Abstract: The theme of the "spirit of place" has long been popular in modern architecture and environmental design, which was developed by the Norwegian architect Christian Norberg-Schultz in the 1970s and 1980s. This idea turned out to be close to Chinese designers, especially those of them who inherited the ideas of the literati (wenren), and through the prism of Western ideas they took a new look at their own tradition. The purpose of the study is to identify some characteristic features of modern Chinese design culture associated with the influence of the literati on it. We believe that this specificity is largely related to the poetics of memories, the understanding of space as a series of images transforming and flowing into each other, "metamorphoses of being." The object of research is the products of the artistic and design culture of the literati and designers rethinking their tradition. In the course of researching the traditional aesthetics of literati, we rely on the works of the Russian sinologist V. V. Malyavin, as well as on Chinese and Japanese authors. Speaking of the modern version of this aesthetic, we turn to the texts and projects of architect Wang Shu, designer Song Tao, photographer Sun Jun, etc. Initially, wenren is a man of high moral qualities, then a scientist and an official. Traditionally, the life of the literati is solitude and even hermitage, hence the theme of memories in their work. In addition, this is "amateurism", an unprofessional passion for the "elegant" – painting, music, etc. Aesthetically, it is an elegant, but unassuming beauty of the "ya". The tradition of "hidden meanings" and "pure offers" is also associated with the literati culture.
Influenced to a large extent by the culture of the literati, many Chinese designers of the twentieth century turned to the poetics of memories and even the theme of nostalgia, interpreting space as a series of transforming images where the present is intertwined with the past, and the natural with what is made by human hands. The traditional concept of a "garden house" is certainly felt today, when the interior space is likened to a relief, and the relief is thought of as a dwelling.

Abstract: The research is devoted to the issue of changing the understanding of design and its current state. Although design originated in the West, today the East is beginning to play an increasingly important role in its development. As a product of modernist culture, design initially followed the principle of "form follows function", but after a "semantic turn" it began to be understood as meaning-making, and form followed meaning. However, today the understanding of meanings only through the prism of "language" has exhausted itself, the understanding today is that design not only intellectually generated meanings, but also senses–sensations, therefore Western design theorists and practitioners began to look for alternative ways of developing design, which turned out to be consonant with the path that is being followed in the East today. The purpose of the article is to summarize some of the results of the alternative "linguistic" understanding of design in the West and in the East. The subject of the study is the change in the ways of meaning formation in modern design. Research methods used in the article are:
- methods of synchronous and asynchronous analysis, that allowed us to analyze transformations in the understanding of design, both historical and regional;
- the method of generalization, including comparative analysis, allows to understand the difference in approaches to design and shaping in different regions. The article presents modern design as a multicultural process, where different regions contribute to the general "theory" of design. However, the current eastern way of design is heterogeneous. Here we can highlight the Japanese vision of design – the "meditative approach", which involves reflection of sensations, reliance on personal experience, as well as the Chinese vision of design that is just taking shape today. We see China's potential contribution to the development of design in the inclusion of "embodied mind" in the design process, when the correctness of the chosen solution is determined not only by speculative calculations, but "resonates" with the feelings of the designer and the customer, as well as in the concept of "living form", when not only compositional or functional connections between elements are seen, but also the coherence of their movements. The Chinese approach can be called "vitalizing".