Architecture and the Landscape of Modernity in China before 1949 Edward Denison & Guang Yu Ren – Chengdu Bookworm – 31/3/13

An interesting event if you happen to be Chengdu way…

Architecture and the Landscape of Modernity in China before 1949

Edward Denison and Guang Yu Ren

Sunday, March 31st, 5:30pm

Chengdu Bookworm

FREE

With building traditions spanning nearly five millennia, China boasts the longest continuous architectural lineage in history. Today, the country’s architectural aspirations are equally unprecedented, forming an omnipresent backdrop to the country’s glass-clad high-rises. However, linking past and present was a period of modernisation that revolutionised China’s architectural landscape and has been largely overlooked.

The history of China’s architectural encounter with modernity offers twenty-first century observers a unique insight into one of the most unprecedented and important manifestations of modernism outside the West – where the formation of an architectural modernism in China derived not only from the West, but also from the East.

Edward Denison is an independent consultant specialising in architectural and urban history.

Guang Yu Ren is a researcher and consultant specialising in architecture and the built environment. Guangyu is now based in London where she works as an advisor to firms working in China and co-authors books on architecture and design with Edward Denison.