ABSTRACT
Can Beijing be understood from an aesthetic and a pure, formal point of view? Is there a formal composition of Beijing as a whole, besides the concentric plan and its symbolic and ideological representation, and besides the social space of power relations? How to reconcile a search for pure, formal compositions, and a study of the same city as a social, political and ideological construct? How can a city be both aesthetic and socio-political? There are at least three areas in which this difficult relationship between form and socio-political reality intersected and, in each case, an argument for a formal composition can be raised: the overall symbolic meaning of the plan, the relationship between formal scale and political power, and the use of walls and the related phenomenon of invisibility.
