A directive issued on Sunday by the State Council, China’s cabinet, and the Communist Party’s Central Committee says no to architecture that is “oversized, xenocentric, weird” and devoid of cultural tradition. Instead, buildings should be “suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye.” The directive also calls for an end to gated communities.
The guidelines come two months after a high-level meeting to address some of the problems that have arisen as a result of China’s rapid urbanization.
— nytimes.com
The New York Times notes that this will most likely result in "stricter design standards for public buildings":
Wang Kai, vice president of the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, under the Ministry of Construction, said that functionality should take precedence in public buildings. “We shouldn’t go overboard in pursuit of appearances,” he said.
Orhan posted a very prescient piece on this back in 2014, when China's President Xi Jinping denounced buildings like the CCTV tower, aka "Big Pants", and the "formerly penis-shaped" People's Daily building (below), for not being "morally inspiring art".
More on China's "weird" architecture:
10 Comments
too late
However, China says yes to weird pink pajama suits.
Bound to happen considering the down turn and the inevitable fatigue one must get with these exhibitionist buildings. Plus, they must have reached the tipping point on the loss of their historical fabric. Happened to us.
ok, so they tried globalization and knocking off every culture in the world, back to being Chinese.
Olaf, but the funny/sad thing is that they tried to completely erase all vestiges of their own culture during the revolution, hence not knowing what it actually means to be Chinese, except for doing bland boring pastiches of their regional architectures.
I guess pastiching your own culture is better than pastiching someone else's. At some point, the pastiche becomes real for academics. For the pastichers, it's as real as the buildings.
yes thats the sad part. the assumption that 4000 years of essentially insular isolation somehow made them behind can probably be laid to rest now
it's not really clear yet how this will be implemented - most likely there will be some form of design review board with fairly broad guidelines for aesthetic standards to avoid upsetting local residents. in effect probably much like what goes on with community reviews in many US cities.
But the much bigger thing which is dominating the discussion within China is regarding the planning of residential developments. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-02/24/content_23617065.htm
For those who aren't familiar with Chinese cities - residential developments (and most business parks too) are entirely gated communities. This isn't limited to homes for the wealthy, nor is it a new phenomenon - most of the charming 1920's lane houses in Shanghai and very basic workers' housing from the 1970s are built in walled compounds, as well as all new housing affordable or otherwise. It seems to be part of a long-standing cultural affinity for walls rather than an imported affectation.
However the government seems to have rightly recognized that the notion these walled-compounds are some sort of community of close neighbors is quaint and outdated, and totally unsuited to the scale of modern developments. Some such 'communities' have 10,000 or more residents - yet only a single main entrance and 1 or 2 side gates connect these compounds to public roads.
The resulting walled communities effectively divide the city fabric into insurmountable 1km square blocks through which no traffic can flow, making for a quite hostile pedestrian environment even in very dense urban districts. It's inconvenient for residents who might need to walk almost 1 km just to get out of their apartment complex, and quite destructive to the accessibility of public transit or local businesses.
The proposed change to the law (not written yet) will not only preclude these sort of walled compounds in the future; they will require existing communities to open up the walls and make the internal driveways into public roads.
This is a big deal, and likely to encounter fierce resistance from existing homeowners, who worry not just about security, but competition for parking and crowding in private gardens and playgrounds. It will be interesting to see how this works out. But in the long run it will certainly improve the livability of the large new urban areas in China's cities and reduce the need for cars.
The cultural revolution was not 4000 years ago.
midlander identified the buried lede - the "end to gated communities" is a much more radical idea than the "ban" on "weird architecture." Indeed, the gated community has deep roots in China, in both traditional and modern ideas of urbanism. One could run a thread from Beijing's hutong blocks to Shanghai's lilong neighborhoods, both walled compounds, though obviously the typologies developed in different sociopolitical contexts. Going further, the danwei work unit of the socialist/Maoist era is another under-examined type.
That 'great walls' persist in contemporary housing complexes and shopping malls should come as no surprise when viewed on a long enough time scale, though of course navigating a city like Beijing can become an exercise in frustration, thanks in no small part to this spatial partitioning. The 'opening up' of these complexes could have really interesting consequences, especially if zoning codes are adjusted simultaneously to allow a wider range of activities along the (now public?) streets.
Perhaps the more interesting question is this: has "weird architecture" in fact "opened the gate" for a closer examination of urban spatial practice?
Projects like Holl's "Linked Hyrbid" and "Porosity Block" are clearly driven by an appeal toward public accessibility ("a new twenty-first century porous urban space, inviting and open to the public from every side." -Holl), even if in practice they too have become private enclaves:
[photo Addison Godel]
Herzog & de Meuron's "Birds Nest" seems to have similar ambitions, with seating accessible from all sides through a field of canted columns. Of course security concerns led the authorities to fence it off, creating pinch points for the crowds and diluting somewhat its social potential:
[photo]
Is there a chance that these and other projects influenced thinking at the level of urban policy? Something to think about.
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