Wroted by Dr.Li Xiangning,Lecturer of College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University

“A cat is good if it catches mice no matter it is black or white.” The saying was cited by DENG Xiaoping,China’s former leader,to push his pragmatic approach. The same can be said about Chinese architects’s practice. They have developed an expedient tactic, which is not a compromise with the greedy market,but a wise balance between the ultimate architectural ideal and social reality in China. It is based on a full understanding of our powerfulness and weakness.
For almost a decade,Chinese contemporary architectural works have been paid much attention by the West,while a gap also becomes apparent between the good taste and neat architectural articulation of the buildings selected and exhibited worldwide,and the mass construction that permeates all of China.Is there an opportunity for a better Chinese architecture as a whole,rather than just a matter of exemplary but dispersed works? In a society that is characterized by uncertainty and rapid transformation,what is the point of building monuments of eternal quality?In other words,could quantity,speed and efficiency be taken positively as another kind of value?
Starting late 1980s,the “modern/post-modern”discourse prevailed in Chinese architectural circle,But it was not long before we began to realize the invalidity of the dichotomy in China because we do not even have the same concept of the western “modern movement”. For the same reason,I do not believe the “critical/post-critical” paradigm will be useful to evaluate contemporary Chinese architecture. Chinese architecture does not need to testify that we now have the same thing that the West has, or even further, that we can export something back to the West.. Instead, we hope that a dialogue like this will help the West acquire a better understanding of the restrictions and limits that Chinese architects have to face, so that the West could try to appreciate another architectural quality which differs from its Western counterpart.

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