ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the ideas behind this collection of essays. Reviewing the scholarship on architecture of China and identifying a process of “constructing” from the 1930s to 2000 and “deconstructing” since the 1990s, it recommends a new departure – not an either–or selection between unity and disparity, tradition and modernity, or chronological history and sociological research. Instead, it recommends a reassembling of diverse systems where identity resides with multiplicity, past with present, and history with sociology. A social–historical approach is adopted with which to examine modern and pre-modern practices in this collection – in 5 parts, 17 thematic clusters, and 46 essays.
