The Journal of Architecture

A kaleidoscope of trajectories: research in/on/with China | Deljana Iossifova & Doreen Bernath
We are closing this transformative year with a double issue that explores current, multifaceted research in/on/with China. What does architecture mean in China and what does Chinese architecture mean to architecture at large were historically, not so long ago, part of polemical debates tied to questions of modernisation, which triggered a series of experimental studies and practices to both prove and disprove certain assumptions imposed by the dominant Western culture. In the midst of China’s war-torn period from the 1920s to the 40s, the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture (SRCA) published an article titled ‘Why Study Chinese Architecture?’ by one of its founding member Liang Sicheng. He poignantly described the rapid loss of historical buildings due to the blind drive of progress to adopt ‘Western buildings’ while remain adamant that Chinese architecture must find its own path towards modernisation, which he believed required both modern scholarship of physical remnants of the past, from physical construction, artistic legacy, to cultural consciousness, and modern sciences to understand old and new materials and methods of buildings. CONTINUE READING