Having experienced, at first hand, China's architects wrestling with modernism and the pull of traditional culture, and observing the often tortuous results, this book actually gives an invaluable understanding of why that struggle exists. The subtitle Architectural Visions and Revolutions suggests the importance of the interplay of historical events and their impact on design thought. The book responds by laying open Chinese modern history, from the 17th and 18th centuries and particularly from the beginning of the 20th to explain the sudden "love affair with modernity, in that after five millennia of uninterrupted civilisation, China was turning its back on the past as the repository of knowledge and ideas... and in this realm modernity took root and flourished...at every level."
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