What is the Future of Chinese Architecture? - The International Lecture Series

About

Streamed live on The Bartlett School of Architecture's YouTube channel, this event will be a discussion between co-chairs Ana Monrabal-Cook, Luke Pearson, Athena Li and Shiyan Jonathan Zhu,  and Jianxiang He and Ying Jiang from O-Office Architects. 

This event forms part of The Bartlett International Lecture Series Autumn 2021.

This autumn and spring, each event in the International Lecture Series will be curated by one of the school's programmes to inspire, invent, imagine, and provoke. This event is curated by Architecture BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1).

Abstract

What is the Future of Chinese Architecture? In conversation with O-Office

The founders of B-ASIA magazine host a live roundtable discussion regarding contemporary architecture in China, between Bartlett students across programmes and O-Office, a Chinese architecture firm based in Guangzhou.

From the hybrid style of historicism and socialist classicism of the ‘Ten Great Buildings’, to the new urban areas labelled as playgrounds for Western architects, this conversation will offer unique perspectives on design and will speculate on the future of Chinese architecture and the implications of rapid urbanisation.

The event is curated and co-chaired by the Architecture BSc Programme Directors and B-ASIA, a student-led collaboration investigating the identity of being Asian through undeclared, unsuspected and untold stories of Asia’s built environment. 

B-ASIA’s latest project is ‘The Stew’, a magazine issue packed with stories of The Bartlett’s own diverse community and exclusive guests. The digital magazine can be read online at Issuu. 

Speaker biography

O-Office Architects is a Guangzhou based architectural practice founded in 2007 in southern China. Driven by the aim of exploring new architectural possibilities in a contemporary southern Chinese urban context, O-OFFICE has been testing their methodology in architectural activities at diverse scales. The team balances their professional practice with using architectural design as a critical instrument for research on spatial and economic reality.

More information

• Read the first issue of B-ASIA magazine, The Stew, at Issuu
• Find out more about Architectuure BSc (ARB/RIBA Part 1)

Image: Shiyan Jonathan Zhu. Taken in December 2019, this photograph illustrates the rapid urban re-development of Guangzhou, China. Older buildings disintegrate like sandcastles in the foreground and in its place skyscrapers spring up like ‘bamboo shoots after the rain’; it leaves the viewer to speculate what lies beyond them.