Jiangnan is on the brink of revolution: a network of bullet train lines will re-territorilize this region of China, including Shanghai, drawing its 80 million inhabitants within a single hour’s commute of one another. From the train, the boundaries between Jiangnan’s ancient cities, villages, and countryside appear to dissolve into a momentary smear of colour. At the very moment the earth has shrunk by the bullet train, Jiangnan’s new mega-city status will erode a sense of community rooted in long stable demarcations of place. The humanity that endures will likely be atomized, lost in a vast, blurred, and indecipherable landscape that has sacrificed community for the high-speed design of a relentless modernity. Fuciao Cun Village, which stands at the geographic centre of Jiangnan, is being dismantled to accommodate explosive urban growth. Only the abandoned temple remains. The surviving temple is imagined to harbour three voices, each offering an alternate vision speed, space and time. Motionscapes studies the scene from the bullet train window and the power of the temple as a ruin, standing still in a landscape of radical flux. Waterland re-tools the temple site to choreograph new economies and transportation networks that respond and reveal a topography continuously animated by water. Finally, Maritime Theatre turns to classical Jiangnan gardens, cities, and temples for tactics of place-making. These techniques attempt to evoke collective memory to waken a dormant yet resilient zeitgeist at the uprooted site. Motionscapes, Waterland, and Maritime Theatre each offer an architectural intervention, the temple as ruin, waterworks and brickworks, and theatre. In sum, the three proposals at Fuciao Cun Temple are layered to project a fuller and inclusive experience of place onto a broader landscape, otherwise derationed, homogenized, and sacrificed by a manically technologic modernity.

Jiangnan is on the brink of revolution: a network of bullet train lines will re-territorilize this region of China, including Shanghai, drawing its 80 million inhabitants within a single hour’s commute of one another. From the train, the boundaries between Jiangnan’s ancient cities, villages, and countryside appear to dissolve into a momentary smear of colour. At the very moment the earth has shrunk by the bullet train, Jiangnan’s new mega-city status will erode a sense of community rooted in long stable demarcations of place. The humanity that endures will likely be atomized, lost in a vast, blurred, and indecipherable landscape that has sacrificed community for the high-speed design of a relentless modernity. Fuciao Cun Village, which stands at the geographic centre of Jiangnan, is being dismantled to accommodate explosive urban growth. Only the abandoned temple remains. The surviving temple is imagined to harbour three voices, each offering an alternate vision speed, space and time. Motionscapes studies the scene from the bullet train window and the power of the temple as a ruin, standing still in a landscape of radical flux. Waterland re-tools the temple site to choreograph new economies and transportation networks that respond and reveal a topography continuously animated by water. Finally, Maritime Theatre turns to classical Jiangnan gardens, cities, and temples for tactics of place-making. These techniques attempt to evoke collective memory to waken a dormant yet resilient zeitgeist at the uprooted site. Motionscapes, Waterland, and Maritime Theatre each offer an architectural intervention, the temple as ruin, waterworks and brickworks, and theatre. In sum, the three proposals at Fuciao Cun Temple are layered to project a fuller and inclusive experience of place onto a broader landscape, otherwise derationed, homogenized, and sacrificed by a manically technologic modernity.

The thesis deals with the changes of the Chinese garden during the Ming dynasty. It examines the changes in decoration, function and conception of private, literati gardens. It tracks the transformation of the Ming garden from a production land into a precious piece of art. In search of the causes of these changes, the thesis emphasizes the pre-conditioning of the garden's shape by its economic and social functions.

La chaîne de collision d'âge néoprotérozoïque de Jiangnan, orientée NE-SW, marque la limite entre les blocs duYangtze et de Cathaysia. Son évolution tectonique reste encore débattue. Une des questions les plus controversées est l'âge de la collision entre les deux blocs. Afin d'acquérir une meilleure compréhension de ce problème, nous avons collecté des échantillons dans les couches sédimentaires situées au-dessus et au-dessous de la discordance dans le but de comparer les spectres d'âge des zircons détritiques et aussi de les confronter à ceux décrits dans les séries néoprotérozoïques des régions du Yangtze, Jiangnan et Cathaysia. En outre, nous nous sommes intéressés aux plutons granitiques d'âge néoproterozoïque de Sanfang et Yuanbaoshan, de type-S, situés dans la partie occidentale de la chaîne de Jiangnan afin de tracer l'évolution tectonique de la région depuis 830 Ma par la mise en œuvre de méthodes pluridisciplinaires : géologie structurale, géochronologie U-Pb, AMS, modélisation gravimétrique et thermochronologie Argon.Notre étude montre les résultats suivants : (i) La chaîne de Jiangnan s'est formée par la collision des blocs de Yangtze et Cathaysia entre ca. 865 and 830 Ma ; (ii) Les intrusions granitiques de 830 Ma se sont mises en place dans des formations encaissantes du groupe Sibao plissées et faillées. Les plutons ont été construits par accumulation latérale E-W de filons N-S, avec un écoulement horizontal du magma du sud vers le nord ; (iii). Un cisaillement ductile du haut vers l'Ouest a été reconnu dans la partie supérieure des plutons. Des âges Ar/Ar vers 420 Ma obtenus sur plusieurs grains de muscovite et biotite déformés impliquent que le cisaillement ductile peut être : a) formé pendant l'orogenèse du Paléozoïque inférieur de Chine du Sud, ou b) pendant la mise en place des plutons au Néoprotérozoïque dans une croûte chaude, sous la température de fermeture du chronomètre argon, puis lors de l'orogenèse du Paléozoïque inférieur, ce domaine crustal de Chine du Sud est passé au-dessous de 350°C; (iv) Durant la période 420-240 Ma, la région de Sanfang-Yuanbaoshana connu un refroidissement lent qui pourrait correspondre au ré-équilibrage isostatique de la croûte. / The Jiangnan Orogenic Belt is a NE-SW trending Neoproterozoic collisional suture, marking the boundary between the Yangtze Block and the Cathaysia Block. Its tectonic evolution is still debated. One of the most controversial questions is the timing of the collision between the Yangtze and Cathaysia blocks. In order to have a better understanding of this problem, we have collected the sedimentary rocks from the strata both overlying and underlying the Neoproterozoic unconformities to compare the detrital zircon age spectra between them, as well as to compare the detrital zircon spectra of Neoproterozoic sequences among the Yangtze, Jiangnan and Cathaysia regions. Moreover, we paid attention to the Neoproterozoic S-type granite plutons located in the western Jiangnan region in order to trace the crustal evolution in the Sanfang-Yuanbaoshan area since 830 Ma by multidisciplinary methods, including structural geology, geochronology, AMS, gravity modelling and Argon isotopic dating.Our study shows that : (i) The Jiangnan Orogenic Belt was built up due to the assembly of the Yangtze and Cathaysia blocks between ca. 865 and 830 Ma ; (ii) The 830 Ma granitic magma intruded into the pre-existing folds and faults in the Sibao group, the tongue-and/orsill-shaped plutonswere constructed by anE-W lateral accumulation of N-S oriented dykeswith adominantly northward horizontal magma flow from south to north ; (iii)A top-to-the-W ductile shearband has been identified on the top of plutons, (iv) the coherent mica Ar-Ar age of ca. 420 Ma, obtained from the deformed muscovite, implies that this shearing may be formed either a)during the Early Paleozoicorogeny, or b) during the Neoproterozoic plutons emplacement, then the plutons were exhumed by the Paleozoic orogeny ; (iv) During the 420-240 Ma period, the Sanfang-Yuanbaoshan area has experienced a slow cool ingrate, which may correspond to the isostatic re-equilibration of the crust.