ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the unequal dialectic in the conception and production of China's architectural landscape, and the relevance of the to this exchange. While King's text is situated within the historic dynamic of imperialist-colonial power relations, the premise remains accurate in the current Chinese context. In this work a longer and deeper engagement with the issues highlighted by Zhu is evident. While designed by lesser lights of the profession, their jagged crystalline facets and tessellations faithfully evoke the affective language under discussion here. Fraser neatly summarizes these properties in the work of Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid: Koolhaas's connection with the Chinese shopping mall not to mention a more generalized field of Chinese architectural production was discussed earlier in the study. If Koolhaas provides the theoretical and organizational background to China's current generation of shopping mall designers, it is probably Hadid who, within the deconstructive/parametric paradigm, has explored more exhaustively the possibilities of sensual delight.
