Jianfei Zhu

Architecture of modern China : a historical critique

1. Modern Chinese Architecture 2. Perspective as Symbolic Form: Beijing, 1729-35 3. The Architect and a Nationalist Project: Nanjing, 1925-37 4. A Spatial Revolution: Beijing, 1949-59 5. The 1980s and 90s: Liberalization 6. Criticality in between China and the West, 1996-2004 7. A Global Site and a Different Criticality 8. Beijing, 2008: A History 9. Geometries of Life and Formlessness 10. Twenty Plateaus, 1910s-2010s

Criticality in between China and the West

Since the late 1990s, different developments have occurred in China and the west. While there is an argument for post-critical pragmatism beyond criticality in the west, there is a rising criticality in contemporary China beside brutal pragmatism. This essay explores a space in between the two worlds in which a two-way communication can be found, as evidenced in the work of R. Koolhaas, Y. H. Chang, J. Liu and Q. Ma among others. It argues for a geographical and cross-cultural perspective in which a study of China, or a country or region in the west, is incomplete until it is externalised in a global space of co-presence. The essay starts with a reading of P. Eisenman and R. Koolhaas to discover different western perspectives on practice and Asia. It then moves on to G. Baird, M. Speaks, R. Somol and S. Whiting to explore the arguments for post-critical pragmatism, and argues that a geographic or ‘external’ approach is missing, and that Asia and China must be included if Koolhaas can be regarded as leading the post-critical as suggested by these scholars. The essay then focuses on China, and identifies the rise of purist architecture with a degree of criticality, in the historical condition of contemporary China, in which western influences play an important part. It concludes with an observation on the in-between space where a third position is found.

The Architectural Influence of the United States in Mao’s China (1949–1976)

Abstract This paper aims to reveal and highlight an architectural influence of the United States in Mao’s China. It does so by studying three cases arranged chronologically from the 1960s to 1970s. In post-war years, architectural communication between China and the United States was much restricted in a cold war confrontation of opposing political ideologies. Yet the architecture of the United States remained influential amongst leading architects in China since the 1960s, albeit in an inconspicuous way. In particular, in a dramatic political change of the early 1970s, new architecture showing an American influence emerged in Guangzhou and Beijing. Soon after, aspects of contemporary American architecture were increasingly referenced by architects in China to re-interpret native traditions in a modernist language. Adopting a tripartite framework connecting “politics,” “knowledge” and “form”, this paper examines these interrelations as found in China in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that knowledge of the architecture of the United States was absorbed and adapted by architects in China for the creation of a Chinese modernism, for the political purpose of representing a national identity of China in a contemporary formal language.