Emergence of “Architecture”

It is in the late years of Qing dynasty, among a campaign of learning from Japan, that we witnessed a breakthrough in the establishment of architecture as a modern academic discipline in early modern China. This chapter describes a process of introducing the discipline as part of “Western technology” within a framework – as adopted in the New Policy of the Qing – of differentiating Chinese and Western knowledge as “essential” and “instrumental,” respectively. Comparing the process in China and Japan, this chapter identifies a revolutionary transformation as well as problems of indigestion and prematurity in the process of introducing Western knowledge into China.