ABSTRACT
Chinese modernity is characterized not by a coherent design vocabulary, but in its very nature is comprised of hybrid design vocabularies. This chapter assess this condition through structuralist and, more importantly, poststructuralist lenses. It provides appraisal of the poststructuralist impact on architectural theory, specifically in the form of critical theory. The chapter then explains the philosophical sources for criticality, and their resonance with poststructuralism. René Magritte's 1933 painting The Human Condition, in which a painting of a window is overlaid on an actual window, so that what one see is the world depicted on the painted window rather than the "real" world is, well, it is the human condition as structuralism would have it. Le Corbusier's five elements are perhaps best exemplified by the Villa Savoye, completed in 1931. Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman is a critique of the Confucian cultural system.
