The universal and the local: some new features in the built environment of contemporary China

摘要

By identifying and examining a number of different but related approaches that have had significant impact on the character of the built environment in contemporary China, this paper addresses the phenomenon of the universalisation of the local. This universalising process has brought about a problematic resemblance between places across distant regions. This resemblance partakes of the logic of modernist uniformity, a result of the elimination of ornament and the simplification of form. Place resemblance engendered by the repeated and cross-regional employment of a very limited number of highly standardised and simplified motifs and elements in the built environment, purportedly being regarded as 'traditional', is not exclusively a contemporary Chinese phenomenon, but it seems more conspicuous and widespread in that country. Thus it is the Author's hope that discussions such as this can help win better awareness of the challenges that the planners and designers in China and elsewhere are facing in the contemporary world of commercialisation and consumerism.