“Chinese Cultural Renaissance” and a Chinese Neoclassicism

In the Cold War of the 1960s–80s, the nationalist KMT government in Taiwan launched a Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement, starting in 1966, to counter the anti-traditional, Communist-led Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution on the mainland. As a consequence of this political posture, a revival of Chinese classical styles surfaced in Taiwan in many state and public buildings. This chapter describes the rise and fall of this trend in architecture, covering some of the primary cases, such as the Palace Museum (1966) and Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center (1980s), and the debate on style and structure. It covers an important episode in the modern architecture of Taiwan.