Two Spheres: Mao and the Market in Chinese Architecture (1990-)

Abstract

Mao and the market, meaning the centralised state and the market, as expanded by Robin Porter, is the broad subject of this thesis. The aim of this study is to examine how changes in the social-political system, the residual influence of Mao, and the acceptance of the market, have changed Chinese architecture over recent time. The process from Mao to market currently cannot be easily situated within any overarching theory, nor is it a linear and systematic transition, but it has far reaching effects on every corner of China, every Chinese social group, from bureaucratic agendas to personal motives. Looking at the architecture from this perspective provides a strategy, a fresh way of reading architecture and architects, and a solid way of framing them under the uncertain nature of the socialist transition.

This research re-examines the new wave of innovative architecture through three case studies of Liu Jiakun, Cui Kai, URBANUS and their designs in the context of a longer vision and a broader perspective, extending the research to an ideological level. The market, the West, the East, the state, the architect all these elements are decisive factors in shaping contemporary architecture, but they make different contributions in different cases, and, more significantly, they affect architectural design at different points in time under different versions of socialism. In other words, the intricate details of the historical pressures and practical approaches have been clarified through case studies.

Regarding the actual architectural works, this research identifies factors that distinguish the designs of the subject architects from the majority of architecture in China today: they and their works transgressed the conventional imagining of modernity, which represented the homogenous dreams of the metropolis, regardless of specific social conditions. Liu Jiakun, Cui Kai and URBANUS are consciously or unconsciously facing the real socio-political challenges and the socio-economic problems of Chinese society from Mao to market. Simultaneously they also enrich the architectural language in the boundaries between this imagined modernity and the actual socio-political environment. Each of these architects, it is argued, has evolved a mediated codified language for bureaucratic communication with the state, and a communicative mode with Chinese residents who are eager for the new world. Cui Kai s designs provide an acceptable way of mediating people s disquiet with the status quo by operating within the official institutes. Architecture designed by Liu Jiakun becomes a psychological medium to provoke Chinese people to confront pre-reform history, and also a medium to reconcile the different cognitions of Mao and his era between the pre-reform China and China s enthusiasm for market driven capitalism now. URBANUS s urban strategies highlight the ideological shifts between the private and public sectors and attempt to resolve the concurrent conflict as an idiosyncratic private/public halfway position between a planned and a market economy in the city.

Thus the thesis argues that, for the architects considered, their manipulations of the changing relationships between market and the state in China are in fact the sources of their architectural innovations. The mix of Mao and the Market has created a modern Chinese vernacular that has been true both in the sense of complying with the demands of the state, and also deeply rooted in the nature of the capitalist market. The tense dialogue between neo-liberal logic and socialist sovereignty is reconfiguring contemporary China, and furthermore reconfiguring China s contemporary architecture, all of which contribute to the idea that the innovation and uniqueness of contemporary architectural design is not driven solely by the state, nor by the market, but rests with the struggle between the state and the market.