Modern Chinese Architecture

International scholarship on the architecture of modern China has emerged dramatically in recent years. Publications in 1998, 1999 and 2002 have marked the beginning of a torrent of publications and media features on the topic. ¹ The increasing visibility of China, the preparation for the Beijing Olympics of 2008, and the opening of the Chinese design market to the world, have all contributed to this rising interest. Yet China had developed a modern architecture long before. This history can stretch to the 1910s if not the 1840s or earlier. The research on the subject matter, within China, also started well before, in the mid-1980s and further back in the early 1960s. By now, if we put all this research within and without China together, we can recognize a few characteristics of the work as a whole. First, most of the research is carried out within one of several historical periods. There are works on jindai or ‘early modern’ Chinese architecture from 1840 to 1949, those on ‘modern’ Chinese architecture that are predominantly on the post-1949 periods, and those that focus on ‘new architecture’ of recent years, after the late 1990s. It is rare to find research that crosses these periods. Long historical analysis in search of latent social and formal currents is even harder to find. Second, these studies are primarily empirical and descriptive, rather than analytical in method and socio-political in focus. Intending to capture basic historical material, these works are rarely concerned with focused historical moments and political and formal problems, let alone long relations across these periods and social-ideological systems.