NING Gang, HOU Mingzhu

(Jingdezhen Ceramic University, Jingdezhen 333403, Jiangxi, China)

Extended abstract:

[Background and purposes] Rooted in a long civilizational history, Chinese design has formed a distinctive cultural pattern, in which artifacts are understood as the material unfolding of cosmology, ethics and everyday life. Yet in contemporary discourse, discussions of "Chinese design" are often split between technological narratives of modernization and culturalist narratives of tradition, lacking an integrated account that links philosophical foundations with concrete making practices. Focusing on the intellectual roots and operative mechanisms of Chinese design, an analytical framework of "Dao–Zhi–Qi" (Way–Regulation–Artifact) was adopted to reconsider how cosmological principles are transformed into institutional norms and hence into design decisions. The purpose is to summarize the endogenous principles, such as "configuring form according to use" (yinyong fuxing), "adapting craft to material" (yincai shiyi), "modeling artifacts on cosmic images" (zhiqi shangxiang) and "integrating form and spirit" (xingshen jianbei), to reveal the long-term evolution of ritual, technology and aesthetics, thus providing a set of viewpoints and criteria that can be used to interpret, evaluate and guide contemporary innovation in Chinese design.

[Methods] Methodologically, it is to combine textual analysis, craft-history research and artifact-based investigation within a unified interpretive framework. Firstly, by reading across classics of philosophy and ritual, historical records and technical treatises, from Kaogong Ji, Yue Ling and ritual canons to Tiangong Kaiwu and modern industrial design documents, the paper was aimed to reconstruct how design-related concepts, such as Dao, Li, Gong and Qi, were articulated in different historical contexts and how they defined the legitimate scope of making. Secondly, drawing on craft literature and archaeological reports, it is extracted from bronzes, lacquer, ceramics, textiles and architectural components the recurring patterns of form, structure, ornament and material treatment that embody those concepts. Thirdly, these textual and material evidences were synthesized to abstract four core principles, including shaping form in response to function and use, choosing techniques in response to material properties, organizing images in resonance with cosmic and ethical orders and pursuing a unity of visible form, symbolic meaning and spiritual affect. Finally, the paper was attempted to select representative contemporary cases in product design, visual communication, architecture and digital media that consciously reference traditional imagery and making logics, while the above framework was used to examine their strategies of continuation, transformation and re-contextualization.

[Results] Firstly, the "Dao–Zhi–Qi" framework reveals Chinese design not as an aggregation of stylistic symbols, but as a process that runs from world-view to normative systems and further to concrete making decisions, in which cosmology, ritual and craft are structurally coupled. Secondly, the four principles distilled in the study constitute the internal mechanism of a Chinese "design-making system": the principle of "yinyong fuxing" links social division of functions and hierarchies of use with choices of type and configuration; "yincai shiyi" mediates between regional ecologies, material affordances and technological routes; "zhiqi shangxiang" encodes cosmological images, numerical orders and ethical classifications into spatial organization and decorative grammars; "xingshen jianbei" ensures that artifacts achieve a perceptible harmony of utility, sensuous form and cultural implication. Thirdly, when examined in a long historical perspective, the interplay of ritual regulation, craft specialization and aesthetic taste undergoes structural adjustments at key moments, such as the formation of the bronze ritual system, the flourishing of literati culture, the rise of commercial handicrafts and the transition to industrial and digital production, but the above principles remain effective as deep-level constraints and generative rules. Fourthly, the contemporary cases indicate that successful "Chinese" design is not defined by superficial quotation of traditional motifs, but by the degree to which designers can internalize these principles, translating them into new relationships between technology and humanity, locality and globality, everyday life and symbolic expression.

[Conclusions] On this basis, it is argued that the aesthetic paradigms and design-making system of Chinese design can be understood as a dynamic, regenerating structure rather than a closed canon of forms. Theoretically, the "Dao–Zhi–Qi" framework provides a bridge between design philosophy and empirical studies of craft and industry, enabling dialogue with contemporary design theory, while maintaining the specificity of Chinese historical experience. Methodologically, the strategy of cross-validating classics, craft literature and artifact morphology offers a path for integrating textual hermeneutics, with material culture analysis in design research. In terms of practice, the observation points and evaluative criteria distilled, such as the coordination of function, material and imagery, the balance between ritual order and everyday use and the continuity between form, meaning and affect, can be used to serve as references for contemporary designers, thus seeking to achieve creative transformation of tradition. By clarifying the historical logic and internal order of Chinese design, this study was aimed to help move contemporary practice beyond nostalgic revival or surface-level ornament, towards a mode of innovation, in which traditional resources are activated as living knowledge and re-articulated in response to today's social needs, technological conditions and global communication.

Key words: design philosophy; design-making system; historical logic; creative transformation