[...] colleges in China are copying America’s copycat approach. There’s a university in Shanghai where faux English manor houses sit side-by-side with dorms modeled on Britain’s half-timbered homes. To the north, Hebei province boasts a university inspired by Harry Potter’s Hogwarts—itself fashioned on the traditional collegiate Gothic. Even specific colleges have been cloned. — theatlantic.com
18 Comments
Can I get an Ivy League education and social network at Chinese prices?
@olaf yes! but also chinese quality...
And USC is trying to look like fake Chinese university campus.
http://la.curbed.com/places/the-village-at-usc
So its a fake of a fake but USC prices? Talk about getting screwed. I will take my fake $5 Oakleys and call it a day, thank you.
The Ivy's tried to look like European palaces so I don't see the issue conceptually. Artistically, that's a different matter, but who knows. In a hundred years (and some ivy) maybe we'll think these buildings are beautiful also...especially compared to the cities they are building.
The university in this photo looks more like Atlantic City to me, the old and gone Traymore Hotel in particular. The twin domes on the right are a bit comical, since the Orientalism found in their design is so obvious. Of course, much of the Ivy League, e.g. Yale's Gothic, is Beaux-Arts revival architecture. Question is: how real can 21st-century Western revival architecture be in China? Not so real, I'd suggest
"how real can 21st-century Western revival architecture be in China? "
I'm afraid only academics care about how 'real' it is in the sense you are refering to. For the Chinese students there it's as real as anyother building infront of them.
Thayer-D, Really? If true, that's too bad. How about the better Chinese architects? Surely they may care, especially if they're missing out on important commissions. It makes no sense to me that academic architecture in China should be coming in "instant," or "quick," when real architecture could be built instead.
I should add that by "real architecture," for China, I mean an architecture that preferably is designed by Chinese architects, who are modernist or postmodernist at least, i.e. architects whose work is recognized internationally, e.g. Wang Shu
Yes Linderman, really. This obsession with reality is hillarious considering those calling for it the loudest have the most unreal impression of what people actually percieve. Chinese modernists whose work is recognized internationally is real architecture?
Thayer-D, I don't understand your argument here, and I don't think you're making much sense either. Your ethos for architecture comes across as amateurish and narcissistic, i.e. the world according to Thayer-D, or something like that. Try to engage in discourse instead.
DWLindeman, it's just my opinion. Like your opinion that real architecture in China must come from Chinese modernists. Should I infer that you are narcissistic for expressing your opinion or that the world must accept it? Let's see if you are actually up for a discourse then. Why must 'real' architecture in China be from a modernist with international recognition?
It's an interesting topic, or would be if western notions of 'authenticity' had any bearing at all on asian cultural practice...
Evan, You've said: "would be if western notions of 'authenticity' had any bearing at all on Asian cultural practice . . " I would say: by default, yes. That is, once the East opened up to the West, which was more advanced in its aesthetic ideas, our judgment trumps theirs.
That said, we have every indication that the Chinese, and other Asian nationalities took architecture quite seriously, and so had their own, independent standard of authenticity, or, reality for architecture. A better aesthetic rationale for Chinese architecture could be produced, presumably, by a Chinese scholar or architect, but that doesn't mean we Westerners wouldn't have something significant to say about this too.
This doesn't mean that some architecture critic in New York, or Europe, should be telling the Chinese what sort of architecture they should want. But, that we can see what they're doing, and so criticize it, strikes me as entirely fair.
Thayer-D: The above response to Evan, is a partial response to you as well. I never said "must," with regard to what a real academic architecture for China should be. I did say "real," and I'll stand by that. This is an opinion about better and worse. If China does not want to be creative, and, instead wants to build academic Disneylands for its students, that's their prerogative. I think China has many fine architects who could build far better.
In architecture, like any art, everything may come down to taste in the end. But Kant devoted his entire Third Critique to a defense of taste as a rational basis for our knowledge of the arts. So: we all have opinions, but some of these opinions will invariably be better and so more accurate than others. These opinions never exist in a vacuum, but rather in social discourse. That's where they are judged, just as the buildings those opinions are about are judged too. That is: at the end of the day: not all opinions are created equal. This may seem unfair, but this is how we construct judgments of aesthetics and of their reality.
Will they have Fraternity houses and Sorority houses? How will their parties be?
so - they're setting up an extensive admission process designed to keep out the jews and the asians?
btw - GSD still likes to joke they have the "best looking group of arch students."
Good point Evan. I would push it a bit further and ask, why is 'authenticity' even an issue? Like the seasonal infactuation of the art world with 'Folk Art', cribbing, borrowing, and ultimatly assimilating is how culture evolves.
China's absorption of western styles is no different than Europe's eclecticism at the beginning of the 19th century, or for that matter, America's wild eclecticism. Once you have access and license, why wouldn't you experiment? There will be many false starts, which this example might be a poster child of, but to set artificial or ideological limits to what one can sample from betrays a fear not consistent with the idea of liberalism and modernity, to say nothing of our artistic heritage.
"That is, once the East opened up to the West, which was more advanced in its aesthetic ideas, our judgment trumps theirs."
Besides the uncomfortable sense of superiority this statement betrays, what criteria qualifies one aesthetic to be more advanced? And assuming one could do so, how does one trump another? What a culture produces is by definition their expression, regardless of what ingredients one can point to or how well assimilated.
"That is: at the end of the day: not all opinions are created equal. This may seem unfair, but this is how we construct judgments of aesthetics and of their reality."
I agree with you that (aesthetic) opinions exist in social discourse, but I differ in the idea that some are better or more accurate than others. That assumes we percieve things similarly, regardless of ones personal and cultural context. I might think my eye more judicious, educated, or even sophisticated than someone else's, but how does that make my aesthetic opinion superior? I will strive to educate or rationalize my opinion to a potential client (for example), but there comes a point at which one tries to work with a client's predilictions as you would have others should you be in their position. It seems to me that what many artists strive to do or make one feel has little to do with the idea of superiority, unless there' s a personal need to do so.
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