Introduction

THE WESTERN VS. THE EASTERN ARCHITECT “…The average lifetime construction volume of the Chinese architect in housing alone is approximately three dozens thirty-story high rise buildings… There is one-tenth the number of architects in China than in the United States, designing five times the projects volume in one-fifth the time, earning one-tenth the design fee. This implies an efficiency of 2500 times that of an American architect.” 

THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD     The past five years have seen a revolution in Chinese architecture – the emergence of independent designers, and a number of new stars – and above all new and interesting buildings that are not the product of direct Western influence. These developments have laid the groundwork for an indigenous modernity that differentiates itself from outside schools as well as eschewing the temptation to put a “Chinese-style” foof on ordinary office blocks. The fact that Beijing has been chosen to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games has been more that a catalyst for the development of high-quality contemporary architecture in China. Major foreign firms like OMA/ Rem Koolhaas or Herzog & de Meuron are participating in the design of buildings that will have functions during the Games, but Chinese architects, too, have been mobilized in this massive effort to prepare the country for an unprecedented level of world-wide attention. 

RED STAR RISING     It is difficult to read a paper or see a televised news program today without hearing about China, the great economic success story of the past ten years. There can be no doubt that the world’s largest country in terms of population (1.313.973.000 people according to a July 2006 CIA estimate) has awakened from its long somnolence. While more developed countries go through cyclical periods of expansion and reduction of their economic activity, China has felt the need to build new on a historically unprecedented scale. New spending on contruction and factory equipment in the five months ending May 30, 2006, was up 30% over the same period in 2005, and such investments are likely to exceed dollars 1.3 trillion in 2006, or almost half the countrys’s gross domestic product (GDP). Development on this scale obviously does not often pay attention to quality, though the exceptions to that sweeping statement are frequent enough and match or exceed what is being done in any Western country. The same intelligence and hard work that is evidenced in other areas of economic activity is also becoming more obvious in architecture, in large part because of recent changes in Chinese laws governing the profession itself. It is this change, the unchaining of the architect, as it were that is the most important event in the midst of an unprecedented outpouring of construction.

Source: Architecture in China by Philip Jodidio, TASCHEN Publishing 2007