An Introduction to Liang Sicheng’s Forgotten Article “On the Character and Spirituality of Architecture”

“On the Character and Spirituality of Architecture” (Shuo jianzhu pinge jingshen zhi suozai), published by Liang Sicheng in the Social Education Quarterly in June 1943, is not included in his complete works and is thus a forgotten article. Through investigating his writing background and analyzing his objective and main argument， the author believes that Liang’s article is the fifirst comprehensive expression of his aesthetic view on architecture. While he emphasized the signifificance of function, Liang also hoped to achieve the adaptation and balance between subjective expectations and actual conditions, material construction and structural effectiveness, science and art, and substance and spirituality through economic means. Liang’s article was written when China began to anticipate success in the Sino-Japanese War, and was instructive to both construction and reconstruction during and after the war．