ABSTRACT
In today’s China, “elitist” architecture by Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid or Steven Holl is present as much as quick imitations of some indistinct “international style” or—much worse—the so called “Disneyland syndrome buildings” recurrent in satellite towns with distinctly German, Italian, or Tudor architectural styles (Beech 2005). Attempts to be creative are easily blurred by sublimated ideas from a recent authoritarian past even when—or especially when—they opt for the “postmodernist,” existential choice and decide to grasp something of China’s lost cultural identity. As many Chinese architects are still lost in translating Western aesthetic forms for a Chinese public, creativity remains most often restricted to the production of experimental skyscrapers with large cutouts and occasional pagoda roofs.
