The Journal of Architecture

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A kaleidoscope of trajectories: research in/on/with

China

Deljana Iossifova & Doreen Bernath

To cite this article: Deljana Iossifova & Doreen Bernath (2022) A kaleidoscope of
trajectories: research in/on/with China, The Journal of Architecture, 27:7-8, 859-862, DOI:
10.1080/13602365.2022.2178132

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2022.2178132

Published online: 03 Mar 2023.

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 859 The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 27
Numbers 7–8

A kaleidoscope of trajectories:
research in/on/with China

Deljana Iossifova

Over the last year, we have sought to reframe what The Journal of Architecture
Manchester Urban Institute
could be about, drawing attention to the important roles that architecture and
The University of Manchester, UK
research about architecture, in many forms and guises, could play in the face of
deljana.iossifova@manchester.ac.uk
pressing global challenges. We look back at efforts to expand, include, desta-
bilise, and decolonise in calling for more diverse, more engaged, and more rel-
ORCID 0000-0003-0477-1462
evant scholarship. Now, we look forward to exploring and engaging in new
ways with our authors and our readership.
In the new year, we will be launching our annual event On the Edge with a
Doreen Bernath
talk by and discussion with Tatjana Schneider on ‘Architecture in the Climate
Emergency’. We are also excited to launch The Journal of Architecture’s
Architectural Association
brand-new website (www.thejournalofarchitecture.com), an accessible online
London, UK
platform providing information about the journal, summaries of recently pub-
doreenbernath@aaschool.ac.uk
lished articles, open-access editorials and commentaries, building reviews, tips
and tricks, and much, much more.
ORCID 0000-0002-3287-9676
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 ques-
tions of modernisation, which triggered a series of experimental studies and
practices to both prove and disprove certain assumptions imposed by the domi-
nant 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.1 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.
A century has passed, and what may be the inevitable dichotomous frame-
work between West, represented by the architectural discipline arisen in the
European and American context, and East, represented by a much wider
realm of the ‘other’ and the ‘beyond’ from the middle, south, to the far east
of Asia, in that period of the early twentieth century had definitely waned.
The conundrum of Liang’s time to search for a form of architecture that may

# 2023 RIBA Enterprises

1360-2365 https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2022.2178132
860 A kaleidoscope of trajectories: research in/on/with China

be representative at a ‘national’ level for a new nation state yet with a long
dynastical past had also shifted, as China and the world navigated through
the heightened ideological conflicts and the challenges of postcoloniality.
Now, as contributions to this double issue exemplified, research in Chinese
architecture will involve a much more plural and complex contextualisation,
both historically and comparatively, in contemporary cultures and discourses.
What may be deemed Chinese architecture — in, on, with, and around its mul-
tiplicities as buildings, stories, materials, images, places, movements and
experiences — as well as the kind of lens studies on Chinese architecture
offers in the understanding of architecture in other contexts, is now more
akin to a kaleidoscope of trajectories. Yet, the urgency, value, and ethos set
out by the SRCA for research in Chinese architecture, traversing historical
material and contemporary interpretation, intersecting practical and theoretical
studies, diversifying critical, scientific and experimental approaches, and
responding to urgent issues and implications of modernisation through respon-
sible, social and ethical perspectives, remains resonant a hundred years later.
The significance of approaches in this assembly of current research from
scholars working around the globe is precisely how they diverge from the ten-
dency to directly represent assumed categories, such as ‘Chinese architecture’
or ‘modern architecture’, which have become unhelpful labels instrumentalised
in power structures. By taking partial, oblique, inverted, and circumvented
ques, from shifting subjectivities in pre-modern China to the country’s technos-
cientific networks on the ’Tropics’, and correlating them to architectural con-
cepts and activities internationally, a new terrain of dialogue, method,
perspective, and relation has been opened. These are as much about China
as they are not; they offer critiques and insights into new forms of practices
that are highly relevant to architecture at large. The forms of research and
output, the critical relation between researchers and their discursive contexts,
as well as the collaborative and translocational framework, which characterise
the larger tendencies in the fields, are reflected and celebrated here in the rich
and pluralistic range of voices and insights.
Mengbi Li’s exploration of the intersection of craft culture and morality
engages with the role of craftspeople and literati in pre-modern China. She
shows how values were established and consolidated in and through codes
of conduct, building standards and legislation. She demonstrates how the
paradox of human nature and the seduction of technology were approached
and handled in consolidating and deploying pertinent ethical values, arguing
that this discourse can provide insights into the challenges faced by fast-devel-
oping regions today.
Lina Sun’s research examines the transformation that Chinese ’architectural’
drawing underwent around the beginning of the twentieth century. She high-
lights the profound changes in compositional rules, from a unique set of geo-
metric principles to Western Euclidean geometry, and attributes this to the
changing subjectivity of artists. Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, too, deploys the notion
of changing subjectivities to explain China’s pursuit of modernity.2 She
argues that the architecture of the People’s Commune reflected, articulated,
 861 The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 27
Numbers 7–8

and enforced the construct of collective subjectivities. Through an architectural

case study and drawing on the critical practice of (re)drawing across extended
periods of fieldwork in a Wuhan commune, she brings to life the all-encom-
passing socio-political, economic, and spatial model of China’s collectivisation
during the 1950s and the 80s.
Cheng’s other paper in this issue introduces the concept of ’rippling’ as a
practice of ‘untamed domesticity’.3 Examining the hegemony of the essentia-
lised model of the modern nuclear family and its associated domesticity, she
unravels how tensions between the modern state and family tradition in
rural China were scrutinised. Yun Gao, Adrian Pitts, and Wen Jiang’s paper,
too, has its focus on the rural-urban interface in terms of temporal, spatial,
and material transitions. They examine the multiple paths that the process of
absorbing villages into urban areas can follow in China, specifically focusing
on the dual urban and rural characteristics of villages located close to cities
and the opportunities and constraints that they afford for active community
engagement.
Transitions are also the subject of Yizhuo Gao, Charlie Q. L. Xue, Gangyi Tan,
and Yingting Chen’s paper. It examines how Architectural Journal, one of
China’s most respected architectural periodicals, played a crucial role in
shaping the country’s architectural discourse between the 1960s and the
80s, and highlighting the shift of focus from Soviet and Western architecture
to tropical architecture in the Global South during this time. Further transitions
in the contemporary era are explored by Xin Jin and Jonathan Hale through the
deconstruction of Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu’s textual and theoretical bri-
colage in relation to his architectural projects and interpretations of spatial
experiences in the past, which spurred a set of radical spatial, material and con-
structional practices. Peng Liu’s interest in reconceptualising heritage at the
level of major architecture, such as the Forbidden City complex in Beijing,
through a lived, affective and phenomenological take on haptic experience,
(in)capacity and (dis)ability, co-produced atmosphere and weather(ing/ed)
mediation, to reveal multiple interrelations and non-normative insights, is
also a significant form of transition.
The kaleidoscopic possibilities opened up by these papers not only offer
insights into the complexity and richness of architecture and its cultural signifi-
cance in China, but also how design and research in/on/with China can be
translated into diverse methodological approaches and practices relevant,
useful, and inspiring for future research in the field. We believe that this final
issue of Volume 27 does much to reflect on the trajectory upon which The
Journal of Architecture has recently embarked.

Notes

1. The Society of Research in Architecture [中国营造学社] is the first group of its kind from the
1920s committed to the task of systematically reframing China’s long building tradition as
’architecture’ and re-presenting its distinct architectural history and design practice as a dis-
cipline that must be recognised as a significant part of the history and culture of architecture
862 A kaleidoscope of trajectories: research in/on/with China

of the world. Liang’s original writing appeared in Bulletin of the Society for Research in
Chinese Architecture [中国营造学社汇刊], 7.1 (October 1944). It was translated and re-
published as Liang Sicheng, ‘Why Study Chinese Architecture?’, trans. by Wencheng Yan,
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 73.1 (March 2014), 8–11.
2. The article ‘Collectivisation, paradox and resistance: the architecture of people’s commune
in China’, by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, is based on the work that received a commendation in
RIBA President’s Awards for Research 2020, History and Theory category.
3. The article ‘Rippling: towards untamed domesticity’, by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, is based on the
work that received a commendation in RIBA President’s Awards for Research 2018, Cities
and Community category.