Constructing a Place of Critical Architecture in China

For the past 30 years, The Chinese journal Time + Architecture (Shidai
Jianzhu) has focused on publishing innovative and exploratory work by
emerging architects based in private design firms who were committed to
new material, theoretical and pedagogical practices. In doing so, this
book argues that the journal has engaged in the presentation and
production of a particular form of critical architecture - described as
an ’intermediate criticality’ - as a response to the particular
constraints of the Chinese cultural and political context. The journal’s
publications displayed a ’dual critique’ - a resistant attitude to the
dominant modes of commercial building practice, characterised by rapid
and large-scale urban expansion, and an alternative publishing practice
focusing on emerging, independent architectural practitioners through
the active integration of theoretical debates, architectural projects,
and criticisms. This dual critique is illustrated through a careful
review and analysis of the history and programme of the journal. By
showing how the work of emerging architects, including Yung Ho Chang,
Wang Shu, Liu Jiakun and Urbanus, are situated within the context of the
journal’s special thematic editions on experimental architecture,
exhibition, group design, new urban space and professional system, the
book assesses the contribution the journal has made to the emergence of a
critical architecture in China, in the context of how it was
articulated, debated, presented and perhaps even ’produced’ within the
pages of the publication itself. The protagonists of critical
architecture have endeavoured to construct an alternative mode of form
and space with strong aesthetic and socio-political implications to the
predominant production of architecture under the current Chinese
socialist market economy.