ABSTRACT
Having established the discipline in the 1930s–40s, Liang Sicheng and Liu Dunzhen were the most respected architectural historians in China. In the 1950s, with the new state ideology arriving, the two differed in research purpose and methodology for architectural history, leaving behind different legacies for the discipline. This chapter examines their strategies and their perspectives on research-design and history-architecture relations. It reveals that amid the changing state politics of the 1950s–60s they had together weakened – unlike in the 1930s–40s – the contribution of architectural historiography to constructing a national identity and ideology. This study sheds light on today’s situations as well.
