The Architecture of the Collective: The Block and Ideas of the City in Modern China
Item
-
Title
-
The Architecture of the Collective: The Block and Ideas of the City in Modern China
-
Description
-
This dissertation interrogates the idea of the block and its manifestations in the socio-spatial development of the modern Chinese city—particularly from the 1950s onward. It delineates the existing discourse of the block and renews its idea against the continuity and transition of modern China. The underlying argument this dissertation puts forward is that, as opposed to conceiving the block as a modernist development directly imported from the West, the architectural and urban operations, together with its socio-political processes in modern China, constitute a rather internal yet continuous logic in understanding the Chinese city. By introducing the dialectical logic of tongbian that encompasses continuity through change, this dissertation examines one of the most canonical Chinese cities—Xi’an—as a case study by focusing on its planning practices in the transitional periods of the 1950s, 1980s, and 1990s, alongside the urban and architectural developments of the Xi’an Textile City project. It maps out the trajectory of Xi’an’s urban form and the role of block in the modern era while foregrounding its transitional episodes through major urban and architectural projects, policies, and socio-cultural practices. In doing so, the idea of the block and the modern Chinese city is theorized through three key propositions: First, it interrogates the concept of the block against its realities—the developments and nuances manifested in specific architectural, urban, and social configurations in China. In doing so, it defines the concept of the block in modern Chinese cities as two specific models: the perimeter-block and the parallel-block, and reconsiders such concept as a modern iteration of a long-existing and continuous socio-spatial construct in the Chinese city. Second, it concerns the block in modern China as an essential planning apparatus in cultivating a common socio-spatial framework, one that is informed by both the continuity of its internal cultural logic and the transitions of specific socio-political conditions, strategies, and practices at moments in time. Third, it postulates the idea of the modern Chinese city as one that spatializes the social collective and encompasses the ‘largeness’, ‘multiplicity’, and ‘bounded figure’ in constituting the architecture for the collective, which remains consistent with the idea of the Chinese city as a continuous cultural project at large and has the possibility to be charted towards a renewed model of urban and architectural production for the future.
-
Creator
-
Wang, Liang
-
Subject
-
architecture
-
block
-
collective
-
modern Chinese city
-
planning
-
urban form
-
Architecture
-
Urban planning
-
Contributor
-
Rowe, Peter G.
-
Blau, Eve
-
Whiting, Sarah M.
-
Date
-
2023-02-09T03:55:21Z
-
2023
-
2023-02-08
-
2023-03
-
2023-02-09T03:55:21Z
-
Type
-
Thesis or Dissertation
-
text
-
Format
-
application/pdf
-
application/pdf
-
Identifier
-
Wang, Liang. 2023. The Architecture of the Collective: The Block and Ideas of the City in Modern China. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
-
30246707
-
https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37374292
-
Language
-
en