Archetype as a Tool for Art Historical Analysis of Garden and Park Architecture (Based on Traditional Chinese Gardens)

The history of the study of garden and park art demonstrates a persistent methodological tension between two research strategies. The first is historical-descriptive, focused on capturing the unique characteristics of individual objects, while the second is typological, striving for the systematic organization of material based on external criteria. The subject of research is the archetype as a form-impulse in garden and park architecture, that is, as a category that describes not the semantic content of the garden space, but the compositional framework it generates: the relationship of masses and voids, the type of route tracing, the nature of framing views, modular-scale switches, and the tectonics of garden structures. The material consists of the classical gardens of Suzhou and Beijing, historically documented gardens of Luoyang and Kaifeng, theoretical treatises "Yuan-ye" by Ji Cheng and "Lingyuan Gaozhi" by Guo Xi, as well as objects of Chinese landscape architecture from the 21st century. The methodology is built on a combination of compositional analysis, iconographic description of stable motifs, and architectonic analysis with the methodology of viewpoints developed in Chinese garden studies: the position of the viewpoint, the angle of observation, comfortable viewing distance, and the rank of the route node. Data from the quantitative analysis of the reference points of the Wangshiyuan garden are also utilized. The novelty lies in translating the archetype from the semantic dimension to the form dimension: each of the five identified archetypes has a measurable compositional expression and is recognizable by the professional tools of art historians without resorting to philosophical reconstruction. Five archetypes are highlighted and described: "shan-shui," winding path, "borrowed scenery," garden-microcosm, and pavilion; visual signs accessible to direct observation are formulated for each. In contemporary landscape architecture in China, archetypes operate in three distinguishable modes: abstraction, in which compositional logic is preserved while losing iconography; functional adaptation, transforming the compositional structure into a functioning engineering system; and stylization, reproducing the decorative code outside the spatial system of the original. The proposed distinction provides a criterion for assessing the level at which a modern project inherits traditions and is applicable to both historical and contemporary material.