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Architecture and global imaginations in China

Duanfang Lu

To cite this article: Duanfang Lu (2017) Architecture and global imaginations in China, The Journal
of Architecture, 22:4, 639-661, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2016.1204080

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 639

The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 22
Number 4

Architecture and global

imaginations in China
(This paper was originally published in the Journal of Architecture, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 123-145. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1080/13602360701363411)

Duanfang Lu Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning,

University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

This article examines the changing consciousness of globality in the Chinese discourses of
national and modernist architecture between 1949 and 1965. Drawing on recent scholarship
concerning knowledge and representation, the study focuses on three crucial moments
when Chinese architectural imaginings were decisively shaped by the dynamic relationship
between a vexed Chinese situation and a shifting world stage: (1) the search for a ‘Socialist
Realist’ architecture in relation to the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries
during the early 1950s; (2) the reception of modernist architecture in relation to an expan-
sive internationalist view of the world in the second half of the 1950s; and (3) the re-evalu-
ation of modernist architecture in relation to Third World nations during the early 1960s. The
study demonstrates the world in Chinese architectural discourses not as a static one that
could be neatly divided into a centre/periphery but a dynamic one constantly being
reconstructed. The article reveals the history of modern architecture as a narration of
tangled global and local experiences, instead of a linear one bounded within a nationally
defined space.

Introduction such as modern/traditional and core/periphery

Originating in interwar Europe, architectural mod-
ernism traversed national boundaries throughout
the world. Yet up until the last three decades, the
official history of modernist architecture focused
mainly on its development in the West. Only in
recent years has a literature on the heterogeneous
trajectories of modernism started to grow, greatly
advancing our understanding of how modernism
was adopted, modified, interpreted and contested
in developing countries.1 This discourse has
focused on national building projects and their
confrontation with and assimilation of Western
professional knowledge. These processes are often
approached along either culturalist or statist lines,
bounded within a nationally defined space. Is it
possible to transcend reified binary oppositions
while still recognising the ongoing development of
global modernity? How did architectural modernism
develop with reference not only to Western epistem-
ology but also to the experiences and knowledge of
other parts of the world? And how did the impli-
cations of modernist architecture continuously shift
in the context of conflicting relationships involving
nationalistic concerns and the problems of under-
development?
This article explores these questions by concen-
trating on the changing consciousness of globality
in the Chinese discourses of national and modernist
architecture between 1949 and 1965 (covering
the period after the socialist revolution and
before the Cultural Revolution). In particular, the
article focuses on three crucial moments when the

# 2007 The Journal of Architecture 1360-2365 https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2016.1204080

 640
Architecture and global
imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
trajectory of architectural development was decisi-
vely shaped by the dynamic relationship between a
vexed Chinese situation and a shifting world stage:
(1) the search for a ‘Socialist Realist’ style in relation
to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the
early 1950s; (2) the reception of modernist architec-
ture in relation to an expansive internationalist view
of the world in the second half of the 1950s; and (3)
the re-evaluation of modernist architecture in
relation to Third World nations during the early
1960s.2
The study builds upon recent scholarship on
knowledge and representation.3 Discourse analysis
has been widely used in humanities and social
science disciplines since the 1970s to unmask
obscured structures of power, political control and
dominance in discursive practices.4 It is employed
in this study to trace the diffusion of design ideas
and the diachronic changes that particular types of
architectural discourse underwent. Informed by
recent formulations of global history, this article con-
cerns the problems of Chinese modernism as an
inextricable part of the global history of modernity.5
Through an investigation into the changing meaning
of signs such as ‘foreign architecture’ in China, the
study demonstrates that the centre/periphery and
sameness/difference are not fixed presuppositions
but unstable historicised formulations. The article
shows that the development of modernist architec-
ture in China was not only informed by Euro-
American sources, but was also influenced by
events and experiences from other parts of the
world. The article presents the beginnings of a
new framework for architectural historiography
which conceptualises the world not as the one
that can be neatly divided into a centre/periphery
but as a dynamic one constantly being
reconstructed.
Pre-1949 architectural development: a brief
history
The traditional Han Chinese construction system,
characterised by a pitched roof and a timber-frame
structure, had remained relatively consistent over
time.6 The Opium War (1839 – 1842) opened up a
series of encroachments by Western powers, under
whose influence great changes occurred.7 Foreign
architects started to practise in China; by 1910,
there were fourteen architectural firms in Shanghai
alone.8 Much of early foreign construction was in
eclectic European styles. Modernist architecture
was first introduced in the late 1920s and gradually
gained popularity in major cities but was nonethe-
less balanced by a Neo-Classical tendency.9
A small group of foreign architects took initiatives
to explore the adaptation of Chinese building
traditions into modern architecture. One of the
first attempts was made by Harry Hussey, a
Canadian architect who worked in China after
1911.10 In his 1916 design of the campus of the
Beijing Union Medical College, commissioned by
the Rockefeller Foundation, he created an architec-
tural hybrid with modern layouts and ancient
Chinese details.11 Another important advocate of
the Chinese style was the American architect
Henry K. Murphy, who practised in China between
the 1910s and 1930s. An expert in school and
campus design, Murphy received the commission
of the Yale-in-China campus at Changsha in 1913
and several other missionary colleges in the years

that followed.12 He sought to blend modern plans
and Chinese ornaments in some of these projects.
The Taihe Palace of the Forbidden City, for
example, was employed by Murphy as a precedent
for the design of Wheeler Memorial Chapel at
Yenching University.13 In an article published in
1928, Murphy conceptualised the adaptation of tra-
ditional elements in modern buildings as ‘an Archi-
tectural Renaissance’, and considered Chinese
architecture a living thing ‘with a bearing on
present-day practical problems’.14 The ‘Chinese
style’ developed by Murphy and other Western
architects greatly influenced the subsequent evol-
ution of national architectural forms in Republican
China (1911 – 1949). The personal agendas of
these initiators were inevitably linked with historical
conditions of the time. The rise of Chinese national-
ism, in particular, had an important effect upon the
development of the national style. The anti-mission-
ary riot that took place in Changsha in 1910, for
instance, had decisively influenced the Yale-in-
China’s foreign clients who sought to give a local
flavour to their institutions in order to achieve
psychic pacification.15
The early twentieth century saw the return of the
first generation of foreign-trained Chinese archi-
tects, most from the United States, where they
received scholarships from the Boxer Indemnity
funds.16 They attempted to move away from
foreign influences and develop what they saw as a
more authentic approach to incorporate Chinese
architectural characteristics into modern pro-
grammes. In a 1919 Far Eastern Review article, for
example, William H. Chaund, a Chinese architect
who had studied architecture in Chicago, called for
641
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 22
Number 4
Figure 1. Sun
Zhongshan Memorial
Hall, Guangzhou,
designed by Lü Yanzhi
in 1925. (Photograph
taken in 2005.)
the search for a more vigorous architecture which
was ‘national in character and joyously Chinese in
spirit’.17 Chaund argued that nationality was the
central fact of art, which was not ‘merely the
caprice of an individual, but the speech of a
nation’.18 As the civilisation of nations differed in
character, living habits and building customs,
Chinese architects should not imitate Western
achievements slavishly. Instead, Chaund insisted
that ‘however profoundly influenced by the
western attitude and thought we must work out
our own salvation’.19
Due to the overseas training the first generation
of Chinese architects received, however, the refer-
ences they employed in the search for a national
architecture remained largely Euro-American. Lü
Yanzhi’s 1925 winning design proposals for the
Sun Zhongshan (Yat-sen) Mausoleum in Nanjing
and the Sun Zhongshan Memorial Hall in Guangz-
hou (Fig. 1), for instance, featured bold monumental
composition and traditionally styled pavilions.20 In
an article introducing the two projects, Lü stated
 642
Architecture and global
imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
that his design concept was to interpret in architec-
tural form the spirit of Sun Zhongshan who sought
to incorporate ancient Chinese philosophical
thoughts into the solutions for China’s problems by
means of methods developed through modern
scientific research.21 Despite the nationalistic thrust
embodied in Lü’s statement, however, the architec-
tural composition and site-planning principles were
strongly influenced by the Beaux-Arts education Lü
received from Cornell University and the Chinese
style developed by Western architects earlier—in
fact, Lü worked for Murphy’s office in New York
between 1918 and 1922, where he participated in
several of Murphy’s projects in China, including
Ginling College in Nanjing and Yenching University
in Beijing.22 During the 1920s and 1930s, the
Republican government vigorously promoted the
adoption of the native form for national buildings.
The transfer of the national capital from Beijing to
Nanjing in April 1927, in particular, provided new
opportunities for Chinese architects to adopt ‘indi-
genous forms’ (guyou zhi xingshi ) for national build-
ings.23 Yet similarly to earlier foreign efforts, most
native attempts to develop the national style did
not venture beyond the stylistic interpretations of
ancient Chinese architecture.24
Building the Socialist Dream
With the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949,
a new chapter of history began. The first stage of
construction (1949 – 1952) bore the mark of the pre-
vious era; architects were free to make their own sty-
listic decisions. Very soon, though, as the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) aligned the nation with
the socialist camp and considered China a ‘junior
member’ of the Soviet-led alliance of communist
countries, Soviet influence began to permeate
every aspect of Chinese rebuilding.25 During the
1950s, more than 10,000 advisors from the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were invited to
assist various modernisation programmes in China,
and their opinions often outweighed local
objections to key decisions.26 In the sphere of
architectural production, Soviet advisors sought to
transplant to China ‘Socialist Realism’, the national
style which had been established in Russia since
the 1930s as a reaction against the adoption of
‘decadent bourgeois styles’, including constructi-
vism, which had flourished in the USSR earlier, and
the International Style, which developed in capitalist
society. The slogan for this style was: ‘Socialist in
content, national in form’.27 In practice, architec-
tural Socialist Realism consisted of a form of Neo-
classicism which promoted the expression of local
identity and national unity through nationally
specific and local folkloric ornament, and spatial
elements that showed ‘concern for mankind’.28
As the First Five-Year Plan (1953 –1957) was
launched, a new scheme of things was imported
from the USSR; the decades-old search for a national
style was renewed. The Indigenous style first
developed by Western architects, which later
became a symbol of Republican China, was re-
fashioned as the revolutionary style of the socialist
state.29 Unlike the past, however, national architec-
ture was re-imagined in the context of the Cold War.
Design knowledge from the Soviet Union and
Eastern European socialist countries was promoted,
while links with the Euro-American world were cut.
Half of the articles in the 1954 Architectural Journal

(Jianzhu xuebao), the country’s most influential,
were about architecture in Russia and the people’s
democracies. Architectural theory from the Soviet
Union was extolled as the canon, while examples
from Eastern European nations were employed to
illustrate how the orthodox might be locally trans-
lated. The first issue, for example, began with three
articles by Russian authors on theory and practice
in architectural design.30 The second opened with
four articles on architectural practices in East Berlin,
West Berlin, Poland and Hungary.31 Apart from one
article on the ‘tragic consequences’ of the Inter-
national Style in West Berlin, there was no coverage
of architecture in Western capitalist countries.32
The changing consciousness of globality in archi-
tectural discourse can best be illustrated by a com-
parative reading of the architectural historian Liang
Sicheng’s writings before and after 1949. Between
1932 and 1937, Liang and his team surveyed thou-
sands of Chinese historical buildings in 137 counties
in northern China.33 By the mid-1940s, Liang had
completed the annotations for the most important
part of the Yingzao fashi, a builder’s manual
written in 1103, and published parts of the research
results in various articles.34 He completed his manu-
script in 1947, which was published as a book
entitled A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture
in 1984, twelve years after Liang died.35
The opening remarks of A Pictorial History of
Chinese Architecture revealed a residual Sino-centric
cultural geography: ‘Over the vast area from
Chinese Turkestan to Japan, from Manchuria to the
northern half of French Indochina, the same system
of construction is prevalent; and this was the area
of Chinese cultural influence.’36 As the narrative
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Number 4
went on, the European world surfaced as the
primary reference for Liang’s historical explication.
European architecture was frequently used as the
object for comparison; Liang was astute to point
out the similarities and connections between
Chinese and European structures. He considered,
for example, that the strict proportions of timber
brackets (dougong) demonstrated the same spirit as
the orders in European architecture.37 Liang also
acclaimed Chinese timber-frame architecture as
having foretold the principles of modern concrete-
frame structures. Other parts of the world were men-
tioned occasionally, but they served only as minor
references. While Liang acknowledged the influence
of Indian Buddhist architecture on Chinese religious
buildings, the narrative often moved on quickly
without further explanation.38 Liang’s discursive inter-
vention was indeed typical of the time, when Chinese
intellectuals were keen to produce counter-discourses
to contest the imperialist ideology which relegated
Chinese culture to an inferior position.39
Compared with A Pictorial History of Chinese
Architecture, Liang’s 1954 lecture ‘Motherland’s
Architecture’ employed a similar set of historical evi-
dence for the discussion on Chinese architecture,
but the primary reference became the Soviet
Union and Eastern European socialist countries,
while the Euro-American world was distanced.40
Liang advocated the adoption of the Socialist
Realist style and abandonment of the ‘bare cosmo-
politan glass boxes’ of modernism.41 He offered
examples from different parts of the world to illus-
trate his points, but the tone he applied to these
examples indicated a shift of global imagination
when compared with his earlier work. A paragraph
 644

Architecture and global

imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu

Figure 2. The Main Hall

of the Friendship Hotel,
Beijing, designed by
Zhang Bo and built in
1953 – 54. (Source:
Jianzhu xuebao
[Architectural Journal],
1(1954), p. 42.)

illustrating the functions of architecture in human life
cited Egyptian pyramids and European mediaeval
cathedrals only briefly, while giving the examples of
Moscow State University and metro stations in
Moscow detailed explication.42 Liang maintained
that each nation had its own building tradition;
China should develop her own national architecture
instead of importing foreign architectural forms. Simi-
larly to China, Liang pointed out, architectural tra-
dition in the Soviet Union was handed down from
one generation to another.43 By establishing a
same-ness between the two nations in terms of cul-
tural continuity, Liang recoded ancient Chinese archi-
tecture into a new global mapping. Liang’s textual
claims facilitated decades-old Revivalism to continue
to grow in the name of Socialist Realism. The style
came to be known as the ‘Big Roof’ style, which fea-
tured a Chinese tiled roof, a Graeco-Roman façade
and traditional decorative elements.44 Famous
examples of the Revivalist style in this period include
Zhang Bo’s Friendship Hotel in Beijing (1954)
(Fig. 2), Wang Fuchen’s Geology Museum in
Changchun (1954) and Yang Tingbao’s Southeast
Building of Nanjing University in Nanjing (1955).
Acting as vice-chairman of the Beijing Urban
Planning Committee in the 1950s, Liang vetoed
many building proposals that did not have a
Chinese-style roof.45
Main administrative and exhibition buildings were
sometimes built in the Russian variant of the Socialist

Realist style in China during the early 1950s.46
Opened on 2nd October, 1954, the Soviet Exhibition
Hall in Beijing was built in the height of China’s new
identification with the Soviet-led socialist camp.47 In
line with the then- dominant metonymic association
of the human life cycle with the growth of nations,
the Soviet Union was seen as a state which had
reached ‘adulthood,’ serving as the ‘elder brother’
for other less ‘mature’ socialist societies including
China. The Exhibition Hall certificated the leading
position of the Soviet Union in the new revolutionary
historiography through a careful manipulation of
architectural elements. The Hall provided a specta-
cular stage on which to present Soviet accomplish-
ments in industrial and agricultural modernisation,
education, cultural development and the arts.48 Its
chief designer was the Soviet architect Sergei
Andreyev, who collaborated with a few other
designers from the USSR and a design team organ-
ised by China’s Central Design Institute.49 Developed
on 13.2 hectares of open land in Xizhimenwai, the
enormous Exhibition Hall concluded the axis of a
major city boulevard. When visitors were invited to
take part in ritual-like involvement by walking
through the boulevard, a contemporary pilgrimage
path of the sublime realm of communism was
created.
The Soviet Exhibition Hall was conceived in
‘Socialist Realist’ style with a solemn symmetrical
layout and lavish neoclassical details. The central
tower, designed in the Soviet tiered ‘wedding-
cake’ style, rose above the roof of the entrance
hall. Its golden spire rose 87 metres, surmounted
with a giant five-pointed star — the symbol of com-
munism (Fig. 3).50 Four Russian-style pavilions were
645
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 22
Number 4
Figure 3. The Soviet
Exhibition Hall, Beijing,
designed by Sergei
Andreyev et al., and
completed in 1954.
(Photograph taken in
2004.)
located at the corners of the first terrace, each
adorned with a bright golden roof. The interiors
were richly decorated with carved ceiling beams
and custom-made lamps. The Soviet iconography
and architectural details ostensibly certified a
Russian identity for the space. The grandiose dimen-
sion and soaring spire of the Soviet Exhibition Hall
overshadowed all other buildings in the area,
which acutely confirmed the role of the Soviet
Union as a beacon to aid the navigation of other
less-developed socialist countries. The Exhibition
Hall was a disastrously expensive building at the
time: its construction rate per square yard was
833.34 RMB yuan, while the average construction
rates for housing and public facilities were at
around 50 and 100 RMB yuan per square yard
respectively.51 The end result of this lavish expense
was a marvellous ideal far beyond Chinese economic
realities. Yet this seems exactly the intention of the
design. The sumptuous building served to divert
 646
Architecture and global
imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
the attention of spectators from the grey scarcity of
everyday life by turning absence into an anterior pre-
sence through its very materiality. The Exhibition Hall
hence represented an ideal of socialist modernity
that was simultaneously tangible and unreachable.
Towards a new architecture
Chinese experimentation with Socialist Realism,
however, was soon suspended due to international
and internal changes. The Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin died on 5th March, 1953; references to him
in state-published literature gradually disappeared.
As the new Party leader Nikita Khrushchev was
determined to set the USSR on a modified path, a
Soviet resolution of 1955 denounced the tendency
toward architectural extravagance in construction.52
Internally, the CCP increasingly emphasised indus-
trial development and strived to achieve maximum
accumulation of capital by privileging production
over consumption. While in the Soviet Union the
rate of capital accumulation averaged about 25
per cent for the first ten five-year plans, in China it
was over 25 per cent for most of the years
between 1949 and 1965.53 Social scarcity was
thus structurally sanctioned by the new socialist
economic system.54 The ‘anti-waste’ ( fan langfei)
discourse, which arose soon after 1949, received a
new impetus in 1955.55 The Soviet housing standard
of nine square metres per capita of floor space was
initially adopted as the model for Chinese residential
planning. Under the austerity policy, however, plan-
ners questioned whether the ‘socialist standards’
from the USSR were proper practices in China, as
the latter was perceived as a much poorer country
than the former. The housing standard was adjusted
to 4.5 square metres per capita in the mid-1950s
(Fig. 4).56 Private consumption was curbed; every-
thing, including quality of life, had to be sacrificed
to achieve industrialisation.
The Party’s official newspaper, People’s Daily
(Renmin ribao), published a series of articles in
1955 condemning buildings with large roofs and
traditional ornaments as wasteful.57 Liang’s theory
of national architecture became a common target
for criticism.58 The austerity policy decisively
changed the balance of power between proponents
of revivalist and modernist architecture. Before, with
the aura of Socialist Realism, Revivalism was strong
and dominant, while the International Style, con-
sidered empty, decadent and bourgeois in nature,
fell into disrepute. As the former lost authority, in
the criticism campaigns against waste, architects
now declared that ‘we need modernist architec-
ture.’59 In a spirited modernist manifesto, Jiang
Weihong and Jin Zhiqiang called for a re-evaluation
of ‘capitalist architecture’, and the adoption of
new forms and structures which served people
better.60 Buildings such as the Children’s Hospital
(designed by Hua Lanhong) and Peace Hotel
(designed by Yang Tingbao) in Beijing were praised
for taking function as the point of departure and
implementing modern techniques.
Professionals came to agree that International-
style architecture could serve both capitalism and
socialism. A new discursive formation of ‘foreign
architecture’ arose and fuelled the new Chinese
imaginings of Modernism. After a short interim
period between 1955 and early 1956 when architec-
tural discussion was focused on internal issues, the
influential Architectural Journal added a new
 647

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Figure 4. Standard plan

for a flat selected from
submissions nationwide
by the General Bureau
of Urban Construction
in 1955. It was common
for two or three
households to share
one unit at the time.
(Source: Jianzhu xuebao
[Architectural Journal],
1(1956), p. 15.

section on ‘Foreign Architecture’, starting from the of the Journal with their leading position empha-
fifth issue of 1956.61 Notably, while articles about sised, they were now moved to the ‘Foreign Archi-
architecture in the USSR and Eastern European tecture’ category. Under the same label one also
socialist countries used to be placed at the beginning found news about design projects and architectural
 648
Architecture and global
imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
trends in Europe, the United States and Japan. Com-
pared with previous issues, the descriptions con-
tained fewer ideological components. Instead, the
tone was neutral and scientific, and there was
more coverage of practical problems, such as the
spatial organisations of special facilities, structural
engineering and building materials.
The conflation of the socialist and Western world
under the same ‘Foreign Architecture’ label indi-
cated a major shift from a definition of global
space based on ideological solidarity to a more
expansive internationalist view of the world during
this period. This change in the consciousness of
globality in turn facilitated a new conceptualisation
of modernism. A 1956 article by Deng Yan, for
example, advocated a ‘scientific attitude’ which
distinguished between science and politics in
capitalist society.62 Deng considered the imitation
of traditional forms lacking in logical basis, and
called for the exploration of architectural ideas
according to actual situations and scientific research.
Two articles by Zhou Puyu published in the same
year focused on the application of modern science
in architectural design.63 Zhou denounced Revival-
ism for ignoring new science and technology,
which gravely curbed China’s architectural develop-
ment.64 He maintained that it was essential to make
use of techniques developed in both socialist and
capitalist countries.65 Through these discussions,
Western modernism, considered the decadent
product of capitalism in the past, was gradually nor-
malised and re-established as part of universal
knowledge.
The progressive normalisation of modernist archi-
tecture eventually resulted in an internalisation of
knowledge. In the 1957 Architectural Journal’s
yearly table of contents, the ‘Foreign Architecture’
section was replaced by a new section, entitled
‘News of International Architecture’, which offered
brief introductions to various types of buildings:
housing, hospitals, hotels, nurseries and various
industrial buildings. Longer articles about foreign
architecture and planning were no longer included
in this section; instead, they were juxtaposed with
discussions about Chinese architecture in other sec-
tions. The journal published detailed introductions
to Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius in
1957.66 Intriguingly, the articles about the two
master architects of the International Style were
placed in the ‘Architectural Review’ section, along
with discussions on local issues. These subtle classifi-
catory manoeuvres not only indicated a growing
Chinese sense of identification with Modernism,
but also established a new synchronic relationship
between China and the West.
The people’s commune movement launched in
1958 opened up new possibilities for Chinese archi-
tects to experiment with modernist architecture.67
In early February, 1958, the National People’s
Congress announced the ‘Great Leap Forward’
Movement for the next three years, targeted at
creating an intensive and urgent work environment.
Overtaking Britain within 15 years in the production
of steel and other major industrial products became
the official goal.68A piecemeal amalgamation of
agricultural producers’ cooperatives was launched
by local leaders in various parts of China amid the
frantic drive towards the Great Leap.69 In an inspec-
tion tour the Party leader Mao Zedong undertook in
early August of the same year, he praised the new

orientation and decided to push it further. A resol-
ution was adopted at the enlarged politburo
meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in
Beidaihe, calling for the formation of peoples’
communes in rural areas. The Party claimed that the
commune was to be a modern organisational form
which integrated industry, agriculture, trade,
education and military affairs.70 The commune move-
ment aimed to improve production forces, eliminate
urban-rural distinctions, promote collective living
and free women from the drudgery of home life.71
Official approval gave a forceful push to the move-
ment. By September, 1958, 23,397 rural communes
had been established in 27 provinces, embracing
90.4 percent of rural households.72
Concurrent with sweeping institutional changes,
the state ordered urban-based planners, architects,
students and researchers to ‘go down’ to the coun-
tryside and work with local peasants to produce
commune design proposals. The Geography Depart-
ment of Beijing Normal University, for example, sent
work teams to eight provinces, including Inner
Mongolia, Shandong, Henan, Sicuan, Ganshu,
Hubei, Guangxi and Fujian.73 Within one month,
these work teams, each consisting of two to three
members, completed planning for 16 communes,
wrote 24 guidebooks, and produced 160 drawings.
To raise the political consciousness of peasants and
increase agricultural output, designers believed
that traditional rural settlements should be revolu-
tionised through a fundamental reorganisation of
the physical environment. To achieve this goal,
designers boldly experimented with modernist plan-
ning and architectural design. The numerous propo-
sals they produced between 1958 and 1960 in many
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aspects represented a complete negation of the
existing rural life-world.74 Villages of various sizes
were reordered into concentrated, large residential
clusters according to modern neighbourhood plan-
ning principles.75 Previous focal points for rural life
(ancestral halls, temples, local markets and so on)
gave way to modern institutions (collective can-
teens, schools, co-op shops and so on).
Vernacular built forms and decorative elements
were abandoned. Production, residential and edu-
cation activities were housed in orthogonal, moder-
nist-style buildings laid out in orderly rows. Indeed,
architectural modernism was employed by
commune designers not only as a symbol of moder-
nity but also as an abbreviated sign of order and effi-
ciency.76 The plan made for Suiping Commune is a
revealing example concerning architects’ ‘quasi-
religious faith in a visual sign or representation of
order’ (Fig. 5).77 The site was dominated by a grand,
symmetrical main building group; a spacious square
was laid in front of the main building to strengthen
its central status.78 On both sides of the main building
group, minor buildings were arranged along the
orderly, rectangular street grid. Although Suiping
Commune was located in the Henan Province of
northern China, and although under no circum-
stances would palm trees grow there, two were
casually included by the designers. This visual
element thus subtly revealed the designer’s logic: the
commune plan was based on the professionals’ own
aesthetic preferences rather than local particularities.
In keeping with the goal of collectivising rural life,
some designers adopted radical standards to
weaken the family unit and free women from the
drudgery of housework. Families were to be
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Architecture and global

imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu

Figure 5. Perspective
drawing for the central
part of Suiping People’s
Commune, Henan,
1958. (Source: Jianzhu
xuebao [Architectural
Journal], 11(1958),
p. 12.

separated and housed in different buildings or
apartment units.79 Adults, with the exception of
married couples, were assigned into dormitory
rooms where three to four persons of the same
sex shared the same space. Aged people stayed in
retirement homes, and young children boarded at
kindergartens or residential schools.80 Kitchens,
living rooms and bathrooms were often abolished
from housing floor plans, while canteens, public
meeting halls, shared lavatories, communal bath-
houses and nurseries were provided in the neigh-
bourhood (Fig. 6). In every way, these modern
spaces proclaimed the end of the peasantry, its insti-
tutions and its long-established way of life.
Despite the energy and enthusiasm instilled in
countless commune proposals, they remained
castles in the air. The inept economic policies of
the Great Leap Forward and the commune move-
ment ignored technological and human constraints;
workers and peasants were called upon to work
shift after shift with little rest. It soon became appar-
ent that the communes neither increased individual
income nor raised the level of satisfaction obtained
from working.81 On the contrary, the egalitarianism
adopted by the commune system resulted in slack-
ing off at work. Meanwhile, in 1960, the USSR with-
drew its technicians and terminated Soviet aid to
China, and imposed pressure for repayment of
 651

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Figure 6. Neighbour-
hood plan, Vanguard
Cooperative Farm,
Shanghai, 1958:
1. Housing; 2. Stove;
3. Women’s bathroom;
4. Men’s bathroom;
5. Kitchen;
6. Storeroom; 7. Office;
8. Canteen; 9. Storage;
10. Lavatory. (Source:
Jianzhu xuebao
[Architectural Journal],
10 (1958), p. 26.

debts.82 The combined effects of these factors and
agricultural disasters resulted in a severe famine,
which claimed millions of lives between 1959 and
1961.83 The state decided to retreat in January,
1961, shifting the emphasis of development from
industry to agriculture. The leadership, seriously
demoralised, considered planning impractical. The
state announced at the 1960 national planning
meeting that urban planning practice should be sus-
pended for three years.84 Planning departments
were dismantled; planners were forced to find jobs
in other professions.85
Rethinking Modernist architecture
The conceptualisation of modernist architecture was
temporarily stabilised in the late 1950s, but the
problem of national form remained unsettled. In
the campaign against Revivalism, alternative
interpretations of the national style surfaced.
China is a diverse country in both geographical
 652
Architecture and global
imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
and ethnic terms. As such, the recognition of
regional differences had always existed. Revivalist
architecture during the Republican era and the
early 1950s often adopted elements from imperial
architecture rather than from local building tra-
ditions. Architectural historian Liu Dunzhen, for
example, pointed out in a 1955 article that Liang’s
codification of Chinese architecture made reference
only to imperial palaces and temples, ruling out ver-
nacular building traditions as part of national
forms.86
As Revivalism fell into disrepute, regional diversity
emerged as an important dimension in rethinking
Chinese architecture. In his 1959 speech on devel-
oping a new Chinese socialist style, Liu Xiufeng,
Minister of Building Engineering, offered a review
of China’ s architectural practices since 1949. He dis-
cussed issues related to architectural research, the
essential elements of architecture and the relation-
ship between tradition and innovation, content
and form, and so on. He emphasised that the cre-
ation of ‘new architecture’ should draw on vernacu-
lar forms which had been developed based on
different climatic and geographical conditions,
local cultures and building materials.87 Liu’s speech
and other articles on the ‘New Style’ (xin fengge)
published in 1959 formed the basis for the discus-
sion on how to develop an architecture that was
both ‘new’ and ‘Chinese’ in the early 1960s.88
The rethinking of Chinese modern architecture
was further fuelled by newly acquired lessons from
the peoples’ commune movement. The failure of
the commune plan forced Chinese architects to re-
examine the issue of architectural modernism.
Although architects were eager to apply modernist
design to rural development, the country was
short of steel and concrete. By 1962, with a new
focus on agriculture in economic development, the
state was mobilising architects to design new rural
houses with the idea of ‘walking on two legs’, a
combination of both modern and traditional
methods, being emphasised.89 In the ‘Rural
Housing Design’ symposium, held in Beijing in
December, 1962, designers discussed the applica-
bility of concrete structures in the countryside and
recognised the necessity of adapting design to the
realities of existing materials, technology and
skills.90 1963 saw a sudden expansion of knowledge
of vernacular built forms in different parts of the
country. Between January and October of that
year, 69 research reports on rural housing and 37
on rural production buildings were produced.91
Efforts were taken to integrate local traditions with
modern building technology in many proposals for
new rural housing. A 1963 Architectural Journal
article, for instance, discussed how traditional
heated brick beds could be incorporated into the
design of modern multi-storey concrete buildings.92
At the same time as the reports of vernacular
dwelling types were published in the Architectural
Journal, the same journal also began extensively to
introduce architecture in Third World countries. As
modernist architecture was gradually internalised
as part of ‘Us’, the ‘Foreign Architecture’ section dis-
appeared between 1960 and 1962. Starting from
early 1963, the section reappeared. Under the
same ‘foreign’ label, however, were not the Soviet
Union, Eastern European socialist countries or
Western countries; instead, they were replaced by
various Third World nations. The 1963 issues

covered architecture in Indonesia, Cambodia,
Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and
Albania, while the 1964 issues added Egypt,
Mexico, Ghana, Guinea and Syria to the list.
Unlike typical Western representations, these
articles focused on the newly developed Modernist
architecture of Third World countries rather than
their traditional structures. Authors paid particular
attention to how architects in these countries
adapted Modernist buildings to local geographical,
climatic and cultural conditions. The narratives
were filled with praise for the progress made in
architectural modernisation in these nations. In a
1963 report on Cuban architecture, for instance,
Liu Yunhe introduced the nation’s achievements in
various aspects: factories, residential buildings,
rural housing, public and tourist facilities, and con-
struction technology.93 Innovative roof systems in
industrial structures and well-planned residential
districts in Havana were extolled. Liu found the
production system of prefabricated components
designed for Cuban rural housing particularly
commendable. In the concluding paragraph, Liu
remarked that China could learn a lot from Cuba
despite the differences between the two in terms
of climatic and geographical conditions. In another
report on architecture in Myanmar (Burma), the
authors devoted attention to the strategies to facili-
tate natural ventilation through openness in building
design (Fig. 7).94 Occasionally, a ‘sameness’ was
evidenced between building traditions in China
and those in other developing countries. Sotto
porticos (qilou) in Cambodia, for example, were
associated with similar arrangements in the city of
Guangzhou, which was followed by comments on
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Figure 7. Image
showing the use of
perforated walls in
buildings at Rangoon
University, Rangoon,
Myanmar (Burma).
(Source: Jianzhu xuebao
[Architectural Journal],
8 (1963), p. 27.
the advantages of such arrangements in hot and
humid weather.95
Through these discursive parameters, the
architectural practices of other developing countries
were conceptually linked with those of China, creat-
ing a world of synchronic temporality and shared
spatiality. The diverse interpretations of modernist
architecture by these nations, along with the
various local traditions of China’s own, together
fuelled new imaginings of modern Chinese architec-
ture. With regional characteristics emphasised in this
new orientation, the early 1960s saw a flourishing of
design projects with a strong local flavour (Fig. 8).96
The regional solidarity between China and the Third
World countries destabilised the previous discursive
framing of ‘Western modernist architecture’,
which once again became a subject of intellectual
contention. This conceptual twist is reflected in a
1964 article entitled ‘A Review of Ten Buildings in
the West’. In this article, Wu Huanjia commented
on the ‘ten greatest buildings in the 1960s’ selected
 654
Architecture and global
imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
Figure 8. Baiyunshan
Guesthouse,
Guangzhou, designed
by Mo Bozhi in 1962:
this was considered to
be a fine example of
regional architecture at
the time. (Photograph
taken in 2005.)
by the American journal The Architectural Forum.97
Wu found the works of ‘master architects’ in
Western countries (including Le Corbusier, Louis
Kahn, Frank Lloyd Wright and Eero Saarinen,
among others) ‘chaotic’, ‘ugly’ and ‘sick’. Saarinen’s
expressionist TWA Flight Center, for example, was
denounced for the lavish abuse of the most
advanced technology and materials for pure visual
concerns. For Wu, such formalistic architecture in
the West was an expression of a decadent bourgeois
psyche and self-centred individualism, which failed
to satisfy people’s spiritual needs.98
The re-evaluation of Western architecture should
be considered under the interpretive conditions at
a specific historical moment. Key to this assessment
was a new cognitive distinction made between the
Modernism of the West and that of the Third
World. While Chinese and Western Modernist archi-
tecture was previously synthesised into a universal
knowledge, the same-ness was inevitably disrupted
by the problems surrounding Chinese Modernism
against the backdrop of conflicting relationships
involving nationalistic concerns and the problem of
underdevelopment. The commune movement, for
example, provided a new practical and discursive
terrain upon which architects could translate,
modify and interpret modernist architecture in the
socialist Chinese context.99 Driven by their technical
convictions, designers aspired to create a powerful
rational order in rural China based on Modernist aes-
thetic cannons. The historical condition of scarcity,
however, limited the possibility that the desire for
Modernism could ever be fulfilled.
If scarcity was an inherited wound of Third World
modernity, further modernisation only made it
deeper: millions of people lost their lives to star-
vation during the commune movement. The crisis
gave rise to a new need for self-knowledge and
other epistemes besides that of the West. This rec-
ognition conflated the South/North confrontation
newly formulated by the CCP after the formal
Sino-Soviet split in 1960. China had consistently
identified itself with the Third World and had con-
sidered strengthening solidarity with other Third
World countries: its basic foreign policy since the
founding of the Third World coalition at the
Bandung conference in 1955. With China’s increas-
ing alienation from the USSR, the CCP attempted to
lead a Third World challenge to superpower
control.100 Hence the early 1960s saw not only a
sudden expansion of knowledge of China’s own
diverse built traditions but also a newly established
interest in the development of Modernist architec-
ture in Third World countries. It was within this dis-
cursive turn that Western Modernist architecture
was re-imagined as a source of alienation and
once again distanced.

Conclusion
The Chinese discourses of national and Modernist
architecture are examined in this article from the
perspective of the changing global imaginations.
As such, the questions discussed have not been con-
cerned with distinguishing between modernity and
tradition, or between universal knowledge and
local cultural content, the dichotomies in conven-
tional architectural historiography. Rather, the
enquiry has been focused on the diffuseness with
which architectural Modernism and nationalism
were apprehended by reference to the dynamic
relationship between a vexed Chinese situation
and a shifting world stage. The active relationship
between the two, as shown above, has rendered
the ‘foreign architecture’ sign an historical formation
whose meaning underwent ‘inevitable displace-
ments, revisions, and challenges’ in China’s modern-
isation process.101 The study demonstrates that
Chinese imaginings of national and Modernist archi-
tecture had been informed by events, sources and
inspirations from various parts of the globe. It
reveals the history of modern architecture as a narra-
tion of tangled global and local experiences, instead
of a linear one bounded within a nationally defined
space.
While this article presents a few specific moments
of Chinese architectural history, its broader concern
is with a new theoretical proposition which seeks to
disrupt the usual historiographical focus on the
West/non-West confrontation which has so far
dominated the narratives of architectural modernis-
ation in developing countries. It reveals, instead, a
world not as a static fixture but as a dynamic one
constantly being deconstructed and reconstructed.
655
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As such, the article argues, despite the fact that
the core-periphery hierarchy is real, it should not
blind historians to the recognition that local histories
are events unfolding in synchronic relationship to
those of various parts of the globe; the assumed
standard history of the West is only one part of
this global narration. Indeed, the under-articulated-
ness of the ‘other relationships’ is another apparatus
through which the hierarchy is maintained. What
this study attempts to achieve, ultimately, is to fore-
ground this neglected facet of architectural
historiography.
Notes and references
The photographs are from my personal collection,
unless specified otherwise. I want to thank Greg
Castillo and Glen Hill for their insightful comments.
1. See, for just a few examples, James Holston, The
Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1989); Jon Lang,
Madhavi Desai and Miki Desai, Architecture and
Independence: The search for Identity—India 1880 to
1980 (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997); Abidin
Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban
Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia (New York,
Routledge, 2000); Sibel Bozdogan, Modernism and
National Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the
Early Republic (Seattle, University of Washington
Press, 2001); Zou Denong, Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu
shi [A History of Modern Chinese Architecture]
(Tianjing, Tianjing kexue jishu chubanshe, 2001);
Peter G. Rowe and Seng Kuan, Architectural Encoun-
ters with Essence and Form in Modern China
(Cambridge, MIT Press, 2002).
 656
Architecture and global
imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
2. Coined by the French economist Alfred Sauvy during
the early 1950s, the term ‘Third World’ was the ideo-
logical by-product of the dramatic changes in the
world order after World War II. The Asia-Africa Confer-
ence in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, symbolised the
appearance of developing nations that had gained
independence from colonial rule as newly emergent
forces in the world system. The term was used during
the Cold War to distinguish nations that neither
aligned with the West nor with the East. See Elbaki
Hermassi, The Third World Reassessed (Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1980).
3. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge
(London, Tavistock, 1972); Edward Said, Orientalism
(New York, Vintage Books, 1979); Homi K. Bhabha,
The Location of Culture (London, Routledge, 1994).
4. The word ‘discourse’ here refers to a system of represen-
tation defining what can be said about a specific topic,
which has developed socially and has been naturalised
over time. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison (New York, Pantheon Books,
1977). In discourse analysis, language is considered
connecting with ‘the social through being the primary
domain of ideology, and through being both a site of,
and a stake in, struggles for power’; see Norman
Fairclough, Language and Power (London, Longman,
1989), p. 15. For the approach of discourse analysis,
see Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis: The
Critical Study of Language (London, Longman, 1995);
Marianne W. Jorgensen and Louise J. Phillips, Discourse
Analysis as Theory and Method (London, Sage, 2002).
5. Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens, eds, Conceptualiz-
ing Global History (Boulder, Westview Press, 1993);
Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, ‘World history in a
Global Age’, The American Historical Review, 100, 4
(1995), pp. 1034 –60.
6. Liang Sicheng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architec-
ture: A Study of the Development of Its Structural
System and the Evolution of Its Types (Cambridge,
Ma., MIT University Press, 1984).
7. For a discussion of urban development during this
period, see Joseph W. Esherick, Remaking the
Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity,
1900– 1950 (Honolulu,University of Hawaii Press,
2000).
8. Wu Jiang, Shanghai bainian jianzhu shi [A Hundred
Year’s Architectural History in Shanghai] (Shanghai,
Tongji daxue chubanshe, 1997), p. 95.
9. Zou, Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu shi, op. cit., pp. 74 –83.
10. Jeffrey W. Cody, Building in China: Henry K. Murphy’s
‘Adaptive Architecture’, 1914–1935 (Hong Kong, The
Chinese University Press, 2001), pp. 70 –85.
11. Ibid., pp. 70 –5.
12. Ibid., Chapter 3.
13. Ibid., p. 1.
14. Henry K. Murphy, ‘An Architectural Renaissance in
China’, Asia, 28 (June, 1928), pp. 428 –75.
15. Rowe and Kuan, Architectural Encounters with
Essence and Form in Modern China, op. cit., p. 65.
16. Xing Ruan, ‘Accidental affinities: American beaux-arts
in twentieth-century Chinese architectural education
and practice’, Journal of Society of Architectural Histor-
ians, 61, 1(March, 2002), pp. 30 –47.
17. William H. Chaund, ‘Architectural efforts and Chinese
nationalism: being a radical interpretation of modern
architecture as a potent factor in civilization’, The Far
Eastern Review, 15 (August, 1919), pp. 533– 6. The
quotation is from p. 534.
18. Ibid., p. 534.
19. Ibid., p. 534.
20. Lai Delin, ‘Searching for a modern Chinese monu-
ment: the design of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in
Nanjing’, Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, 64, 1 (March, 2005), pp. 22 –55; Rowe
and Kuan, Architectural Encounters with Essence
and Form in Modern China, op. cit., pp. 69 –72. Lü

Yanzhi died of cancer in 1929, before the two build-
ings were completed.
21. Lü Yanzhi, ‘Memorials to Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Nanking
and Canton’, The Far Eastern Review, 25 (March,
1929), pp. 97 –101.
22. Rowe and Kuan, Architectural Encounters with
Essence and Form in Modern China, op. cit., p. 221.
23. Charles D. Musgrove, ‘Building a dream: constructing a
national capital in Nanjing, 1927 –1937’, in Esherick,
Remaking the Chinese City, op. cit., pp. 139–60.
24. Zou, Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu shi, op. cit., pp. 69 –73.
25. Peter Van Ness, ‘China as a Third World state: foreign
policy and official national identity’, in, Lowell Dittmer
and Samuel S. Kim, eds, China’s Quest for National
Identity (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1993),
pp. 194 –214.
26. Jonathan D. Spence, To Change China: Western
Advisors in China, 1620 –1960 (Boston, Little, Brown,
1969), p. 282.
27. William C. Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993),
Chapter 15.
28. Anders Åman, Architecture and Ideology in Eastern
Europe during the Stalin Era: An Aspect of Cold War
History (New York, The Architectural History
Foundation, Inc., 1992), Chapter 3; Greg Castillo,
‘Soviet orientalism: Socialist Realism and built
tradition’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements
Review, 8, 2 (1997), pp. 33– 48.
29. Greg Castillo, ‘Building culture in East and West Berlin:
two Cold War globalisation projects’, in Nezar
AlSayyad, ed., Hybrid Urbanism (London, Praeger,
2000), pp. 181 –205.
30. Minie’erwen, ‘Leilin de fanying lun yu shulian jianzhu
lilun wenti’ [‘Lenin’s theory of representation and the
problematic of Russian architectural theory’], Jianzhu
xuebao [Architectural Journal], 1(1954), pp. 4 –13; A
Kuziniezuofu, ‘Huifu erluosi shuwei’ai lianban shehui
657
The Journal
of Architecture
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Number 4
zhuyi gongheguo chengshi de chuanzuo zongjie’ [‘A
summary of architectural creation in the process of
Soviet socialist city rehabilitation’], Jianzhu xuebao
[Architectural Journal], 1(1954), pp. 14 –28; Associ-
ation of Russian Architects, ‘Guanyu gongye jianzhu
de jueyi’ [‘Resolution on industrial architecture’],
Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 1(1954),
pp. 29 –31.
31. Wa Wubulixi, ‘Guojia jianshe shiye yu deguo jianzhujie
de renwu’ [‘The cause of national construction and the
tasks of German architects’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architec-
tural Journal], 2(1954), pp. 53 –77; Ke Magelizhi, ‘Xide
jianzhu de beiju’ [‘The tragedy of architecture in West
Berlin’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal],
2(1954), pp. 78 –85; A Fulashuofu, ‘Zai bolan jianz-
hushi diyici quanguo daibiao dahui shang de fayuan’
[‘Speech at the First National People’s Congress of
Poland’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal],
2(1954), pp. 86 –90; Yue Liwanyi, ‘Xiongyali xinjianzhu
de wenti’ [‘Problems in new Hungarian architecture’],
Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 2(1954),
pp. 91 –9.
32. Magelizhi, ‘Xide jianzhu de beiju’, op. cit., pp. 78 –85.
33. Wilma Fairbank, ‘Liang Ssu-ch’eng: a profile’, in Liang,
A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture, op. cit.,
pp. xiii –xviii.
34. Li Shiqiao, ‘Reconstituting Chinese building tradition:
The Yingzao fashi in the Early Twentieth Century’,
Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, 62, 4
(2003), pp. 470 –89.
35. Wilma Fairbank, ‘Liang Ssu-ch’eng: a profile’, op. cit.
36. Liang, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture, op.
cit., p. 8.
37. Ibid., p. 24.
38. For example, Ibid., p. 124, p. 184.
39. Xiaobing Tang, Global Space and the Nationalist
Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of
Liang Qichao (Stanford, CA., Stanford University
 658
Architecture and global
imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
Press, 1996); Rebecca E. Karl, Staging the World
(Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2002).
40. Liang Sicheng, ‘Zhuguo de jianzhu’ [‘Motherland’s
architecture’], in Liang Sicheng wenji, vol. 4 (Beijing,
Jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1986), pp. 104– 58.
41. Ibid., p. 104.
42. Ibid., p. 107.
43. Ibid., p. 108.
44. For a detailed discussion of the ‘Big Roof’ style, see
Rowe and Kuan, Architectural Encounters with
Essence and Form in Modern China, op. cit., pp. 87 –
106.
45. Anne-Marie Broudehoux, ‘Learning from Chinatown’,
in AlSayyad, Hybrid Urbanism, op. cit., pp. 156–80.
46. Zou, Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu shi, op. cit., pp. 182 –
95.
47. Several similar exhibition structures were built in major
cities including Shanghai, Wuhan and Guangzhou
after the completion of the Soviet Exhibition Hall in
Beijing. See Zou, Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu shi, op.
cit., p. 184. I am indebted to Greg Castillo for bringing
my attention to the connections between the Admir-
alty Building in St Petersburg (1810 –1823, designed
by Andreian Zakharov) and many exhibition halls in
China and in the USSR built in the 1950s. For a discus-
sion on the Admiralty Building in St Petersburg, see
Brumfield, A History of Russian Architecture, op. cit.,
pp. 357 –8. For exhibition structures in the postwar
USSR, see Alexei Tarkhanov and Sergei Kavtaradze,
Stalinist Architecture (London, Laurence King, 1992),
Chapter 5.
48. Jianzhu gongchengbu sheji zongju, et al., Beijing
shulian zhanliangguan jianzhu bufeng [The Soviet
Exhibition Hall in Beijing, Architecture Section]
(Beijing, Jianzhu gongcheng chubanshe, 1955), p. 1.
49. Ibid.
50. Zou, Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu shi, op. cit., pp. 182 –3.
51. Ibid., p. 183.
52. Åman, Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe,
op. cit., p. 219.
53. Kam Wing Chan, Cities with Invisible Walls: Reinter-
preting Urbanization in Post-1949 China (Hong
Kong, Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 60.
54. China’s quest for modernity created a perpetual
scarcity as both a social reality and a national
imagination after 1949, which had important spatial
implications. See Duanfang Lu, Remaking Chinese
Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949 –
2005 (London, Routledge, 2006), pp. 7 –11,
pp. 82 –5.
55. Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan and zhongyang
dang’anguan, eds, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo
jingji dang’an ziliao xuanbian: jiben jianshe touzi he
jianzhu ye juan, 1949 –1952 [Selected Economic Archi-
val Material of the People’s Republic of China: Basic
Construction Investment and Building Industry,
1949–1952] (Beijing, Zhongguo chengshi jingji
shehui chubanshe, 1989), pp. 564–77.
56. Ibid., p. 811.
57. See, for instance, Renmin ribao [People’s Daily],
editorials, March 28th and June 19th, 1955.
58. Many criticisms of Liang were published in Jianzhu
xuebao [Architectural Journal], 1 and 2 (1955).
59. Jiang Weihong and Jin Zhiqiang, ‘Women yao xiandian
jianzhu’ [‘We want modernist architecture’], Jianzhu
xuebao [Architectural Journal], 6 (1956), p. 56.
60. Ibid., p. 56.
61. Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 5 (1956), pp.
61 –2.
62. Deng Yan, ‘Xiaochu jianzhu shijian zhong de fei kexue
taidu’ [‘Avoiding the non-scientific attitude in architec-
tural practices’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural
Journal], 6 (1956), pp. 52– 5.
63. Zhou Puyu, ‘Jindai kexue zai jianzhu shang de yingyong
(1)’ [‘The application of modern science in architecture
(1)’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 4 (1956),

pp. 61 –5; Zhou Puyu, ‘Jindai kexue zai jianzhu shang
de yingyong (2)’ [‘The application of modern science
in architecture (2)’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural
Journal], 7 (1956), pp. 48– 53.
64. Zhou, ‘Jindai kexue zai jianzhu shang de yingyong (1)’,
op. cit., p. 60.
65. Ibid., p. 60.
66. Luo Weidong, ‘Misifandeluo’ [‘Mies van der Rohe’],
Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 5 (1957), pp.
52 –60; Zou Buyu, ‘Geluopiwusi’ [‘Walter Gropius’],
Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 7 (1957),
pp. 35 –8 and 8 (1957), pp. 60 –5.
67. For a detailed account of commune experiments, see
Duanfang Lu, ‘Third World modernism: modernity,
utopia and the People’s Commune in China’, Journal
of Architectural Education, 60, 3 (2007), pp. 40 –8.
68. Kaiming Su, Modern China: A Topical History (Beijing,
New World Press, 1985), p. 219.
69. Kang Jian, Huihuang de huanmie: renmin gongshe
qishi lu [Brilliant Failure: Lessons from the People’s
Commune] (Beijing, Zhongguo shehui chubanshe,
1998), pp. 12 –15.
70. Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China
(New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1990), p. 579.
71. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, eds,
Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian, di shiyi ce
[Selected important documents since the founding of
the People’s Republic, vol. 11] (Beijing, Zhongyang
wenxian chubanshe, 1995), pp. 598 –623.
72. Liansheng Song, Zongluxian, dayuejin, renmin gong-
shehua yundong shimo [The whole story of the
General Guideline, Great Leap Forward, and the
People’s Commune Movement] (Kunming, Yunnan
renmin chubanshe, 2002), p. 177. After some success-
ful communes were established in several major cities,
the Party decided in early 1960 that the urban
commune served a useful economic purpose, and
that it was possible to carry out its development on a
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larger scale. See D.E.T. Luard, ‘The Urban Commune’,
China Quarterly, 3 (1960), pp. 74 –6.
73. ‘Beijing shida jinxing renmin gongshe guihua de
gaikuan’ [‘Survey: Beijing Normal University is carrying
on commune planning’], Dili zhishi [Geographical
Knowledge], 2(1959), p. 94.
74. See, for example, Wang Ye et al., ‘Shanghai shi yi ge
renmin gongshe xinchun de guihua sheji fangan’
[‘The planning design proposal for the new village of
a Shanghai people’s commune’], Jianzhu xuebao
[Architectural Journal], 10 (1958), pp. 19 –23; Wu
Luoshan, ‘Guanyu renmin gongshe guihua zhong jige
wenti de tantao’ [‘On several issues in the planning
of the people’s commune’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architec-
tural Journal], 1 (1959), pp. 1 –3.
75. For a discussion of the application of modern neigh-
bourhood planning principles in China, see Duanfang
Lu, ‘Travelling urban form: the neighbourhood unit in
China’, Planning Perspectives, 21, 4(2006) pp. 369 –92.
76. James C. Scott argues that high modernism tends to
simplify reality through using the visual order as a
legible sign of the experienced order. See James
C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes
to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New
Haven, Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 133 –4. For a
discussion of the connections between the Chinese
commune movement and high modernism, see Lu,
‘Third World modernism’, op. cit., pp. 41 and 46.
77. Scott, Seeing Like a State, op. cit., p. 114.
78. Huanan gongxueyuan jianzhuxi [School of Architecture,
Huanan Technology College], ‘Henan sheng suiping
xian weixin renmin gongshe diyi jiceng guihua sheji’
[‘Planning proposal for Satellite Commune, Suiping
County, Henan Province’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architec-
tural Journal], 11 (1958), pp. 9–13.
79. Wang Yanzheng, et al., ‘Hebei sheng xushui xian
suicheng renmin gongshe de guihua’ [‘The planning
of Suicheng People’s Commune, Xushui, Hebai’],
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imaginations in China
Duanfang Lu
Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 11(1958), pp.
14 –18.
80. Su Xueqin, ‘Zai fengtaiqu lugouqiao dongfanghong
renmin gongshe guihua sheji zhong de jidian tihui’
[‘A few thoughts on the planning of Dongfanghong
People’s Commune, Lugouqiao, Fengtai District’],
Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 11(1958),
pp. 22 –4.
81. Henry J. Lethbridge, The Peasant and the Communes
(Hong Kong, Dragonfly Books, 1963), pp. 121 –2.
82. Liu Suinian and Wu Qungan, China’s Socialist
Economy: An Outline History, 1949 –1984 (Beijing,
Beijing Review, 1986), p. 265.
83. For a discussion of data about death totals, see Jasper
Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao’s Secret Famine
(New York, Free Press, 1996), pp. 266 –74.
84. Tongji University, et al., Chengshi guihua yuanli [The
Principles of Urban Planning] (Beijing, Zhongguo
jianzhu gongye chuban she, 1981), pp. 24 –5.
85. Ibid., p. 25.
86. Liu Dunzhen, ‘Pipan liang sicheng xianshe de weixin
zhuyi jianzhu sixiang’ [A critique on Mr. Liang Sicheng’s
idealist architectural ideas], Jianzhu xuebao [Architec-
tural Journal], 1 (1955), pp. 69– 79. Liu Dunzhen
(1897–1968) was an erudite architectural historian
who used to be the partner of Liang Sicheng at the
Institute for Research on Chinese Architecture. Like
Liang, he published widely on Chinese architectural
history and was a great architectural educator.
87. Liu Xiufeng, ‘Chuangzhao zhongguo de shehui zhuyi
de jianzhu xin fengge’ [Creating new Chinese socialist
architectural style], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural
Journal], 9&10 (1959), pp. 3 – 12. Liu Xiufeng (1908 –
72) joined the Chinese Communist Youth League in
1925 and the Chinese Communist Party in 1926. He
organised revolutionary campaigns thereafter and
became a Party leader. Liu was Minister of Building
Engineering between 1954 and 1964. He was
purged during the Cultural Revolution and persecuted
to death in 1972.
88. Other articles on the ‘New Style’ published in 1959
included, for example, Yuan Jingsheng, ‘Guanyu
chuanzhao xin de jianzhu fengge de jige wenti’
[‘Several problems in creating new architectural
style’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 1
(1959), pp. 38 –9; Gong Zhenghong and Ma Haoran,
‘Shilun xin jianzhu fengge de xingcheng yu chengz-
hang’ [‘On the formation and development of the
new architectural style’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural
Journal], 4 (1959), pp. 33 –5. With official approval
from the Architectural Society of China, 1961 saw vig-
orous debates on the ‘New Style’. See Zou, Zhongguo
xiandai jianzhu shi, op. cit., pp. 268 –71.
89. ‘Beijingshi jianzhu shejiyuan, Miyun xinjian nongchun
zhuzhai diaocha’ [‘A survey of new rural houses in
Miyun’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 10
(1962), pp. 3 –6.
90. ‘Ba sheji gongzuo zhuan xiang zhiyuan nongye de
guidao shanglai’ [‘Shifting design practices to support
argriculture’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal],
1 (1963), p. 4.
91. Zou, Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu shi, op. cit., p. 284.
92. Li Jiefu and Li Xueshan, ‘Caiyong huokang cairuan de
loufang zhuzhai’ [Apartment buildings with heated
brick beds], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 1
(1963), p. 23.
93. Liu Yunhe, ‘Guba jianzhu’ [‘Cuban architecture’], Jianzhu
xuebao [Architectural Journal], 9 (1963), pp. 20–27.
94. Yuan Jingshen, Zhu Shanquan and Ren Guoyun,
‘Miandian jianzhu’ [‘Myanmar architecture’], Jianzhu
xuebao [Architectural Journal], 8 (1963), pp. 24 –8.
95. Cheng Xiaofang, Jianpuzhai jianzhu [Cambodian archi-
tecture], Jianzhu xuebao [Architectural Journal], 7
(1963), pp. 22 –6. ‘Sotto portico’ refers to the street-
side building with upper floor(s) projecting out to
provide a covered walkway at ground level.

96. Zou, Zhongguo xiandai jianzhu shi, op. cit.,
pp. 273–81.
97. Wu Huanjia, ‘Ping xifang shizuo jianzhu’ [‘A review of
ten buildings in the West’], Jianzhu xuebao [Architec-
tural Journal], 6 (1964), pp. 29– 33.
98. Ibid., p. 33.
99. Lu, ‘Third World modernism’, op. cit., pp. 42 –3.
100. Mao’s famous theory of the three worlds saw global
space differently from the normal division of the
three worlds. It considered the First World to consist
of the two superpowers, the United States and the
USSR; the Second World to include the developed
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countries of Europe and Japan; and the Third World
to be made up of both socialist and underdeveloped
capitalist countries. As the Second World was ‘con-
trolled and bullied by the superpowers’, the contra-
diction between the two could be exploited by the
Third World to unite the Second ‘in the common
struggle for self-determination’. See Lillian C. Harris
and Robert L. Worden, China and the Third World:
Champion or Challenger? (Dover, VT, Auburn House
Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 12 –13.
101. James Clifford, ‘Notes on travel and theory’,
Inscriptions, 5 (1989), pp. 177–86.