of the fighter theme. According to the view of western architecture, the
natural beauty is not an imitated object rather it is a transformation, therefore the main artificial
construction is reflected by the landscape of Western classical garden however just an
architecture of a foil flower garden. Flowers are landscapes which are not capable of potentially
holding the development of a state as discussed by the laws.
The layout of architectural space gives a reflection on the Western system of culture,
personality differences and features. From the latitudinal building layout which is a closed
group, the eastern architectural pattern stretches out to cover the plane ground regardless of the
building.
The early western architecture has diverse artistic expression due to diverse culture,
materials, and societies. Diversity in a group of people will result in different beliefs, different
cultures, different desire on the materials for construction and at the same time, they will
automatically indicate different emotions and feelings. The stone buildings in the Western
regions are big and of great heights with upright developments. Western classical architecture
focuses on clever architectural roofs. For the development pillars in roof building, a ‘basic
sentence' is the western roof of the building when the Western architecture pillars are ‘basic
vocabulary'. Different roofs result in diversity in the input of the style. The stone building in the
Western regions comprises of the early Eastern wood architecture. In the building of various
cornices, a stent which involves enlargement of the vertical forces horizontally supports the
curved wooden roof overlapping (Brüggmann et al. 2015). According to both the olden Eastern
architecture and the Western architecture, the subject matter is various types, straight, down or

on the pick of the cornices, and the diverse artistic impacts either real, dignified or simple
resulting from the different forms. Desperate from the rotunda, the floor and table should also
imply the use of cornices to articulate their emotions as well as displaying their own identities.
The architectural elements of designing cornices such as height and length are not easy to
determine.
The Eastern architecture especially the Chinese architecture has tried to adopt the
Chinese art design as glimpsed back in the Suzhou garden (Amorosi et al. 2017). The beautiful
Suzhou garden is approximately closer to the various changes in the landscape like the lion
rockery maize. The architecture of the garden personifies the intellectual of Chinese to hunt for
the ideological artistic taste. There are many who experiment but the intellectuals focus on the
universal approach without putting into consideration the related ‘days outside the days’ by the
explorers. The architecture of the Western region has revised various styles at varying stages in
the history of architecture. In the architecture of West with a crucial difference at every
development stage, the Gothic architecture and Baroque architecture of which both are Eastern
architectural methods could be glimpsed by every individual with even a little sense of
architecture.

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