A Brief History of the Development of Chinese Design Theory: Pre-Modern, Modern, and Contemporary Period

Abstract

The historical development of Chinese design theory has gone through three periods: the modern period, the contemporary period, and the current period. In the modern period, its development reflects the disciplinary conceptual transformation from “pattern” to “arts and crafts”. In the modern period, it is embodied in the parallelism of the disciplinary concepts of “Art design” or “Design art”. In the contemporary period, it is characterized by the joint construction of “Design studies” and “Theory of design history”. As a shared concept of the Chinese design school of thought, the representative scholars of three generations have constructed the disciplinary system of Chinese design studies in different periods.