Study on the Design of Soundscape in Chinese Classical Gardens

Chinese classical gardens have a long history, which have made very high artistic achievements. Apart from the design of visual landscape, the gardens focus on the expression of artistic conception. Soundscape design is one of the most important ways to express artistic conception, and it is deeply influenced by Chinese philosophy and aesthetic system. Firstly, this paper introduces the development course of soundscape in Chinese traditional culture and its cultural value. Then, this paper puts forward three key elements of soundscape in Chinese traditional gardens: people, sound and environment, and furthermore analyses relationship among them. Soundscape of Chinese classical gardens is mainly composed of natural sound and artificial sound, while the former is generally the main way of expressing artistic conception, such as wind, rain, snow, flowing water, animal sound, insect sound and so on. Finally, through case study, the paper discusses some typical soundscape design methods of Chinese classical gardens, such as sound introducing, sound contrasting, noise reducing and giving literary meaning. Nowadays the design of soundscape in Chinese classical gardens is still inspiring and deserves further study.