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Fig. 4.
The plan of Daming
Palace relic garden in
current urban context;
from www.focus.cn.
principal of the open-air Daming Palace Museum Project was just
simply to rebirth it across the history (fig. 4), as Heidegger’s ontology
of being in which time was seen as expressing the very nature of
human subjective (Macdonald, 1996). It is true that Daming Palace
is a treasure in the history of China, while, it’s crucial to search out
the proper method to “translate” current pieces of ruins to people.
Of course no ruins are simply ”present” but are changed as new
elements are accumulated from the past. There is only the present, in
the context of which the past is being continually re-created (Macdonald,
1996). It means the differences of Daming Palace we saw
today and one thousand and five hundred years ago are not only
the object and the view themselves, also embrace the past they recorded
which is endlessly constructed in and through the present.
The musealization of Daming Palace abandoned to reconstruct the
magnificent wooden architectures, instead, it reorganized the ruins
to exhibit the all the past it suffered, and to show the various layers of
the history. On the other hand, people could appreciate the virtual
palace through the media exhibition, and imagine the real prospect
in the contextualized site with the fragments. Just as Bergson argued
that time is inextricably bound up with the body. People do not
therefore think time in some abstract way but experience it sensuously,
qualitatively (Clifford, 1992). For instance, after the torture of
the wars, pillages, and erosions, Hanyuan Hall left only the pieces of
basement hathpace. What exhibit now is just the protected cover of
basement, which is constructed by concrete (fig. 5). Visitors could
go up through the renewed two lateral ramps to arrive the top of the
huge hathpace, where used to be the interior of Hanyuan Hall. Each
architectural relic could be treated as a cultural symbol for present.
Memory is sedimented and materialized through the specific body.
Therefore, the relics of Daming Palace are also the artefacts through
which the societies in general pass on bodily memories in particular
context. Designer of open-air Daming Palace museum avoided using
the Chinese traditional garden language, which is substituted
by formal geometrical shaped green, to contextualize the relic with
a new language to fit the solemn atmosphere. The process of musealization
Daming Palace is also a progress of identifying this site.
Except for offering the present identity within the modern context, it
also is including the interpretation of the original identity. However,
even the most accurate, and unambiguous expression the museolo-
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