Architecture in China and the Meaning of Modern

摘要

What is generally understood by Modern architecture in China is set to be re-evaluated across the world with a major exhibition this summer at the RIBA in London and a significant new book by Edward Denison and Guang Yu Ren. Here co-author and co-curator of Modernism in China, Edward Denison, outlines why we need to look back to China's Modernist roots in the early 20th century if we are to understand the intense modernisation of the present. It has been observed that China's architecture 'is in a state of transition and time alone can show the ultimate outcome'. For a country which, until the early 20th century, proudly boasted the longest continuous architectural traditions humankind has witnessed and which, in the early 21st century, is undergoing the most extensive urban development humankind has witnessed, this observation appears decidedly understated, but since it was penned in the 1920s the author can be forgiven. What China has been through over the past century is nothing short of staggering when compared with any other perceived norm in architecture and urban planning, and yet this transition is still under way.