document
In the first of three contributions about architectural interchanges
between East and West, Peter Blundell Jones presents the first
English translation of a little known article by Hugo Häring.
Conversation with Chen Kuan Lee
about roof profiles (1947)
Hugo Häring
We spoke about the usability and further
development of the Chinese roof profile in Chinese
buildings today. How did this roof, this remarkable
Chinese roof, which gives Chinese architecture a
special signature against which other features pale
into insignificance, come about? It is a saddle roof
with an exaggerated rounding of the ridge and wide
out-swinging eaves, and the surface is raised to the
highest shine through the intensity of gleaming
glazed tiles which display all the colours of nature:
light and dark red, lemon yellow and golden yellow,
sky blue and peacock blue, rare green and brown
glazes of every kind. Through the wave profile of the
over- and under-lapping tiles – which all adds to the
formal effect – it survives every kind of weather.
And these tiles lie in a thick mortar-bed, so that the
whole roof becomes extraordinarily heavy. It is
supported by a most elaborate roof structure of
intersecting beams, struts and small columns, which
seems not the result of calculation but only of a will
to form, to image, in connecting this skin to the
great tree trunks which allow these extraordinary
loads to hang poised above the earth. It would be
wrong to call these tree trunks columns and to
group them with the columns of the West, for they
are the precise opposite. They are proportional – in
relation to the heavy load and the wind-pressure as
on a sail – there are few of them, and they are always
of slender growth. Between them are set partitions of
clay, more wind screens than true wall construction,
and not in the slightest load-bearing. The roof is the
whole building: all else is subordinate. It can even
stand alone with no house beneath, just a roof held
high by tree trunks, when it takes the form of a gate.
The stone-built bases are misunderstood
26 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 document
afterthoughts in an inappropriate (unecht) material.
What is this roof? As we thought all form (gestalt)
must lead back to technical issues, because we knew
nothing of the underlying force of image and gestalt,
we sought technical explanations – that the roof
derived from a tent, or from a woven roof covered in
reeds or bamboos. This is unsupportable.
Developments do not simply follow on from
technical demands if an impetus towards form-
making reliant on deep form-images and form-
worlds is already present. The origin of forms lies in
deep connections with being.
The Chinese live willingly and sympathetically
with nature, integrating themselves within and
under her reign. They understand this in relation to
all earthly and heavenly occurrences. The roof
profile supports this. Sustaining their first great
elevation to the world of earthly being, it arises out
of endlessness to float over the contemplating,
meditating, human figure. It covers this person,
roofs him, then sinks back down to the earth to
renew the connection. In so doing it carries the line
of the earth, of mountains, of other elevations of the
earth itself, whose cosmic personality it feels, over
the person’s head. In this form an image and
expression of nature lives within him.
But this is the roof profile of his house, his temple.
Also the place where he erects his house, his roof,
determines for him the underlying rhythm and wave
form of nature. It values the connection with the
earth, it does not lead out of this earthly world to
another, for the profile elevates itself only to provide
cover for the human being. The decisive thing is the
ridge, for the sides do not rise together into a peak
but rise and fall in a single movement, a continuous
flow in either direction.

It is so, or so, but not so,
for the latter would lead the movement out of the
earth. And the direction in which the profile flows is
north-south. This is why the rounding of the ridge is
so important and is the basis of its emphasis through
repetition. Along the ridge the tiles are piled up to
stress the connection with earth. Only later came the
demon of a light, straight dropping away. Lee says
that this form is the oldest and purest Chinese form.
The Chinese roof is thus essentially a picture-form of
Chinese being. It presents Chinese being-like-ness.
And therefore it can exist as roof, only as roof, and
even as roof, while everything else is being dictated
on grounds of use. But in itself it is not understood as
an object of use, only as a representation of Chinese
being.
I already mentioned that the tree trunks
supporting this roof should not be called columns,
for that would put them into a false and European
perspective. They never became the objects of special
individual development but always remained tree
shafts. Such painting and decoration as was applied
to them did not alter the essence of the shaft but
remained only a superficial addition or was
connected with the finishing of the shaft itself. Why
with few exceptions they were never replaced by
another material, although they needed replacing if
a temple was to last, and why they remained mere
trunks of wood, is now self-evident. Because only this
living being of a tree – another elevation of the earth,
and trees are greatly revered in China – could really
take part in this process, in which the image of
humanity should be elevated above the earth itself.
In what way is the column the opposite of the tree
trunk? It is the opposite in that the idea of the
human body as a bearer of weight is always circling
in it. In its origins in Crete and Mycenae it was
broader at the top than the bottom – which goes
against the whole practice with tree trunks – and
shows an old concept of humanity which at its end,
that is at the end of its unfolding and European
birth, gave rise to the caryatid. It becomes very much
a human figure which holds high a load. Seen in
document arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 27
another way, human strength holds high earthly
load – does not pull the protective earth as a covering
over people as in China.
Let us now consider the Greek roof in this
connection. That we only reach the roof via the
columns shows the shift of emphasis or even reversal
in importance of the two form-elements, leading to
the following question. How did the Greek roof gain
its form and identity?
The mass of its elevation in a flat triangle is
meaningless in comparison with the columns’
determination to hold up this triangle. Also the
horizontal bearer of the load is more important
than the raising of the triangle (Greek temples are
stronger in effect for their columns and architraves
than for their gables). What does this show? What
kind of cosmic connection is there? The gable has
become a protective roof for the Gods themselves, for
a place of refuge is made for them, which in relation
to earthly power and human elevation, the
Promethean drive, has come out modestly enough.
Nothing however binds this form to the everyday
world, the current happenings on earth. It is a
protective form, sheltering against heavenly forces
(the gods, whichever of them it is, sit under the
cover), not inviting linkage with cosmic events.
The Greek temple therefore presents this image.
Roof forms produce essential images of Chinese and
Greek beingness. They are images of their individual
presence-forms. Lee said that for the Chinese a
caryatid would be an incomprehensible form.
We should take this discussion of roof forms and
their physiognomic expression further to consider
modern roof forms, the much-contested theme of
the recent past in building.
The flat roof, if employed for technical reasons as
the covering of a building and not chosen for its
expression or effect, is as a roof non-existent. It is
only the upper surface of a cube. Existent is only the
cube, the basic figure of Architecture, the concept of
geometry, the base-figure of the earth and pure
ordering concept. On this there is nothing more to
say here.
It is quite otherwise with the roof brought to effect
as horizontal form, as a plate. This is typical of Mies
van der Rohe. With him it is exclusively as horizontal
energy, as extension of the power-grabbing of the
horizontal, with no limit to this striving,
uncontrolled in its outward spreading. Nothing
competes with this horizontality: the rising triangle
of gods in the Greek temple falls away and
Promethean man no longer proudly carries the
earthly load of the architrave, but sways, bobs up and
down, a resting Prometheus beneath the architrave,
which is now supported only by the thinnest of
columns. It shows the triumph of two thousand
Conversation with Chen Kuan Lee about roof profiles (1947) Hugo Häring
28 arq . vol 12 . no 1 . 2008 document
years of Promethean striving, the effect of the
elevation of humankind. But nothing indicates any
further elevation:
everything orders itself, layers itself out under the
horizontal power-expansion, with no capacity to
break out. The earth and its riches are protected by it
and arranged in horizontal harmony, sublimating a
this-sided world. Expensive materials and the noblest
work belong to this, but not in their essential
meaning, rather in their bodily display.
The reverse of all this is Scharoun. For him the
material illuminates in a being-like way in the
orchestra of a musical elevation in space. To him
belongs no single roof form, but rather roofscapes.
Another situation is offered by the gently sloping
roof in repeating layers and in the running in and
out, which give impetus and initiation to its
movement and direction.
The south-directed rise addresses the sun, to which
the people are therefore orientated. They pull it in
this here-floating and at the same time rising
movement. It decks over, roofs over, protects and
welcomes an approaching person, its elevation is to
the sun, here the opposite pole of the meditating
Chinese. Climbing out of the horizontal of the earth,
taking its exit from it, yet at the same time directing
itself towards the sun, this roof form finds itself in
perfect harmony with nature. It is the effect-image of
another kind of European man.
The connections of this form to the Chinese form
are nonetheless unmistakable. Identical in both is
direction towards the south. Similar too is the
connection with earthly happenings, its departure
from them and the elevation towards the above. New
is the movement of striding out, of movement and
direction of will. A current problem for the Chinese
presents itself. Buddha must rise up and stride out.
In his roof form it means this:
Hugo Häring Conversation with Chen Kuan Lee about roof profiles (1947)
A break in the protective roof facing south retards
the meditative practice in a rudimentary way. China
will never run like Europe.
In the new Chinese house, new roof forms like these
will arise, but the ancestors’ hall will stick to the old
form. It is unmistakable that these form-elements
which appear in roof forms reflect the deeper
beingness of the Chinese,
and have in the whole world of images a dominant,
even constitutive importance. This is seen above all
in the span-like forms of Chinese script.
Lee feels that these forms remember the ever-
repeated mountain ranges in Chinese pictures and
the great importance which the wave-like line plays
in Chinese. He states that it is a new enlightenment
to see the new roof forms in terms of characters,
such as …
Movement into the house, and then with the
addition of the human being: thus out of our
discussions emerges a crowning statement of their
deeper meaning.
Translated by Peter Blundell Jones 12 January 2007, based on
the version published in Jürgen Joedicke and Heinrich
Lauterbach, Hugo Häring, Schriften, Entwürfe, Bauten
(Stuttgart: Karl Krämer Verlag, 1965), pp. 60–63. The piece
was first published in Neues Bauen: Schriftenreihe des
Bundes Deutscher Architekten, vol. 3 (Hamburg, 1947).
Chen Kuan Lee was a young Chinese architect from
Shanghai who came to Berlin in 1935 to study at the
Technische Hochschule under Hans Poelzig. After completing
the course in 1939, he worked in Hans Scharoun’s office for
some years. He then started an office of his own in Stuttgart.
The original typescript is dated 12 February 1942, a period
of numerous meetings between Lee and Häring. The
‘conversation’ was probably several and took place on many
occasions over at least a year. For further background and
discussion, see ‘The lure of the Orient: Scharoun and Häring's
East-West connections’, pp. 29–42.