ABSTRACT
The 1950s, the first decade of the People's Republic, witnessed intensive interactions between state politics and design culture in modern China. In the active days around the opening of the Republic on 1 October 1949, the national flag and the emblem were designed. A monument to the 'People's Heroes' was proposed. Mao wrote an epigraphy. A foundation-laying ceremony was made at Tiananmen Square the evening before 1 October, in which Mao read solemnly, 'eternal glory to the people's heroes who laid down their lives for the independence of the nation ...'. Sweeping campaigns soon followed, to create a 'people's democracy' and, finally, a socialism. All architects were employed into design institutes and universities owned by the state. They were required to study Mao's writings and Soviet models, and to conceive a design approach suitable for the new nation. Educated in the West and eminently in the United States before 1949, these architects managed to integrate western Beaux-Arts design methods with Soviet Russian models for socialist China under Mao's leadership. In the mid- and late 1950s, two theories, 'socialist realism with national forms' and 'new styles for China's socialist architecture', were respectively proposed. The first, articulated by Liang Sicheng, promoted buildings with 'Chinese roofs' in 1954 and 1955, whereas the second, a collective voice with the Party, supported larger state structures, notably the 'ten grand buildings' in Beijing in 1959 with a more varied use of forms. The planning for Beijing was also finalised in 1953 following the Moscow plan of 1935 under Stalin. The new capitol was placed at the centre of old Beijing. An east-west Changan Boulevard was opened that intersected with the north-south axis of imperial Beijing at Tiananmen, which in turn defined the centre of new Beijing. Tiananmen Square was enlarged and formalised in 1959, elaborating the new centre in a scale unknown before. Following the Soviet model, the city, besides its purpose as the political and cultural centre of the nation, was also to become an industrial base, 'for the efficient production of the working people'. Orthogonal avenues, ring-roads and radials were planned and, by the end of the 1950s, partly realised, while old buildings, city-gates and city-walls were demolished where necessary.
