DEC

"asian"

*^

thresholds
Cherie Wendelken
Ritu Bhatt

Charles Correa

17

Akiko Takenak,

Stephen Cairns

Alka Patel

Constance

Lai

San San Kwan

Toshihiro

Andrew

Li

Komatsu

Nilay

Oza

T.

Tunney Lee
Luke Young

asian

thresholds
Cherie Wendelken
Ritu Bhatt

Charles Correa

Akiko Takenaka

Alka Patel

Constance

Lai

Bundit Kanisthakhon
Eric Howeler
Toshihiro Komatsu
Stephen Cairns

San San Kwan

Andrew

Li

Nilay

Oza

17

Kerry S. Fan

T.

Tunney Lee
Luke Young

thresholds

17^

"asian"

http://architecture.mit.edu/thresholds/

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Constance C. Lai and Andrew Miller

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V'J

fOJi tents
introduction
'

Introduction
Cherie Wendelken

Jbistory and theory in arcliitectural practice^

Sites

Eric

of Interface:
Interf,
Cultural Identity and the Asian Skyscraper

Howeler

Sustaining Tradition: Design for a Contemporary Thai

House

in

Northern Bangkok

Bandit Kanisthakhon

Opv

OC
^^
QH
Q r>

Archipelago Aesthetics: The Evidence of Architecture in Southeast Asia

Stephen Cairns

what is "C hinese"

A 12th-century Chinese
Andrew I-kang

Building Manual: Descriptions

Made by Chinese: Shanghai Tang and

San San Kwan
Socialist Ideology
Ide(

Kerry

S.

&a

shape grammar

Li

and Architecture:

the

Development of Contemporary Chinese Couture

Study of the Chinese Architectural Journal

Fan

MASSACHUSEHS

INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY

^iSCUSSiOTL

with Charles Correa and Tunney Lee

Constance Lai
Intervievirs

DEC

1 1 2000

LIBRARIES
what

is

"indian"

Hov^r Buildings Divide

and Unite Us: The Case of Mandal (Gujarat, India)

Ritu Bhatt and Alka Patel

CO

Nek Chand's Garden: Chandigargh,

Cha
Nilay Oza and T. Luke Young

India

Japanese^

57

Inverted Office
Toshihiro Komatsu

OO

Orientalism and Propaganda:the construction of a v\'artime national identity

Akiko Takenaka

IntrodurliDn.
cherie wendelken

Modern

Asia

is

a landscape of rapid

change - environmental and

social trans-

formations have been fueled by economic

and advanc-

grovrth, increased population,

ing technologies. International alarm over

economic

the current

crisis

only enhances

that of Europe. In this Orientahst construct,

Indian context both focus on the problems

fragmented island geography and the natu-

of foreign interpretation of Indian architec-

ral

were conflated and aestheticized into

notion of an exotic Southeast Asian "urban-

Eric

Howeler examines contemporary

economic region. As a result, in recent years

a new identity has emerged for Asia in con-

contexts in order to question over simpli-

temporary architectural discourse. In the

give national identity to

as

an idea has become ephemerality,

megaform,

placelessness, globalization.

These notions displace - even invert er

earli-

European and American constructs of

Asia as a timeless or ancient

non-modern

modnew idea of Asia conan embodiment of the postmodern

realm against which to measure the

fied strategies

structs

is

place of another e.xtreme where history

abandoned, visual meaning

willfully

casually discursive,
tative.

The

city of

and

all

built

form

Tokyo becomes

is

ten-

is

a dis-

course about ephemerality. The rebuilding

of Singapore becomes an
al

emblem

of cultur-

tabula rasa and bigness.

Distance and complexity

both

cul-

and geographic - conspire to perpetuthe essentializing of Asia in European

tural

ate

and American

architectural criticism. This

employed by

the debates over "style"

emerge

as Malaysia

as

are

still

first

section examines the diverse

roles that history can play in

contemporary

Asian practice. Bundit Kanisthakhon analyses the rapid

housing

change and reconstruction of

Bangkok by looking

in

technolo-

at

gy and process, rooting his own designs and

theories in personal memories. This confrontation with personal experience and

childhood

memory

is

both an antidote to

overarching discussions of housing "tradition"

and

powerful reminder that history

and

tradition are indeed a

tive

memory. By

form of

collec-

contrast, Stephen Cairns

takes us through a history not of internal

experience but of being seen.

The

colonial

encounter with Southeast Asia created a

regional identity inversely

compared with

independent

states in

for

its

British historians

identity, in

wrote into categories of

"Hindu" or "Muslim" serve to

perpetuate ethnic conflict rather than create

a national
flict

patrimony. Another kind of con-

seems to be played out

essay

in the photo
on Nek Chand's garden. The profu-

sion of hand-crafted subjects in the garden

seem

to defy the evacuated, brutahst design

of Le Corbusier's Chandigargh. The squatters

concerned with issues of tropicality

and the natural

which rim the

site

isane impossibility for

seem

to

echo the

Corbusier's vision

le

of India.

The study of national identity in

must examine the sometimes

China the

discourses of politics and economics have

architecture

dominated

conflicting nature of a nation's identity as

criticism

and

restricted the

forms of expression. Kerry

S.

Fan's review

of the Chinese Architectural lournal

on not only
form, but the technology and materials

the

favored in various stages of China's history

since 1949.

As the singular publishing organ

of the academy,
state's desire to

its

contents chronicle the

harness built form

as

well as

- and

propaganda. This unified voice

its

The

illus-

trates the effects of politics

of belief and practice

The

just reflect,

But where Southeast Asian architects

Asian architecture by looking carefully

identity.

do not

the international arena.

history

the diverse sources for the formation of

buildings.

but in fact forge identity as countries such

issue of Thresholds re examines the idea of

at

modern

and control of history for political ends,

and the narrative of cultural conflict that
style labeled

architects to

By highlighting the instability of meaning

in even the most literal quotations from
historical architecture, he reminds us that

ern. Yet strangely, the

-a

The

identity in colonial historiography.

colonial enterprise included the surveying

architectural practice in a range of Asian

Koolhaas and others, Asia

Patel look for

ism" of the wild, with an architecture of the

recendy the globe's most rapidly expanding

Rem

and Alka

sources of national and ethnic architectural

ephemeral.

the sense of instability in what was until

writings of

ture. Ritu Bhatt

expression in built form.

final section

on lapanese

ture retrieves sources of

identity in the still-uncharted history of

Japan's militarist prewar years. Akiko

Takenaka focuses on state sponsored exhibition architecture in this politically

charged period to underscore the conflicting

meanings

that can be read into a single

marked contrast
to the landscape of contemporary China, as
demonstrated in San San Kwan's article on
Shanghai Tang. The political sources for a
modern Chinese identity are made into
absurd commodities. The government's
attempts to police national form and mean-

building.

ing are subverted in Tang's successful ven-

or the accompanying essay

ture to give

China

is

in

its first

international

Finally, like

Bundit Kanisthakhon's

article in the first section,

Komatsu

takes us

Toshihiro

back to the realm of per-

The Inverted Office

makes no explicit references

sonal experience.

N51-1

13

lapanese or Asian identity in either

let

its

to

form

us there-

fore resist the temptation to read into this

work the discourses of the new Orientalism,

"brand."

Andrew
Chinese

architec-

modern lapanese

Li's article

on 12th century

hall structures presents

an

interest-

ing intersection between historical scholarship of traditional building

methods and

by

for

example privileging

quality or ephemerality as
tially

Asian.

work, in the

would

artist's

"entropic"

its

somehow

essen-

prefer to think of this

words as

"

a the trans-

computer/math techonology. In acccordance with the methods of shape grammars

formation of private space into a pubic

proposed by George

overcohesion out of the diverse and some-

to quantify the

Stiny, Li is

attempting

underlying structual logic of

and caution

that

we do not

articles that

examine the

create

times conflicting individual voices in architectural practice, history,

these halls.

The two

sign,"

contemporary

Asia.

and criticism

in

sites
eric

in te rf ace

of

cultural identi ty

&

the asian skyscraper

howeler
_a3

o
a

Figures 1-4

"Shanghai already has 53 buildings

of more than 30 floors, and a

41

total

of

buildings standing between 20

and 29

stones," Clifford Pearson.

have experienced radical and unprecedented change, economically, cul-

Cities in Asia
turally,

shck

and

new

office buildings across the city,

[Figures 1-7] At the height of the

"Reports from the Pacific Rim,

world.

Architects find Business from

twenty-four hours a day. City

Indonesia to China," Architectural

Record, July 1997,

boom, which

p. 81.

The building

until recently affected

almost every major city in South East

Asia has recently

With

come

it

boom

Shanghai engendered

in

into the largest construction site in the

boom, construction crews worked eight-hour

shifts

razed entire neighborhoods in Beijing and relocated urban

populations to suburbs to make way for

new

construction. [Figures

8, 9|

In

Bangkok, a

forest of

construction cranes populated the skyline, and a thin layer of construction dust covered every
surface of the

Asian

cities

city.'

Today, those cranes rust

among

half-clad skyscrapers.

The

cityscapes of these

have been altered completely and dramatically.

greatly devalued,

Architects

economies have been restruc-

tured to comply with guidelines set

down by

the International

Monetary

fully global practice.

American design
"The American construction

industry exports $2.5 billion worth of

services every year, a figure that has
tripled over the past decade." Cited in

Bradford McKee, "The Multinational

Report, American Architects are

and planners played

tecture profession has evolved to address

Fund.
2

officials

capital, the building

transforming

the South Korean, Indonesian

and Thai currencies

their

to a standstill.

by foreign

architecturally. Fueled

ference.-

a critical role in the reshaping of those cities.

emerging new markets, and transformed

The

archi-

itself into a

American firms practicing in Asia, where American technical expertise and

demand, must confront issues of national identity and cultural dif-

are in high

The modern

architectural practice participates in these vast transformations, but does

The academy, conversely, treats the massive

and the building types as not-quite-criticism-wor-

so without any extensive theoretical component.

amounts of construction
thy.3

The

result

is

as not-yet-history,

a tremendous

cities, cultures, political

and

amount of new

social systems- that

construction, and a regional transformationis

largely unseen,

its

unspoken, and untheorized.

Shaping Skylines Around the World,"

Architecture Magazine, October, 1997,

The

p. 126.

rift

between the practice of architecture and architectural theory appears wider

today than ever before. Hal Foster, referring to the separation of art practice ft'om art theory,
3 Indeed, academic architecture

notes two

common

misconceptions:

1 )

"art

is

not theoretical and/or political in

its

own

terms,"

often ignores the projects of corpo-

ornamental and

rate practice unless they are located

and

historically.

reductive separation of theory

2) "theory

practices.
4

Hal Foster, The Return of the Real.

MIT

Press,

Cambridge, MA,

p. .xvi.

is

politics external."''

and

practice,

and

These two misconceptions

severely limits both critical art

result

and

from

architectural

0)

in

Figures 4-7

Approaching the division between practice and theory as a difference between two
two fields of practice, rather than as a division between two distinct and exclusive
aspects of the discipline of architecture, provides a useful analytical framework. ^ As two fields of
practice within a spectrum of different practices, each field has the ability to inform, intersect

practices, or

and

inflect the other.

A theoretically
architecture, as

developments

it

informed practice

is

necessary to negotiate the terrain of contemporary

engages a complex and diverse global landscape. The economic and urban

in Asia are sites

of cultural interface, in which Asian clients are commissioning

new Asia. At this inter-

designs from American and European architects to produce symbols of a

and practitioners (academics and professionals) must contend with issues not only
of cultural and linguistic difference, but also of cultural identity, symbolism, history, geography,
nationalism, agency, and legitimation.
face, theorists

and destruction
Kenneth Frampton's theoretical position can be seen as a

In the face of rapid globalization, and unprecedented construction

Asian

cities,

architectural historian

in

counter measure. Frampton's .seminal essay, entided "Critical Regionalism, Modern Architecture
and Cultural Identity", calls for an architectural practice conscious of the global situation but

The term 'critical regionalism' is borrowed from Alexander Tzonis

and Liane Lefaivre, whose model of regionalism is positioned against a romantic regionalism in
which "selected regional elements linked in memory with forlorn eras are inserted into new
buildings, constructing scenographic settings for arousing affinity and 'sympathy' in the viewer."^
Examples of romantic regionalism abound in Asia. Cosmetic details and pagoda hats on buildresponsive to local conditions.

name of preserving a cultural identity, the genergarb of traditional symbolic legitimation. [Architectural Record

ings operate as superficial cultural signs. In the

ic

city

is

wrapped

in the semiotic

The

first

Kenny Berger

in a short essay entitled

"Revisiting the Theory/Practice

Problem," Pam-tactics

2,

Harvard

Graduate School of Design,

Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Why

6 Tzonis and Lefaivre,

Regionalism Today?"

p.

counter argument

American

Fall 1997.

Critical

489.

is

made by an

architect, "High-rise build-

ings don't have a national character,

8-ll]7

thev create their

On

the other hand, c;esar

Pelli's

Petronas Towers, Skidmore Owings and Merrill's ]in

Tower, and C.Y. Lee's C.rand 50 Tower each employ strategies that could be categorized as
critically regionalfst. These prominent Asian projects are conceived of as representations of an

Mao

were

ideas articulated here

developed in collaboration with

quoted

own

culture." as

in Mitchell Pacelle, "U.S.

Architects in Asia:

Up," The Wall

21, 1996.

Only Way

Slret-I

lournal,

to

Go

March

Is

o
o

Figures 8-11

press release issued about the

construction of the Shanghai World

emerging Asia and embody the collective images of the city, region, or nation that commissioned
them.'^ These monumental signifiers are symbolically predetermined. Praised by critics and jour-

Financial Center in Shanghai slates

that the building

is

meant

to symbol-

nals for their cultural sensitivity, they use regional references as a source of legitimation, while

subscribing to superficial and

prosperity of the city of

ize "the

outmoded

cultural signifiers.

Shanghai and embody the hopes and

of the people of China."

lofty ideals

The Petronas towers

Cited in Mitchel Pacelle, "U.S.

Architects in Asia:

Only Way

Go

to

Is

company. Conceived

Up,"

national

9 In a lecture on the Petronas Towers,

of Kuala Lumpur, on the former

Pelli

gave a brief

summary of the

his-

Showing
precedents, ranging from church

Kuala Lumpur, designed by American architect Cesar

in

commissioned by the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad, were

oil

as

symbols

site

for the

new

built to

Pelli,

and

house the

Malaysia, the towers stand in the center

of the British Selangor Turf Club, [figure 12] The design

addresses the cultural context by making references to Malaysian craftsmanship for interior

tory of the slcyscraper.

spires to pagodas,

and

India,

what he

from

New Yorlv,

feels to

details.' In the

Iran, Tikal,

Peili

describes

words of the

architect, "cultural elegance

and design, controlled and modulated by the

rials

print

is

also

be an "urgent psy-

is

achieved by utilizing Malaysian mate-

steel grid

of the facade."'" The tower's foot-

determined by the use of Islamic patterns. "To increase the buildings' cultural and

chological need, across cultures, to

regional identity further, the composition of the plan

build high." By claiming to find this

metric principles: two squares are rotated, superimposed and completed with small circular

"urgent psychological need" in

all

infiUs.""

is

designed using traditional Islamic geo-

[figure 12]

cultures, his projects are assured of

being appropriately (and urgently)

contextual. His projects are simply

responding to that universal need.

Cesar

comments made at a
The Skyscraper Museum,

Pelli,

ture at

lec-

New

The project is celebrated for its "sensitivity" to its context, its use of local materials and
and its ability to create a very "Malaysian" building. In recounting the process of designing the building, Pelli describes an exchange between himself and the Prime Minister, Mahathir
details,

Mohammad;

York.

MM:
10 Cesar

Pelli,

"The Petronas

CP:

Towers," Reaching For the Skies,

MM:

Architectural Design Profile No. 116,

Maggie Toy
11

Cesar

ed.,

Pelli,

London,

"It

has to be Malaysian."

"What does it mean?"

"We don't know."

p. 63.

"The Petronas Towers,"

Claiming that there

isn't

much Malaysian

architecture that

is

worth referring to ("A few huts and

p. 63.

some
Pelli, comments made
November 6, 1997.

12 Cesar
lecture,

at a

British colonial buildings,

forms of the rotated squares.

rain

and seeing nothing (but

which they don't

Pelli

performs the

really like")'-, Pelli turns to traditional Islamic

classic neo-colonial operation;

surveying the

ter-

huts), he effectively creates a cultural ttibula rasa. Since the building

0)

0)

Figure 12
Plan Diagrams of the Petronas Towers

"ha(d) to be Malaysian," he choses something in close proximity: Islamic patterns. Confronted

with cuhural otherness, PelU creates

homogenizing formula: Malaysian equals

Owings and

Similar to the Petronas Towers, Skidmore

14] also

draws from regional 'precedents' to derive

a vertical shaft, the tower

SOM,

struggled to address the

cism

mimics

site's

Merrill's Jin

Made up

form.

Mao

Tower, [figure

in the 1970s for their lack of sensitivity to context,

SOM

and doing the

same things we were doing in the
places geographically

1980's."

geographic, cultural and historical context.^^ Responding to

McCarthy of

Skidmore Owings, "In part," he adds,

"our relief has been going to different

as Pelli,

building of physical and symbolic prominence in Asia,

13 "All of us were trying to reinvent

ourselves," says Mr.

of stepped back portions of

Chinese pagoda. Operating under similar conditions

an American firm designing

its

Islamic.

(my emphasis)

criti-

way

to

Go

Journal,

produces another eighty-eight

14

story pagoda, a caricature of a traditional Chinese architectural form.'-^

is

Up."

March

21, 1996.

survey of the buildings under

construction in Shanghai, China's

massing of the building

The

ences to Chinese

is

described

as, "the first

authentic Chinese skyscraper."^^

articulated by cantilevered cornice projections

is

This creates a stepped profile with

tural elements.

and corner

The

setbacks.

decorative crown, evocative of traditional Chinese architec-

details of the curtain walls, lobbies, canopies

wood

and Partners,

Office Building in Taipei, [figure 15] designed by C.Y. Lee

a large architecture firm in Taipei,

and columns make

ber" elements.

only build-

ings that

to tradition-

al

Chinese forms are the ones being

designed by foreign firms. The

Oriental Pearl television tower, built

to

'Tmd

a correct expression of

Chinese culture in modern

buildings crowned by auspicious emblems':

'lucky cloud' floating roofs, circular portals, 'horseback' pediments,

Lee's words, "the quest for

and lotus flower motifs. In

an authentic fusion of modern functional design with Chinese cultur-

Chinese

post-revolutionary
artifacts

traditions

lies at

the heart of the problem."'^

is

recalls the

conundrum

ot

should be preserved

and celebrated, and which artifacts

should be denounced as vestiges of
an imperial regime.

Forbidden City
al

no pre-

The dilemma over what

which

modern looking

bulbous,

tense to regional references.

15

is

is

rocket-like construct with

'authentically'

Lee's self-stated goal

city since the

War II, the

make reference

before World

in the early eighties,

direct refer-

construction details. Trabeated column capitals mimic interlocking "tim-

architecture'. 1^ Lee's projects are

Only

Wall Street

7"/?^

most cosmopolitan

The Grand 50

Mitchell

Pacelle. "U.S. Architects in Asia:

visit to

scores this dilemma.

Can

the

under-

in Beijing

the history

of China be delaminated from a

Lee

is

different

from

Pelli

and SOM,

in that

Chinese context. Lee describes the function of a

And
sum

the purpose of a

monument

is

to establish

tall

an

he

is

culturally Chinese

building

identity, to express

of your culture."'^ Heralded as "the architect for a

new

and working

in a

element equals monument.

as, "Tall

who you

China," Lee's work

are

and

the total

Chinese imperial history? Similarly,

can a modern building type be
laminated with

a history

architecture? "C.Y. Lee,

is

symptomatic

of Chinese Postmodernism.''^ Desperate to counteract the internationalization of modern

for a

New

re-

of Chinese

An

Architect

China," World Architecture

Profile, Issue

No. 54,

p. 7.

0)

Figure 13

Petronas Towers

in

Kuala Lampur
Figure

Jin

Mao Tower

in

Shanghai
Figure 15

Grand 50 Office Building. Taipei

Figure 6. Shanghai World Rnancial
1

Center. Shanghai

architecture,

and

to recapture a traditional past,

forms which make references

tures or elements are deployed at the level of image.

translated into an absurdly

The

monumental symbol of "Chineseness"--

the scale of a skyscraper. Lee's cultural mediation takes place

16 "C.Y. Lee,

China,"

An

Architect for a

New

An

Architect for a

New

p. 8.

17 "C.Y. Lee,

China,"

The use of
and

architecture to

pictorial representations

18 "C.Y. Lee,

An

New

Architect for a

is

China,"

ly

on the

level

is

on

of caricature.

national, cultural, or ethnic identities through static

highly problematic. Equally problematic, though,

on

a regionalist position that

translatable into architectural form.

p. 10.

The term Postmodernism

used

embody

a counterfeit carpentry

is

an architec-

p. 7.

tural practice predicated

19

is

to historical struc-

tectonic of traditional Chinese craft

in different fields,

is

wide-

with a wide

assumes an identifiable

The reduction of local'

local culture that

to 'image of the local' results in a

proliferation of buildings that exhibit superficial cultural signs. These strategies

ready-made epithet and billboard

succumb

to the

identity.

range of meanings. In architectural

discourses.

monly

Alan Colquhoun notes that "regionalism

Postmodernism com-

refers to a style that advocates

architectural essence

a return to historical architectural

vocabularies, but
classical

more

forms such

as

specifically to

pediments,

cornice lines, entablatures,

etc.

20 Alan Colquhoun, "The Concept

of Regionalism,"

described seemed to
gered,

and therefore

Gulsum Baydar Nalbantoglu,

New York,

Similarly, in the absence of an applicable history,

Gulsum Baydar Nalbantoglu and Wong Chong Thai

"An ethnographic

interest in the

the given boundaries of knowledge but does not transform

positions are critical of the conventional hierarchies that privilege the

it.

While

non-West

regionalist

modern over

the tradi-

Postcolonial

Spaceis), Princeton Architectural

Press,

need of protection.

separations that they are claiming to bridge.

may expand
2

in

mythical pasts are resurrected. Ironically, these regionalist strategies create and maintain the
write in their introduction to Postcolomal Spaceis),

p. 17.

Wong Chong Thai,

as a search for an authentic cultural and

was formulated precisely at the moment when the phenomena that it
be threatened and about to disappear."-^ The local is thought to be endan-

1997

p. 8.

and the international over the local, their interest lies more in finding a reconciliatory
middle term than in questioning the very systems of privilege."-' Regionalist strategies seek
tional

legitimation through simplistic cultural signifiers and freeze a culture in an "ethnographic pre23 The term 'ethnographic present-

borrowed from James

book Vic Predicament of
Cultu re, Twen tieth -Century

ness'

sentness."--'

is

Clifford's

Ethnography, Literature and Art. Also

see Hal Foster, "The Artist

The American practice, operating

fits a model of practice known as

in

Asian contexts and designing 'Asian-looking'

orientalism. Orientalism, a

As

Ethnographer," in The Return of the

Real.

buildings,

Said, denotes the use of representations of the oriental subject to

relation.

The

project of colonialism

employed

term coined by Edward

produce and maintain

a pervasive strategy of orientalism,

power

through which

10

the European 'self was constructed in relation to the exotic native

the "Orient" and "Occident" are

man-made. They

'other'.

As Said points out,

are not simply 'out there' (nature), but metic-

ulously constructed artifacts (culture). As socially constructed artifacts, the East and the West
are

made

manifest in different forms of cultural representations: literature, painting, photogra-

phy, cinema,

and

architecture. "Orientalism, therefore,

the Orient, but a created

body of theory and

is

not an airy European fantasy about

practice in which, for

been a considerable material investment."-'* Orientalism,

means of understanding and dismantling oppressive

many generations,

cultural representations. Postcolonial the-

ory contests these representations and constructs alternative ones. Architecture, as

of cultural identity,
ideologically.-'

is

there has

as a discourse, proves useful as a

medium

implicated in the structures of representations that are highly charged

Only through

critical

we begin
communal.

representations can

signs that structure identities, individual as well as

to contest the systems of

24 Edward Said, Orientalism^ p

6.

25 For Jameson, economic stages find

their expression in cultural para-

In

making claims about

cultural identity, architecture

ings that are not automatically legible.

becomes invested with mean-

digms. Economics are generative of

cultural

comparison of two projects

in

Shanghai, the Shanghai

World Financial Center (SWFC), designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, and the Jin Mao tower,
designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill, illustrates this problem clearly. Although located on
adjacent sites, the two projects employ very different strategies in regards to context, [figure 16|
Unlike the Jin Mao tower, which makes e.xplicit references to traditional Chinese architectural
forms, the Shanghai World Financial Center employs formal abstractions that are not singularly

phenomena, rather than

itself. "Of all

being a cultural product

the arts, architecture
constitutive!)' to the

The design of the

SWFC

is

square in plan

along a slow curve that approximates a line which

punctured by a circular opening that not only

at the

is

ground

floor,

which, in the form of commissions

and land

values,

unmedialed

it

lameson. Postmodernism, or the

wind

Duke

University Press,

1993,

p.

The square

The top

26 William Pedersen,

is

load, but also places the circle

and

symbolic of the

which are meaningful

man-made realm of 'earthliness'. The

to the traditions of

project relates to

Chinese architecture," but not limited to

text,

an empty

signifier.-''

World

A+U, Tokyo,

27 The tower

an opening.

1996.

resolved at the top by

is

It is

literally

a circle, a platonic form.

its

image-based historical precedents.-* The monolithic form makes a single gesture

remains an open

in a project

description, "Shanghai

seen as representing nature and the

context through "an abstract language which attempts to symbolically incorporate charac-

pictorial or

yet

is

is

Durham,

Financial Center,"

teristics

has a virtually

relationship." Fredric

tapering vertically

the diagonal of the square.

relieves

the square in dialogue. In Chinese culture, the circle

its

the closest

Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,

coded.

heavens.

is

economic, with

empty- void,
It is

read

simultaneously as a moongate, a
ing sun, or as a mathematically
ab.stract

form.

ris-

11

0)

The debate

surrounded the design and reception of the building reveals the

that

and the importance of

trary nature of a text

American-based firm for

Chinese

site,

and

its

The

reading.

SWFC

by a Japanese developer.

built

arbi-

was designed by an

A member

of the

design review committee read the circular opening in the tower as a symbol, not of the heavens,

but of the rising sun of the Japanese

flag,

and

its

presence on the

SWFC

as a re-inscription of

Japanese imperialism in the center of Shanghai. This 'misreading' of the text forced the architects

and

to partially obscure the purity of the circle. In a context of highly charged identity politics,
in a context

informed by the

World War
authors. Whereas the

historical violence of

readings that were not anticipated by

its

indeterminate to a dangerous degree, the

Jin

Mao

II,

the building as text produced

SWFC was

Tower, in contrast, with

read as symbolically
its

overt and elemen-

tary references, was read as appropriately and innocuously 'Chinese'.

critical practice that

practice seeks to locate

dismantled by

produces cultural objects and complex

and

readings sees

identity as other than a fixed

facile reconciliation."-*

Culture, identities are

critical

and stable entity. A Postcolonial

areas of "productive tensions produced by difference, not dismissed or

identification as a process,

As

Homi Bhabha

produced performatively. "What

book The Location of

and politically
subjectivities and to focus

points out in his

is

theoretically innovative

is the need to think beyond narratives or originary and initial

on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural

crucial,

differences.

These 'in-between' spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood - singular
and communal - that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and
contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself"-'^ For Bhabha, the process of identi-

Gulsum Baydar Nalbantoglu,

Wong Chong Thai, Postcohnial
28

Space(s}, p.

fication

is

an act of negotiation and contestation.

8.

Architectural discourse often takes as

Homi Bhabha, The Location of

Culture, Routledge, New York. 1994,

29

tions.

p. 2.

This text was started in

of 1997,

when

boom was

November

At that time

economic collapse of several

Asian economies was beyond the
horizon of foreseeable events. Since

many

in this

The

'viewer'

is

a universal

and

assumed

its

occupant an idealized subject. Works of

spatial experiences

and

static

formal composi-

ahistorical figure, navigating space with mathematical

detachment. Postcolonial discourse dislodges the subject from the constraining parameters ot

and

purely formal practice.

the Asian economic

in full swing.

the

then,

architecture are discussed in terms of

racialized subject.

The

The

subject of architecture

is

a gendered subject, a classed subject,

subject experiences architecture in a state of negotiation,

ed by the architecture even as he/she occupies

its

and

is

constitut-

spaces.

At stake in the design and building of Asian

cities is the possibility

of architecture to

of the projects described

paper have been put on hold,

or scrapped altogether.

on the level of symbolism, but in the complex field of practice, where

and negotiated, and not dogmatically reiterated and reproduced.

create meaning, not

ties are articulated

identi-

12

Sustaining Tr adition

Design for a contemporary Thai House

in

Northern Bangkok

bundit kanisthaKnon

0!

O
Q.
E
3c
o
u

This thesis explores

Bangkok

and

Because Bangkok
plain with heavy

documents the evolution

was designed and buih

next to the

of a Thai house, which

a series

located

is

monsoonal

on

a flood

rain, the city

as a floating city

Chao Phraya

river,

connected by

of canals. By the middle of the nine-

more than half of the

Bangkok were afloat or

teenth century,

dwellings in

has transformed drasti-

amphibious.

Land based development began

cally over the years to

appear

in 1887,

when

the

first

to

public road

was opened, followed by the introduction of

meet changes

trams

in social

in

1887 and the railway in 1890.

Westernization took place in Bangkok in a

aspiration.

The

this investigation

rapid and undigested

result

of

manner causing land

and technology to develop.

As a result, Bangkok became two towns: the
floating and the land based, badly sewn
together and contradicting one another in
based

generat-

life-styles

cultures

ed the design principles

and functions.

'

The Bangkok predicament

expressed by Nietzsche:

for a

new

single family

in the case

to

they found

house, which can be used

of sea creatures

become land
all

is

"lust as

aptly

happened

who were

animals.... All of a

forced

sudden

their instincts devalued,

unhinged. They must walk on legs and

carry themselves, where before water had

as a prototype for future

carried them: a terrible heaviness weighed

upon them. They

development

in Thailand.

felt

manipulation, for in

inept for the simplest

this

new,

unknown

world they could no longer count on the

guidance of their unconscious

The application and

Architecturally,

ensuing guidelines, which

Rg

conceptual study

Houses. From Paul Bonnetain.

L'ExtremeOr,ent.Pans. lae?

Fig, 2 Floating

are responsive to the local

climate, technology

and

three

main types of structures: floating, amphibious, and masonry. Floating houses are
houses built on bamboo rafts. Amphibious
architecture is built on stilts, scattered along
the river and canal banks. Masonry structures,

which are usually ceremonial places

such as temples, are generally built on higher

culture, are presented as

drive...." -

Bangkok has

ground or on

a solid

podium.

Sumet Jumsai, Naga: Cultural Origins in Siam

and the West Pacific, Chalermnit Press & DD
1

an alternative

to

current

Books. Bangkok, 1997. p.l67.

2.

Friedrich Nietzsche: TJje Birth of Tragedy

The Genealogy of Morals, Doubleday,

construction practice.

1956, p.217

and

New York,

13

^^^^^^B

Building Types
The houses

Bangkok may be divided

in

into

three types, reflecting their construction

techniques: Traditional, Conventional and

Current.

Traditional
The traditional Thai house was built
one story wooden structure on stilts.
These houses had rectangular, high pitch
roofs with extended overhangs and were
as a

placed on

wooden

platforms.

The house

could be a group of buildings for a big family

or a single structure for a married cou-

ple. In addition, there

were many practical

determined the characteristics

factors that

of the house type.

The river and the canals were the primary route of transportation, and so people
built their

houses along these waterways.

These houses were

built

on

stilts

to avoid

floods and to protect the inhabitants from

reptiles.

When

the land was dry, the space

underneath the house could be used

multi-purpose space, where family

as a

mem-

bers worked, parked their boats and stored

tools.

It

was

also

where

livestock

was

shel-

tered.

Houses

in a tropical climate

must be

designed to allow natural ventilation, with

high pitch roofs to shed water quickly and

extended overhangs to provide shading and

protect the walls. In the past,

wood was

and was used as the primary element in structure. Other materials

such as bamboo and thatch were used tor
wall panels, which were fabricated and then
attached to the house structure. House were

available locally

often built in standard sizes using

proportion as a measuring
structural

human

tool, so the

components could be assembled

or dismantled quickly.

single-family house usually consist-

ed of more than one unit: a sleeping unit

for the parents, another unit for children, a
living unit

and

cooking

area.

Although

these units varied in size, they were built in

14
tn

D
O
x:

Memory

o
E
Bc
o
u
Fig.8-Fig. 12

The evolution of my

own house from

1966-present.

N4i^^

^^^
we were
^^^^.^

^^^^^^

all

farmer.. ..duriens,

mangoes are

the things that

I built this

we

and

I first

mom

your grandmother's.. .seven of my

grow

friends

bathing?

house when your

got married.. ..next to

We did

it

in the

Klong(canal).... washing? Still the

klang.... transportation?.. .the

klong

Food?. ..the klong.. ..to play? the klong.

-grandmother

came and helped me

built.. ..we

Your

did

it

in

two

tnonths....

mom just got a job across

the river, your

grandpa took her

work by boat sometimes.

-dad

to

15

o
JI
CD
.n.

'c
(D

For me,
tal

this search for

fundamen-

design principles became a journey

my past, looking at the tranformamy own house and its neighborhood over time. My quest was to
discover a truth on which to base my
to

tion of

analysis.

To find

go back

to one's

tigate

is

of

results

to

is

held, to find

permanent. There are the

my search

The house
Bangkok,

is

origins, to inves-

why an opinion

out what

River.

a personal truth

own

...

located in Northern

is

east of the

Chao Phraya

The surrounding neighborhood

was once farmland and

My house
passed

fruit orchards.

was once farmland

down from

too,

generation to gen-

eration for nearly 200 years. There

canal,

is

one of the many branches of the

Chao Phraya

River, ne.xt to the house.

The neighborhood was once named

after the canal,

lime canal, because

lime was the main farm product in this

area. Today, the

Your cousins moved

we subdivided

in

the big

with us

room

into

...

two

Since

When

married, there are only

the house. ..my

mom

they keep asking me:

are you coming

and

is

85, after

Jaransanitwong road which cuts

through the

area.

HOME?

shopping at the

supermarkets.. .there's always parking,

not

left in

my dad.. .and

bedrooms.

I started

my sister got

2 persons

neighborhood

named laransanitwong

like the

farmers market near our

Where
Bangkok?

house

Boston?.

-mom

-myself

is

my home?

Seattle?

Mexico?

Khon Kaen?

Rg.l3-Rg.U The
borhood

in

aerial

photographs of

my

neigh-

1952 ancll997, (Courtesy Royal Survey

Department. Bangkok]

16

w
3
o
CD

CD
^.

O
Q.
e
C
o
o

Principles
This analysis

is

to

examine each individual space

The building types include

in the various

traditional, conventional, current

lyzed in terms of spiritual, climatic, social

and

and

Thai building types and

my own

call

each space by

A new category deals with

architectural principles.

function.

its

family house. These functional areas are then ana-

derived principles that are

used to guide the prototype design.

S piritual Factors

Derived Principle

Cllmattc Factors

Locate Vehicular Gateway where

Gateway

Provide shading
to the site

through

human

tor

pedestrians

scale vegetation

Discourage the use of automobile by

hiding the cars from public view

Avoid Positioning the long side

of the house facing West,
which symbolizes death

Building

wind.

Raise

to

Shade against

landscape

on

qualities t>ased

linguistic

Allow a transitional zone between the

house and the gate

avoid flooding;

for social

interaction

easy access.

South orientation: Lift up above ground; Set

back from the Gateway. Use screens and

Shade house

with large roof, overhang to South

Place human-scaled, fragrant plants

tor

for

fins to facilitate ventilation.

solar heat gain

Provide shading

not

Position length of structure in the North-

Certain trees have auspicious

Open Space

is

Pededstrian Gateway so as to open onto the

sidewalks

Encourage natural ventilation

around building envelope; take
advantage of prevailing S/SW

It

Locate

clearly visible from the street.

near entrance

the house

place

reasons

plants with
lo

provide a desirable
also work

for social Interaction:

as property markers

and West end; Locate

respect to their sizes and

Plant trees at East

appearance; Place potted plants, which can

be removed during

floods, near

openings

to

deflect direct supiiq hl.

Where shoes

Provides shaded area

West

considered inauspicious Positioned to avoid solar glare

Is

Cooking Area

are taken

before

off

entering the house

the house buildings; never

ventilation

play area for security

above

Avoid location that points straight through

place to receive guests

Located near entrance and children

private space, located

away from

to

the public area, yet close to the

encourage cross venblalion

lifted

ground, small area to greet guests

Positioned to encourage cross

Act as heat barrier and

Set beck from the Site Gate;

West

to

East

Always located at the periphery of the

house with independent structure
Located

at either

the East or

the house with bathing and

West end

of

toilet facilities

circulation

Washing Area

N/A
East

Sleeping

Room

is

considered auspicious

and symtralizes
is

life,

while

West

Natural ventilation to dry laundry;

Should be visually shielded from the

Located at the West; covered but not

protected from rain

public

enclosed

Positioned to optimize crossventilation

and

to

Considered

avoid afternoon

room

in

to

be the most private

the house

Entry should be

Bed Placement

Same

Located

at the East,

Never toward the West

heat gain.

inauspicious

as above

head

Positioned to avoid tieel gain

of the

bed

fully visible

for

from the

comfort and

Never place the head of the bed toward the

West

security

Guest Accepting

Where guests

Positioned to catch prevailing

Room

wind from the

S/SW

as

are entertained; serves

multl- function

room

lor

the family

Together with the Cooking Area,

Eating

Room

Positioned to avoid direct sunlight

Is

this

a place where the family can

Shaded and located near Entrance

Locate away from

access

to

tfie

West

with direct

Cooking Area

interact

Upward
Spiritual Stiell/Allar

West
Water Container

Is

ShoukJ be a private and quiet space,

P\ace

separate from main circulation

the

at the highest point

and never facing

West

considered Inauspicious.

Made

N/A
A space

Multi-purpose Area

side represents heaven,

happiness, and superiority.

ad

to

gather rainwater and

Locate on the

to

as heat barrier

of the

Inauspicious.

Is

considered

on the highest point

Place beneath the tiouse, where washing

located beneath

another space

roof, or

house

Shaded by

the house

Shielded from the public

area, garage, gathering space, storage,

additional

rooms can be located

and

17

o
05

c
Multipurpose Area

Approaches
Two sites were

3 Entrance

selected to

Guest receiving Area

encom-

5 Guest accepting Area

pass the two possible building orientations.

One

other

is

is

6 Eating Area

East-West facing and the

7 Cooking Area

8 Washing Area

North- South facing. The loca-

tions selected are situated in

10 Office

borhood, where a canal has been paved

Fig,

over and used as a road. The programs

15

Prototype Design

area,

Water Room

12.13 Sleeping

Room

14 Water container area

of these prototype houses include: a

cooking

Water Room

my neigh-

an eating area, a guest

accepting area, a

home

office,

two

water rooms, two bedrooms, a washing

area and a multipurpose area.

New Design

Principles:

Three Elements House

The house

is

broken down into

three elements: Ground, Middle,

Roof

These three elements are conceived

and designed

to allow possible future

and horizontal expansion.

These elements are connected and
vertical

related to each other, yet they

still fol-

low their individual building and spatial logic.

Fig.

Fig

16

Prototype Design

-First floor

18

Prototype Design

-First floor plan

II

Ground
This ground zone should be
as

open

as possible to allow for

left

maxi-

mum ventilation and to avoid damages

from the continued flood problems

in

Bangkok. Instead of housing animals,

this area

can serve

new purpose, such

modern needs.

as parking, to address

Middle
The middle zone of the house
where the majority of the

is

living spaces

are. In this zone, the interior

and

exte-

rior partitions can be placed according

Fig

17

Prototype Design

Fig.
I

-second

floor plan

19

Prototype Design

II

Second

CD

2 Parking

floor plan

c
3

J3

18
0)

m
o
SI

Q.

to the owner's wish for privacy

and

potted plants, which can be removed

E
c
o
o

sun protection. These partitions are

during floods, should be placed near

designed to the

maximum

size that

can

openings to deflect direct sunlight.

be carried by four people into the

house without the use of heavy

machinery. This is a very important
consideration because

many

of the res-

Bangkok are still narrow and cannot accommodate large

idential streets in

zone

trucks. This

designed with

is

openings that exploit natural ventilation,

but given the almost non-existent

breeze in Bangkok's current urban

environment, the entire

can also

level

be enclosed to accommodate an

air

Water System
Traditionally, water jars are

placed outside the house to collect

rain water for dwellers to

ing the

is

designed

water supply, are inte-

The re-introduction of rain

house.

water usage involves a gravity-driven

collection system that begins at the

bathroom on

down

The roof

city's

grated with the core structure the

air

Roof
like a

cap

to the enclosed

that can be easily

for usable

space. This

feature of

supply water for

roof structure

is

a direct response to

Bangkok's dwindling open space and

the resultant high land prices.

down

to the

open-

the second level,

middle zone, and

the ground

moved up
new and fle.xible

in

rainwater containers, supplement-

ple,

roof gutters, flows

conditioning system.

wash

year-round. Based on this same princi-

bathroom in
way down

the
to

the

all

This system helps

level.

all

functions in the

house. Extra water for future use

is

stored in containers outside the house.

one-

story house can be expanded vertically

by raising the roof

dwelling

level.

to create a

The

second

area under the roof,

being the hottest area of the house,

should be

left

open

mum ventilation.

to allow for

In addition,

maxi-

abun-

dant sunlight creates possibilities for

the installation of photo voltaic panels

on the roof structure.

left

Fig,

20-Fig. 22

North Facade Study

Scheme showing how sun

shading device on the north and south facade

should be designed and operated Unlike the
cal fins

and the

sliding

facade (Fig.28-Fig 29 next page), panels that can

be extended forward and up are encouraged here

because

of the higher

sun angles.

Trees are planted near the east

its

seasonal changes. In addition.

If

the cntical sun

angles are known, fixed panel can also be used.

Landscape
and west facades to provide additional
shading and to increase privacy.
Planting trees near the house also puts
the dweller in touch with nature and

verti-

doors on the east and west

right
Fig.

23 Preliminary Scheme IV

Fig.

24 Preliminary Scheme

Fig.

25 Preliminary SchemeVI

Fig

26,Vertical

(prototype Design

Fig.

V
II)

Components
27 Horizontal Components

19

c
o

(0

'c
to

and

it

continues..

A starting
for the design
in this thesis

point and catalyst

methodology employed

were

my own

experiences

and memories. This helped me to make

decisions about what is worth keeping
or sustaining.

arrived at the decisions

by examining the house that

in,

by relying on

grew up

my childhood memo-

ries and by learning about tradition

from my parents and my grandparents.

My design
own

process was informed by

my

personal understanding of each

and every space in my family house

and its surrounding landscape. Given
the manageable scale of this project, a
house based on these principles can
readily be built in
/

hope

my

Bangkok

thesis will

designers to sustain their

today.

remind fellow

memories of

the space/places that they have experi-

enced and to utilize them as an anchor

and a guide in their own design process.

Fig

30

doors

Interior

Space

facing

west with double

sliding

20

Archipelago Aestheti cs:

The Evidence of

arc hitecture in

So utheast Asia

Stephen cairns
a>
00
<u

o
_tD

0)

Q.
!E

"Town of Kenowit. Rejang

1849.

River'.

From The Living House by Roxanne Waterson

ways of thinking'. Miller argues

For traditional philosophy a well-

grounded piece of architecture is a

source of delight and comfort; from
this basis speculations
its
is

cal

of thinking can safely unfold. This

is

metaphori-

The 'triumph

mind remains
stands

between material base and superstruc-

what can never be approached, named,

ture,

it is

the 'erasure or forgetting of

sophical texts of such terms as

Hillis Miller, like

years,

is

many

others in recent

suspicious of the comfort a

well-grounded piece of architecture

offers.

He

argues that in philosophy

Miller

goes on to describe his project, in his

recent

book

Topographies, as exploring

the workings in literary

and philo-

stream, mountain, house, path,

'river,

field,

perceived,

felt,

It

thought, or in any

'is

the hidden agent of

nomenal

all

those phe-

this sense invokes a desired material

world without ever offering an

unmediated encounter with

it.

hedge, road, bridge, shore, doorway,

Nonetheless 'materiality' represents an

cemetery, tombstone, crypt, tumulus,

interruption of the cognitive workings

boundary, horizon'.

He

asks whether

of meaning and hence should be privi-

moments of

leged as triggering

and

terms 'have a function beyond that of

(im)possible contact, or at least

tectonic' have

mere

unease, between world and

tial

ment'.

as they have been turned into concep-

becoming 'subordiand rational thinking'.

tual terms' thereby

way

experiences'. 'Materiality' in

such geographical or architectural

had their 'original spaand material reference [...] eroded

'for

encountered as such', that nonetheless

geographical terms such as 'ground',

architectural terms such as 'archi-

materiality Miller has in

in architectural terms.

J.

or architectural terminologies

mediated by language.

'the covering

the material base in question'.

Literary critic

ical

would operate as a bulwark against a

supposed rampant textuality. The

over of that problem' of the distinction

is

on architecture. The most

famous example of this is perhaps
Kant's critical philosophy where the
very form of his thinking is described
cally reliant

that

kind of paradoxi-

'triumph of theory'.

of theory' he argues

on the very lim-

to say that philosophy

this erosion serves a

setting or metaphorical adorn-

topography encountered

Conversely, Miller does not aim to

up contingencies as a simple circumvention of formal difficulties with

and philosophical

text.

texts Miller

ways

Each

in the literary

chooses

'hide an

offer

to read, in different

representation; he does not suggest, in

unplaceable place', and invokes the

dilemma of materiality. The triumph

operate unproblematically as 'trans-

other words, that a return to 'the mate-

of theory

parent illustrative metaphors, handy

rial'

nated to logical

As

consequence such terms tend to

as figured in various

geograph-

the material

as the blithe erasure

for Miller

is

of

triumph

21

(0

o
c
v

x:
Q.

of thinking over reading. So a

resist-

ance to theory, he argues, must be

enacted through a heightened reading

he

practice, a practice

reading'.

Such

calls

an

of

'ethics

rial

in the

phenomenal experience of
'river',

'stream', 'mountain', 'house', 'path',

'doorway', 'boundary'

impor-

etc. are

and theory

What

am

itself in

interested in

such a relationship plays

situations in

is

more detail.
way

the

itself

which each of

its

unique

in

mind

are certain

ments with the

have

European engage-

islands of the Southeast

this rigorous

reading as

'a

through

just

moments which remain

convolution of materiality

is

and where the reading of

a consistently troubling activi-

I'll

begin this exploration with a

which

mer, not quite boiling over. In this

zone neither land nor sea dominates,

instead island-figure

and oceanic-

that a formal agitation confronts the

and

this difficulty

is

graphically confirmed: whereas mainIn

its

Southeast corner, the stable

might be interrupted. Architecture and

land mass of continental Asia seems to

geography are privileged zones of con-

break open.

tingency in the transcendental space of

at

not unprob-

in

the island-fragments are held at a sim-

pre- 1960s atlas

points at which the workings of theory

is

geomorphological explosion

cartographer's eye. Indeed, scan any

II

theory.

geog-

this

'ground' continuously interchange so

ty-

out of reach of cognition.

Miller's position

Between the two extremes of

extended liminal zone, a snap-shot of a

est in the

reading of the geography.

Architecture and geography are key

transformed into the

aims, then, to transport Miller's inter-

formative event'. Miller aims to draw

attention to

is

fresh ethereal space of the Pacific.

raphy the archipelago forms an

order

unique per-

mainland Asia

Pacific. In a relatively

Asian archipelago. This exploration

category,

to the materiality of the text

bowl of the

short space the old continental mass of

reading

In paying close attention

axial

giant

referential circumstance in the act of

itself.

no

order, are flung pollen-like into the

out in

and phenomenality into a zone where

the ground itself is not so obvious a

tant for their orchestration of a

sistency and, beholden to

compo-

nents are strange. The situations

a practice pays close

attention to the workings of the mate-

reading. So, terms such as

tecture

From

the gentle

moment

which Sumatra eases away from the

land Asia and the Pacific are represent-

ed as coherent entities each with

own

formal

legibility

mass and oceanic bowl respectively

underside of the Malay Peninsula, the

the extended point of inflection

geography

between them

spills

Eastwards in a

its

terrestrial

is

difficult to see. 'Asia'

lematic from our disciplinary point of

sequence of intensifying vortices and

and

view. His privileging of the activity of

eddies intermingling land and sea in

coherently in the atlas format, as are

reading,

however broad he imagines

to be,

inadequate

is

when

dealing with

geographical or architectural

ena

built

the

phenom-

to say that a landscape or a

form might be

'read'

is

excessively

want to by-pass
dilemma here in order to explore
dynamic between geography, archi-

metaphorical. But
this

it

ever

more complex

relations.

At

first

and densely afforested

island chunks hold in tangential formations and string out along the equator. Later these chunks themselves
twist, contort and fragment into smaller particles. Eventually they froth and
foam becoming almost gaseous in consubstantial

'the Pacific' are usually represented

entities

such as 'the Far East' or 'Indo-

china'. But insular Southeast Asia

is

most often found straddling maps on

different pages,
ters usually

its

agitated island clus-

cropped and located on the

margins of those more coherent geographical entities.

In the West, insular Southeast

22
U5

o
"55

"S
0)

o
D)
TO
0}

Q.
jz

u
1_

Asia had long been

known by such

Such anxieties are persistent

eties.

yet

(and

second reason)

this is the

because this engagement attempts to

architectural issues,

and was thereby conceived as a

kind of Hindu colony under the direct
control of kingdoms in India. But
during the Dutch colonial era a sub-

produce an autonomous disciplinary

surface in

body of evidence pointing to

unique historical and cultural characteristics of the archipelago was gradu-

ways

names

as 'Further India' or the 'East

Indies',

stantial

accumulated. Consequently by the

ally

1940s the older terminology had

be seen

to

The term

as imprecise

come

and outmoded.

'Southeast Asia'

came

into

general use around this time, and

goes on to describe

many

historical
[

is

a region, as

it,

which

it,

'in

economic relations with India, but distinct from India and consequently fully

nary debates. Architecture

ble to place,

and commonsensical

themes and tropes

of the other discipli-

and

yet

is

impossi-

is

thoroughly

implicated in the articulation of a

regional cultural identity.

Of course,

"autonomous"'. This production of

architecture could be said to be a key

autonomy

source of evidence in the production

in the face of a lack of

autonomy, although developed

in vari-

ous discipline-specific terms, was

artic-

and most obviously

through long and convoluted attempts
ulated initially

this, in turn,

and

Day

so

not and has never been

to 'identify the region of study'.

it

articulated a unique regional identity,

historically implicated in cultural

object in the face of

many

And

was most often expressed

of cultural identity more generally. For

instance

many of anthropology's

ethnographers

America, Radcliffe- Browne in the

Andaman

tions of built

of sounding

want

like

an enviro-determinist,

you

great

North

Trobriands, Levi-Strauss in South

geography of the region. So,

the risk

Lafitau in

America, Malinowski in the

through worries about the fracturous

at

in their

Islands

feature descrip-

form

at pivotal locations

monographs, and, further-

more, the structuring of ethnographic

reciprocal in those relations. However,

once the association with the clear and

sionally at least) that the pseudo-geo-

evidence, as unique cultural wholes,

long-established civilizational traits of

morphological and formal agitations

are often developed

India was broken, the characteristics of

we can

this regional identity

were required to

be thought anew. This process proved

to

on Indonesian historiography

instance,

Tony Day notes

kind of anxiety in those

it'.

for

that

'Southeast Asian history produces

who

[ . . .

whether

it

imagine (provi-

read off an atlas

map somehow

be understood as a keystone which

ments made with the region;

holds together a vast array of

as

as if that

an index of the

difficulties the disci-

such that they are able to coalesce as

more

an organic cultural form

Ill

which

(or,

ment, such as insular Southeast Asia,

cross-disciplinary anxiety

tory or archaeology

ly interesting for

this

traits,

artefacts

broadly, as theory). But in an environ-

Architecture's place in this broadly

time are beset by epistemological anxi-

and

insular Southeast Asia.

anthropology, geography, cultural his-

engagements with the region from

practices, behaviours

plines have in their engagements with

be sociology,

Western

around such

descriptions. Architecture, then, could

infect the various scholarly engage-

study

Indeed, across a whole range of dis-

ciplines

to

fragmented geographical image serves

be a fraught one. In a perceptive

essay

to invite

sons:

an

first,

two

is

particular-

inter-related rea-

architecture rarely figures as

explicit disciplinary formation,

and

own

resists

lack of

formalization through

its

form architecture takes on

an even greater burden

and production of

in the

proof

cultural identity. In

other words, the already sanctioned

relationship between architecture

and

o
c
a>

a.
to

anthropology in general

is

cursive production of an indigenous

heightened

in this part of the world; architecture

is

interpolated into the field of anthropological culture in a

more urgent and

culture.

hypothesis a

add

thorough way here. Two recent exam-

effects a

ples of this intensified relationship

cal anxiety,

come

to

book

Tlie Living

mind:

Roxana Waterson's

first,

House:

An

anthropolo-

gy of architecture in Southeast Asia is

perhaps the best known recent anthropology of Southeast Asia.

And

further

little

that, if a fractured

would be

to

geography

then architecture

rogate to pull things together again.

quite a beautiful river

she

of

and Stephen

willingly. It

geography are

and beyond. This is a genon anthropological interpreta-

all

material reference

book

explicitly with built

(six

forms

half of

the

and

figuratively

lit-

on which the

of evidence wielded within

it

was

architectural in character. Architecture

and geography are brought into a particularly complex relation here, and
together they are implicated in the dis-

Everything

metaphors,

one

'city'

is

is

[...].

neglected and natural,

shore hide

The

all its

houses".

'wild' spatiality

of this

first

Indonesian 'urbanism'

is

also attested

trav-

Wood, so
we could not see a house till we
were upon it. Neither could we go
into any place, but we found houses
"very spacious, built in a
that

and great concourse of people: so

that 1 think the town spreadeth over
land".

can give

because the great trees along the

to

by John Crawfurd

century:

whole

style

and even a little wild. When

at anchor one sees not a single

ellers

the

new

vestige or appearance of a city,

indigenous settlements in Aceh,

often the
Western
Southeast Asian
encountered were

a pretty accurate idea

pleasure to passing strangers

Captain John Davis notes that

Northern Sumatra

form

that a ciry of this

rustic

as 'transparent illustrative

project of cultural identification

unfolded, then the most powerful form

will

of Achen [Aceh] and you will agree

'turned into conceptual terms', to serve

eller
if

you

eroded', to be

in the

stood as the fracturous grounds

erally

[...]

handy ways of thinking' about culture.

The eighteenth century English trav-

geography of the region can be under-

many people as you see in your

towns, when they are well populated;

and

of ten) deal

Southeast Asian archipelago. So

spread throughout this forest as

too

have their 'original spatial and

to

eral text

form case-studies

ous quarters by meadows and woods:

too ready to collude,

Levi-Strauss

relies over-

all

as if architecture

is

separate quarters; divide these vari-

and geog-

raphy play into theory's hands

Hugh-Jones' book About the house:

the essays in the

and bark, and arrange

them in such a manner that they
sometimes form streets, sometimes

But a consideration of the indige-

indigenous built form. The second

from the archipelago over

covered

number of houses made of

incredible

IV

possibility that architecture

built

al!

with boats; put in this forest an

canes, reeds

explicit consideration

whelmingly on

the

trees,

bamboos, pineapples and bananas,

through the midst of which passes

through an

it

de Premare writ-

"[ijmagine a forest of coconut

nous architecture of the region from

tions of built form, yet

J.

makes the following remarks on

same 'city':

is

outside anthropology's frame raises the

Janet Carsten

Jesuit, S.

required as a fundamental cultural sur-

cultural diversity in the archipelago

is

French

comprehensive epistemologi-

develops an anthropological account of

example

ing to a colleague in Canton, in 1699,

So to develop the imagined

of

'a

in the

town, even

many thousand

nineteenth

when

it

inhabitants,

consists
is

no

more than an aggregate of villages'. As

Anthony Reid notes, in his essay 'The
structure of cities in Southeast Asia',

these impressions are

fact that the

made

despite the

urban conglomerations of

24

CO

a>
re
0)

Q.

Southeast Asia were amongst the

world during the seven-

largest in the

teenth century.

He

concludes that

approaching the Southeast Asian

we may be wise

to

'[i]n

city

shed most of our

how

preconceptions about

Reid offers an economic explanation for this kind of rural 'urbanism':

capital,

was

had

to be protected in the Southeast

city', as

a consequence, he

argues, '[t]here
specific area

was

little

which had

values dear to the discourse of civiliza-

and

rather as 'scattered settlements',

sense of a

to be

defended

enemies, and no sense

on

their social organization relied

principles of social mobility

ticity.

Like Reid,

and

Berman concludes

it

This discourse was initiated in the

colonial era

one

can never support the

tion.

elas-

and continued

in

many

contemporary engagements with the

gets rather the impression that the

region. If the epistemological anxiety

Javanese countryside was in a perma-

which besets such engagements

nent state of

flux'.

Berman argues

that

the institution of a standard village

regarded as the principal asset which

Asian

coherence,

known

that '[o]n reading the old reports,

Renaissance city ought to function'.

'manpower, not fixed

desa [village] heads'. Villages were

form

which

entailed an administra-

to

is

productive in the postcolonial era,

must be turned to thinking at the limits of form and beyond comfortable

tive structure, clearly delineated village

autonomies. This would be to take

boundaries, and the fixing of

seriously the possibilities of an

finite

be

it

bodies of population to specified

ephemeral architecture and

places of residence

urbanism. Both of these are inherently

was

a conse-

wild

quence of the implementation of the

contradictory terms: architecture by

colonial policy of the Cultuurstelsel.

definition

This policy led to the comprehensive

and urbanism

consequence fixed dwellings and land

surveying of the whole of Java, and the

romantic sense. However, these terms

ownership were not regarded

allocation of

against

all

that the city

was

the suburbs

and the

priorities.
life

a different

at all

world from

countryside'.

As a

as high

'Except in the biggest cities

all

uncultivated land to

are

is

a resistance of ephemera,
is

only ever

symptomatic of the kinds of con-

voluted and contradictory

the colonial state.

was based on the presumption of

'wild' in a

demands
make

certain postcolonial conditions

of Western scholarship. In these

The grounds which were settled

(geography) and the modes of settlement (architecture) are locked into an

cumstances, architecture can make the

Discussing the nineteenth century

intriguing relationship here: they col-

is

administrative structures of the

lude to generate a wild and unsettled

the triumph of theory.

constant mobility'.

This ambivalence with regard to

territory

is

also noted,

ical perspective,

lages of
Java,

a sociolog-

vil-

Banten and Priangan, West

Berman

points out that '[tjhere

was no mention of the

ritorial

from

by Ian Berman.

village as a ter-

organization at the time of the

urbanism. The values of civilization

permanence, sedentariness
and form, and the.se values underpin
privilege

the production of cultural diversity in

[Vereenigde Oost-Indische)

the region. Consequently the ephemer-

Compagnie and,

al

as late as 1857, the

Resident explained that there were no

urbanism which emerges

in the

archipelago can never offer evidence of

most of

its

cir-

privileged position between

the material

and the phenomenal

prepared to

if it

resist its allocated role in

A 12th-cen tury Chinese Building Manual:

andrew i-kang

li

Descriptions

&

a shape

grammar

26
to

C
CD
E
en

c
'5
J3

0)
(n
O)

c
o
d

!c

The descriptions

in the Yingzao fashi

Each description has three parts

(figs.

2-17), each characterizing one aspect of the

transverse frame.
1

Depth, in

Subdivision, expressed in various combinations of three types of terms.

rafters.

This

is

an even number.

Clear span (tongyan). In a clear span building, there are no interior columns,

only the two in the front and back walls

(fig.

17a).

Central division (fen xin). In a centrally divided building, there

below the ridge purlin

Beams

(/).

(fig.

is

column

16b).

The length of the beam indicates the size of the bay it spans. Only
beams are specified; the inner beams are merely imphed (17b).

the outermost

Of the

18 descriptions,

none containing the term dear span

terms central division or beams.

central division or

beams or both

also contain the

description not containing clear span contains

(figs. 7, 9, 11).
2

number of columns. The minimum is two in a clear span building. The maximum is one more than the number of rafters, but this possibility is not seen among

Total

the 18 variations.

Consider the description

(fig. 4):

10-rafter building, centrally divided, a 2-rafter

(shijia

chuan wu,fen

xin, qianhoii nifu,

beam

in

both front and back, with

columns

yong wu zhu).

The building has four bays which, from front to back, are two, three,
The two outside bays are specified; the two inside bays are not.

three

and two

rafters deep.

How descriptions and shape grammars are related

Now that we have seen what the descriptions look like, let us discuss, briefly and in a
minimally technical way, the formal relation of descriptions and grammar. For details, see Stiny
(1981).

A grammar consists of an
are applied to shapes to
initial

initial

shape and a number of shape

produce other shapes. There

shape and functions associated with the shape

is

an

rules.

shape to produce another shape, the associated function

shape to produce a description of the other shape.

It

is

initial

rules.

The shape

rules

description. associated with the

As each shape

rule

is

applied to one

applied to the description of the one

does this by changing some of the compo-

nents of the description. Thus, "given a language of designs defined by a shape grammar, the

intended descriptions of these designs can be explicitly constructed by use of a recursive schema

based on

this

shape grammar" (Stiny 1981, 257).

10-rafter building, centrally divided, with 3

columns
zhu]

(shijia

ctiuan wu. fen

xin,

yong san

27

5
a>
I

T3

CD

10-rafter building,

both front and

two

2-rafter

bacl<. with 6

chuan wu. qianhou bing ru

beams

columns
fu.

yong

in

{shijia

liu

zhu]

28
CO

C
CD
E

C
K, < with

'3
gf.

Otj

c
o
d

gg:

columns

CCi^ a^, 2-rafter beam

< with

02 <
(Z,

in bacl<

columns

3-rafter

0^2,

< with

How do

beam

in

back

columns

these functions generate descriptions? As examples, seven descriptions of a

CD

four-rafter building are derived here.

5,

corresponding to

one (derivation

7)

figs.

Four are among the 18

7a, 16b, 17b,

and

in the text (derivations

16a); three are not (derivations 3, 6,

corresponds to a reflection of one

descriptions can be generated by the functions but,

among

the 18 in the text

compared

to the set of

8,

and

(fig.

1, 2, 4,

7),

16a).

Other

they appear

formed. They are worth discussing, but we omit them here for lack of space.

( 1

4-rafter building

# with

columns #

# 4-rafter building # clear span # with

(2)

columns #

# 4-rafter building # e# with 2 columns*

# 4-rafter building # centrally divided # with

(3)

columns #

# 4-rafter building # e# with 2 columns #

# 4-rafter building # centrally divided # with 3 columns #

4-rafter building # centrally divided,

-rafter

beam

in fi-ont

# 4-rafter building # centrally divided,

-rafter

beam

in front,

5
(4)

# with 4 columns #

-rafter

beam

in

back # with

columns #

# 4-rafter building #

columns #

# with

-rafter

beam

in front

# 4-rafter building #

-rafter

beam

in front,

# 4-rafter building #

# with

# 4-rafter building #

-rafter

beam

in front

# 4-rafter building #

-rafter

beam

in front, 3-rafter

# 4-rafter building #

# with

^&
# 4-rafter building #

# with 3 columns #

^&
(5)

(6)

-rafter

beam

in

back # with 4 columns #

columns #

columns #

# with 3 columns #

beam

in

back # with 4 columns #

and

although

ill-

29

T3

C
TO

30

D
C
CD
E
O)

Fifth, the designs

many-one

and

should have a one-one relation.

their descriptions

relation, then configurations differently generated

If

they had a

but otherwise identical would have

Such synonymous descriptions seem not

two descriptions (from derivations 2 and 6):
different descriptions.

to

be permitted; compare these

o
four-rafter building, centrally divided, with three columns;
four-rafter building, a two-rafter

CM
^
If

beam

in

both

ft'ont

and back, with three columns.

one-many relation, then some designs

make descriptions unnecessary. Another hint

the designs and their descriptions had a

CD

would not have

descriptions. This

that the 18 variations

and

would seem

to

their descriptions have a

one-one

is

17a

relation.

4-rafter building, clear span, with 2

columns

[s/y/a

chuan wu. tongyan. yong er

zhu]

17b

Conclusion

ii-rafter building, a t-rafter

beam

both front and back with 4 columns

We now have
the descriptions

grammar

the outline of a shape

illustrated in the Yingzao fashi. This outline

accompanying the

is

that generates the 18 transverse frames

implied by the functions

illustrations. Specifically,

of a transverse frame with a step in the generation of

its

we

we propose

chuan wu. qianhou zha

qian.

yong

si

in

isijia

zhu)

to generate

associate a step in the generation

description. For example, the

should have a shape rule that "centrally divides" a transverse frame; when

grammar

this rule is applied,

an

associated function changes the associated description to include centrally divided.

Using descriptions provides an alternative approach

frames are allowed: we can

grammar now embodies

extent

it

now

evaluate not only the design

to the
itself

its

description.

those criteria that interested the builders of the Song dynasty; to

has the internal logic, the "look and

feel,"

The
some

of the Yingzao fashi. This in turn addresses the

question of the descriptive adequacy of the characterization of a

and Mitchell (1978).

This example shows how Stiny 's formalization

style, first

brought up by Stiny

integrates varying types of

about designs - not only the designs themselves, but descriptions as

is

question of which transverse

but also

well.

knowledge

Moreover, the example

taken from architectural history, which shows that the approach can provide insight into real

A note

on the

iflustrations

The descriptions of

architectural problems.

frames

List of references

posed functions

(figs.

the ting hall transverse

2-17) have been translated

into English rather Hterally, so that the prowill

be valid whether the

descriptions are in English or in Chinese.

Chen Mingda.

muzuo zhidu
Wenwu.

1993. Yingzao fashi da

the Yingzao fashi]. Beijing:

yanjiu [A study of structural carpentry in

v. 1.

Beijing:

Zhongguo

jianzhu gongye.

and

George. 1981.

design

Stiny,

8:

A note on

the description of designs. Environment

and planning

B: planning

design

in

appeared in an unspecified older source.

The drawings and

the descriptions are

of the Yingzao

fashi, inconsistent; this

includes the illustrations here. However,

257-267.

and

were reprinted

sometimes incorrect and, bet^veen editions

George, and William

B: planning

illustrations here

Liang (1983, 313-321) and originally

Liang Sicheng. 1983. Yingzao fashi zhushi [The annotated Yingzao fashi],

Stiny,

The

5:

J.

Mitchell. 1978.

5-18.

The Palladian grammar. Environment and planning

is

it

easy and uncontroversial to infer the cor-

rect

drawings and descriptions; we follow

Chen's

1993, 108) standardized version.

JV\ade by Chinese:

Shanghai Tang

development of Contemporary Chine se Cnutiirp

san san kwan

31

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They have been calling it PoonTang corner (Williams 107). Ever since

Hong Kong impresario David Tang set

up shop on Madison Avenue - right
across from Barney's, which is controlled by fellow Hong Kong mogul
Dickson Poon - fashion watchers have

on the arms of every chair in photographs of official Communist summit

meetings. Chinese revolutionary

anthems, intermingled with 1930s

Shanghai lounge-pop, blare from

colorful: lime green, acid purple,

candy

speakers throughout the store.

An

apple red, fuchsia, Day-glo orange.

David Tang claims

as his

main

been quick to make colorful remarks,

undoubtedly inspired by Tang's own

enormous bat design, representing

good luck, curls its lemon yellow way

of China's

David Tang

along the elevator cab that pierces the

(Elegant 62). Tang wants to establish

brash

style.

cocky

Hong Kong

is

a profane,

with an

socialite

tri-level space.

uppercrust colonial upbringing.

cherry

Owner

backed

of the China Club, a super-

exclusive

hub

for the

and well-heeled
Beijing, he also
store,

in

monied, famous,

Hong Kong and

founded the new

Shanghai Tang,

a hip,

mobile emporium that

haute couture,

sells

retail

upwardly
Chinese

and products for

the home. Shanghai Tang opened its
doors to Hong Kong in 1994 and then
unveiled

its

gifts,

New York

November of

location in

1997, just in time for the

post-Thanksgiving rush.

Shanghai Tang

sells

wood

Chinese antiques -

tables

and matching

chairs, herbalist cabinets, old

and calligraphy brush stands scattered amid louder versions of

are

try.

The

come

dresses are hand-tailored

and

in the conventional silk or bro-

cade, as well as any

number of furry,

squeaky synthetic

Mao

shimmery, or

fabrics.

For men,

Shanghai Tang

suits in quilted leather

sells

suits,

Red Guard

caps,

the Cultural Revolution. In the display

colonial 1930s Shanghai, ancient

cases

dynastic designs, Tibetan color

images of Deng Xiao Ping, fluorescent

Madison Avenue

store

is

The new

blindingly

style

(Alexander

B30) without risking the old tendency

images of China are driven by colonial
Oriental mystique and submission.

Mao

sit

watches with hand-waving

mugs, napkins depicting happy

coolie laborers, furry

Manchu

and the white crocheted

hats,

doilies seen

of the

Traditionally,

it is

East that

on Madison Avenue -

sells

this vision

home of the etablishment consumer.

how can Shanghai Tang escape the

So

cultural associations

are

bound

which customers

to carry with

them

into the

store?

reminiscent of the 'good old days' of

tionary propaganda, fashions from

superstitious symbols, etc.

new Chinese

constructs, opium-steeped fantasies of

or green velvet. To match the

schemes, Buddhist imagery, Chinese

initiate a

store.

there are

revolu-

but as a leader in

towards Orientalism. In the West,

camp. The store irreverently appropriates from a dizzying mix of eras and

Communist

like,

and glamorous fashion indusThe question is whether he can

and gold-tinted folding screens. On

the racks hang traditional Chinese qi
pao's in the same vibrant shades of the

gone-chic and revolution-turned-

forms: icons from

mobiles or the
the elite

Orientalia, like bulbous red lanterns

recognizable brand

first

China on the global market, not as a

manufacturer of electronics or auto-

mirrors,

fuzzy, scratchy, shiny,

Chinoiserie-

stiff-

objective the introduction to the world

The question
retical

raises a

more theo-

concern regarding the project of

postmodernism

as

an agent for

social

change. Critics of postmodernism sustain little faith that the

form

is

postmodern

anything more than a pastiche

of styles juxtaposed without integrity

32
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difference for

own

its

sake.

0)

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that preoccupation with

But per-

haps the postmodern aesthetic of

multiphcity can serve a political

listic

image

is

empty of political import. On the contrary, postmodernism uses image pre-

sty-

change for the

purpose. Perhaps one should consider

cisely to enact political

the possibility that David Tang's ironic

traditionally marginalized; those

send-up of Orientalia,

Mao and
works

his

electrified Confucius, actually

to subvert orientalism. This

who

have been constructed by their mien

hipped-out
ity for

emergent voices, minority voic-

postmodern pastiche would serve to

overturn traditional ideas of China in
favor of d>Tiamic and contemporary

presents one

ones.

es,

now

buried by the predomi-

es previously

nance of Euro-American authority.

Of

course, the field of postcolonialism

forum

for these

new

voic-

look to masks to reconstruct.

Critics

contend that postmod-

ernism exercises pastiche and not parody. While parody conveys an ulterior

motive, pastiche

pure imitation,

is

and since Shanghai Tang haUs

directly from the recently decolonized
territory of Hong Kong, its presence

Sometimes, though, postmodernists

almost inherently invokes postcolonial

ends. Sometimes, though, parodic

ernism's preoccupation with appear-

discourse. In his bid for Chinese fash-

quoting presents the most

ance and

ion. Tang, a

Parody: Surface with Depth

postmod-

Skeptics claim that

perhaps irresponsible dis-

its

missal of history reduce forms to

By

simulacra.

modern
ing,

and

art
is

this

mere

argument, post-

reproduces without creat-

end of

in that respect the

the distinctive individual brush stroke

(Jameson

15).

Empty of any unique

postmodernism has no ego.

Without an ego, a subject who feels,
style,

no emotional content or pull.

(15) While Shanghai Tang undoubtedly indulges in pretty pictures and
there

is

imaginative histories, this effect need

not imply that the store lacks an ego.

Postmodernism

dom

is

not simply ran-

difference. Ideally,

driven by

it is

the theory that the master narrative of

history

is

an

illusion.

There

is

no

linear

progression or advancement of society

(a belief

upon which imperialism was

founded), only synchronic repetition

and

reiteration.

There are no essential

(White) truths, only multiple perspectives.

While these ideas portray seem-

postmodern
opens up the possibil-

former colonial subject

relieved of the satiric impulse.

choose specific quotes toward specific

effective, if

not the only, way to express resistance.

and self-admitted Anglophile, carefully

maneuvers between two dominant
powers - a postmodern-style postion

made comprehensible only through

the context of Hong Kong's postcolonial moment.
The postmodern aesthetic, relying

Tang, as a

on notions of 'aspect' and 'simulacra',

provides an ideal forum for minority
empowerment. As Dorinne Kondo, in
her book, About Face: Performing Race
in Fashion and Tlieater, argues, gender,
sexuality, and race may condition the
degree to which we are conscious of

parody

re- working

most

clever

of surfaces can be the

method of re-working

hegemonic perspectives. Shanghai

Hong Kong-based company

Hong
new phase under mainland

poised at the beginning of

Kong's

Chinese

rule,

as a

employs postmodern

form of quiet

Paris

is

Burning, Judith Butler discusses

parodys subversive
where
is

political cri-

on the documentary

tique. In her essay

effect:

the uniformity of the subject

expected, where the behavioral

is commanded, there might be produced

the refusal of the law in the form of

conformity of the subject

we perform ourselves in
everyday life (16). Kondo argues that
the ways

minority communities implicitly recognize identity as performance. Only a

white heterosexual patriarchy can sustain the belief that surface

appearance and
After

all,

who

and depth,

reality, are separate:

thought actually

(15).

Kondo

legitimacy- of the

command,

a repeti-

tion of the law- into h\-perbole, a

rearticulation of the law against the

authority of the one

who

delivers

it.

can afford to be uncon-

allowed to ignore

is

that subtly calls into question the

(Bodies That Matter 122)

cerned about his/her appearance?

ingly bleak prospects,

the parodic inhabiting of conformity-

it

Who

with impunity?

attacks the moral stance

Butler's use of the

term law here

is

Lacanian reference to the system of

33

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utterance by which a subject becomes

ed, simultaneously

socially constituted. Ideally, that sub-

proud

admiring

can refuse the law which names

ject

her through hyperbolic imitation. By

Mimicry:

over-aping law, performing

Global Capitalism with a

too well, she reveals

ness,

its

superficiality,

its

resignifies

its

constructed,

The
pastiche

perhaps

constructed-

power over
it

it

Difference

and thereby
her. If

to
it is

can be deconstructed.

crucial characteristic of paro-

dy, the thing that separates

and

gives

it

it

critical

import,

ladies, Suzie

Wong, Shanghai

Miss Saigon, any Asian whore,

come

in glow-in-the-dark hues

out-of-this-world fabrics.

They

and
are

stranger than the fiction of the characters they usually imply.

As

a result, the

dresses reveal these characters as

tions, fantasies
desire.

wrapped

the

at

same time exuding rab-

Mao

so the

fic-

in colonial

velvet.

The kind of parody identifiable

postmodernism only obscures the
truth that postmodernism does not
ery.

caps are faithful

come in blue
The Deng Xiao Ping watches
a laughing stock.

tion. Despite the theoretical pretense

The

filigreed silver glass holders are identical to

in

those used for official fiinctions

communist-socialist led China, only

Shanghai Tang
tive

market

them

sells

prices.

at

another essay, parody exists

indecisive space

competi-

As Butler writes

in

in a sort

of

between attraction

and repulsion:

truth of the always already construct-

identity,

ed.

it

Not one

to stop at Orientalism,

David Tang also

resists

the mass prop-

approximate, and draw near;

engages an intimacy

tion

it

ability to

witti ttie posi-

sition of

Hong Kong back

Chinese

rule,

felt

by many

Hong

in regard to the handover.

While they are proud

and

mainland

Shanghai Tang speaks to

the ambivalence

Kongers

to

to

be Chinese,

relieved to unstrap the yoke of

or the reader does not quite ioiow

where

you stand, whether you

have gone to the other side, whether
it is

you remain on your

you can rehearse

side,

whether

that other position

without falHng prey to

may

potentially exer-

Through parody, Shanghai Tang

it

in the

midst

Thus, parody represents a method for

Hong

Kong's ambivalence

towards both Western colonialism and

Chinese communism.
fect role for a territory

Tang does claim

fectly exemplified

also per-

is

by Shanghai Tang.

David Tang

is

He

make money by turning

is

out to

an unabashed salesman.

world brand, a

Chinese Nike (Williams 40). His project to establish a

Chinese label

signifies

not only a demand for

mere reparations for

more
bid for economic power.

cultural respect,

the history of Orientalism, but,

importantly, a

Thus David Tang's venture is the quintessential example of the globalization

of capital. Shanghai Tang proves capitalism's influence beyond its origins in
the West. Capitalism

rhetoric without rejecting Chinese

all.

italism. Bizarrely, this claim

is

a victor the

world over.

subtly snubs Chinese revolutionary

patriotism. After

third phase: late, or multinational, cap-

(Merely Cultural 3)

expressing

cise.

cultural manifestation of capitalism's

of the performance.

colonialism, they also fear the censor-

ship that China

will overturn hegemonic narrapostmodernism is actually the

it

tives,

appropriates that troubles the

voice, the bearing, the performativity

of the subject such that the audience

aganda of communism. After the tran-

that

Shanghai Tang into

Extreme materiality reveals the

Parody requires a certain

in

Utopian transforma-

really represent

both honor China's deceased leader

and make him

still

argue that such underhanded, mincing

criticism avoids any real political brav-

idly Angiophiliac (Yaeger 14) tastes.

copies, except that they

dresses traditionally associated with

dragon

though

is

Orientalism with excess. The qi pao's,

Modernist hold-outs might

be passionately Chinese (Bogert 48),

And

from

hyperbole. Shanghai Tang attacks

Lil,

yet bitter,

yet fearful.

to both Britain

Of course,
truly generates

serves the per-

whose loyalties
and China are conflict-

possible that what

heterogeneous materiality,
fessed

It

it is

postmodernism's

room

for choice,

is

all its

not

pro-

some

kind of libertarian dissemination of

power and agency, but something

34

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Marx

enough, the

comes

culture of the simulacrum

life

Coca-Cola
But
"McDonald's
whats Chinese? There is no Chinese

commodity

identified long ago:

fetishism. Appropriately

brand.

to

to

me

to be

crazy."

where exchange value

in a culture

seems

just

It

(Williams 45).

develop; this ultimately homogenizes

has been so generalized that the actual

everything by evacuating individual

use value of an object

meaning and narrative. Perhaps postmodernism multiplies perspective only

Tang's sly appropriation of Western

to strengthen the capitalist imperative.

jostling the

society in

is

effaced.

It is

which "the image has become

the final form of commodity reification"

(Guy Debord, The

Spectacle, 18).

Society of the

Shanghai Tang

capitalist values in the service of

echoes

really

And

yet, global capitalism

Bhabha's notion of

Mimicry, in Bhabha's terms,

icry.

need

Western cultural hegemony

Homi

mimis

the

only commodifies China, or perhaps

not be read as simply the unquestion-

desire for a

re-Orientalizes China, under a guise of

ing adoption of Western values by the

Other, as a subject of a difference that

whimsy and

non-West. As various multinational

is

store

kitsch. In the end, the

still sells

exotica over

with desire. The blue velvet

are

sumptuous and

imbued

Mao

corporations

caps

beautiful, but they

occlude the history of oppression and

move from

Europe and America

their bases in

to establish opera-

transit of

Capital
profits

becomes

truly global

move not only from

to South, etc. Global capitalism,

napkins embroidered with tiny coolie

laborers? Will

no one

it

feel slightly

perk)' star-embellished

now turned
est green? Is

queasy
traits

Mao

anyone

at the sight

just a

wee

it

bit

Is

Army

a restaurant

This

re-edu-

may

brating.

is

Shanghai Tang

shift the control

plans to

above the store and

the West to

mimicking

may

their colonizers, colo-

nials validate the

power of those

help

senting themselves in the images of the

civilized,

page,

it

conforming Other. But

can also be

ence

it

sion in

creates

is

with a history of mass

that commodification

is

not solely enacted upon the non-West

by Western powers, but

poverty and brainwashing behind

the space of subver-

is

also taken

Pleasure and Threat,

Joy and Capitalism

up

Fashion writers describe Tang's

irreverent cannibalization (18) of the

embraces capitalism with enthusiasm,

- terms which seem

past in the service of the market.

but he embraces

belie

true that in

its

never a

which the colonized subject

domination by the colonizer.

venture with words

is

is

The space of differ-

by the non-West itself in order to serve

non-Western ends. David Tang

them. Postmodernism

its slip-

a strategy for dis-

avowing authority. Mimicry

rejects

in the East.

rulers.

feed the rulers narcissism by pre-

perfect replication.

of capitalism from the

some hands

In

its e.xcess,

Shanghai Tang's move to Madison

something outrageous about

selling items

not

not be a victory worth cele-

Still,

Avenue proves
There

if

democratically, at least geographically.

Long March bar?

the

and economic power -

not a single citizen

slippage,

difference. (86)

because mimicry always reveals

of widely distributing cultural,

political,

of two huge por-

revolted to learn that Tang

call

ect

of Mr. Tang hanging next to a

cation session?

when

spreads wealth in multiple directions,

out in crimson and for-

vintage print of a Red

open

caps,

mimicry must continu-

its

its

They

cooperates with the postmodern proj-

uncomfortable with the hawking of

effective,

produce

when

East to

West, but also from West to East, North

there really a market in 1997 for

be

ally

one example of the

capital in the opposite direction.

Is

constructed around an ambivalence;

Tang

The

this irony best:

is

to

famine which produced their originals.

Village Voice style editor articulates

almost, but not quite, the same. In

other words, the discourse of mimicry

tions in developing countries, Shanghai

is

reformed and recognizable

ruthless in

its

It is

self-proclaimed hetero-

it

so that he can

reorder power relations:

geneity postmodernism risks concealing the historical route by which things

Hong

either to forget or

Kong's history of colonial-

ism under the

include The

"What's American?" asks Tang.

like "colonizes"

(Yaeger 14) and "invades" (Bogert 48)

British. Article titles

Coming of the Tang

35

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<n

Dynasty (Williams 40) and Under the

Spell of China (Fiori 161). Implied in
is an American pub"Get ready, America -

such descriptions
lic

under

siege.

Hong Kong

impresario and tastemaker

David Tang has

works cited

on you"
Shanghai Tang

his sights

(Alexander B24).

If

Alexander, Ian. "The Next Emperor". Money.

Bhabha. Homi. "Of Mimicry and Man: The

Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse". The Location
of Culture. New York and London: Routledge,

demonstrates a wholehearted adoption

of American market strategies, there

new

something about

this

smugly

model of Western

defies the

Oct. 1997: B24-B30.

is

store that

admit, what persists for

ism.

It

now

would be delusional

is

capital-

1994. 85- 92.

Ruder, ludith. "Gender

to posit a

is

Burning: Questions of

Appropriation and Subversion". Bodies That

capitalism, or at least the forces of

place outside of market influences;

desire that undergird

even joy

title

it.

Like the crass

depicting Shanghai Tang's location

across from Dickson Poon's depart-

now

commodity
13).

Matter:

occurs fully within a

regime (Kondo
wrong about that?

capitalist

And what

is

so

insidiousness or

discomforting - especially paired with

whichever - ultimately

Poon's recent takeover of Barney's.

things.

Shanghai Tang, for

even as

It is

mockery

it

embraces those

all its

seduction or

empowering
sells

effects

beautiful

manuscript. Cheng, Allen T. Mr.

Tang's blend of design with

that enables

it

to simultane-

ously take up the profit motive, that

critics see as

undergirding postmod-

ernism, while simultaneously effecting

the radical disruption which advocates
ascribe to the

postmodern

project.

Through the slippery techniques of

parody and mimicry, forms which
both perpetuate and undermine hegemonic narratives, Shanghai Tang straddles the

uneasy border between beat-

In analyzing postmodernism's

Edelson, Sharon. "The Tang Dynasty".

Elegant, Simon. "It Takes

all, is

as liberation. Critics

ernism

may hold

tive Utopia,

not the

of postmod-

out for a transforma-

but as they might also

Oct.

to Tango". Far

Dorinda,

et. al.

"David Tang's China Chic".

you care about design,

of Late Capitalism.

color, texture,

New

Principle?" The

... or

York Times. 18 Feb. 1996, sec.

6:46.

lameson, Fredric.

Tile Cultural Logic of Late

Capitalism. Postmodernism

or.

Vie Cultural Logic

Durham: Duke

University

cut, draping, drafting techniques, dis-

Press, 1991. 1-54.

about clothes - and still

be political? (Kondo 15). In order to
understand the power of image, the
depth behind the surface, we must

Kondo, Dorinne. About Face: Performing Race

Fashion and Tfieater. New York and London:

play

that

is,

confront our

own

pleasure that images provide. Image

not

trivial. It is

provides

joy,

ably imbricated in

if it is

is

a joy unavoid-

consumer

hend

it,

to

indulge in

it.

it,

8i

even to

New

"The Great Mall of China". The

York Times. 20 Nov. 1997, sec.

F:

1+.

Weintraub. "Shanghai Tang:

Chinese

1997.

Marx, Karl. "Commodity Fetishism". Capital,

New York: Vintage Books, 1977: 163.
1

vol.

Medford, Sarah. China Wear Town

desire.

beauty's place in

contend with

Louie. Elaine.

Store for the 21st Century." Press release. Oct.

not depthless. Beauty

even

in

Routledge, 1997.

Loving

complicity in the

the capitalist market in order to appre-

Subversion, after

One

Gargan, Edward A. "China: Profit

Thus we must accept

same

W.

1997: 201-2.

we need to account for,

and concede, our own desire to revel in
spectacle, in beauty, in humor. Can
you wear lipstick and still think? Can

and joining it. Realistically, this

much as anyone can expect.

as

romotion.

Neu'sweek. 22 Sept. 1997: 48.

ing the dominance of Western capital

is

Self-

Eastern Economic Review. 29 Feb. 1997; 62.

political effect
ideas.

New

BuUer, ludith. "Merely Cultural", unpubhshed

Elliott,

Shanghai Tang seems to challenge the

thrives,

the Diseursive Limits of Sex.

Asia. Inc. Online. July 1996.

ment store, David Tang's presence on

Madison Avenue is both alluring and

very ideas upon which the avenue

On

York and London: Roudedge, 1993. 121-140.

November

& Country.

1997: 164-7.

VVice, Nathaniel

and Steven Daly. ah. culture: an

- underground, online, and

a-

to-z guide to the 90s

ove-the-counter.

New York:

Harper Perennial,

1995.

Williams, Alex. "The

Dynasty".

New

Coming of the Tang

York. 3

Nov. 1997: 40-45-^.

Yaeger, Lynn. "China Syndrome".

9 Dec. 1997:

14.

The

Village Voice.

36

Ideology and Architecture:

Socialist
kerry

s.

Study of the Chinese Architectural Journal

fan

c
(0

>s
O)

o
o

0)

;g

"to

o
o

esoistus^

Drawings

Socialist ideology has represented China's official cultural attitude since 1949.

denied

ments

a large part

in the arts

It

of a gandalei house.

has

of domestic cultural inheritance and rejected most contemporary develop-

and humanities of the West. This ideology, while undoubtedly leaving

its

imprints on buildings, has also strongly influenced the literature of architecture. The
Architectural lournal, sponsored by the Chinese Building Ministry,

is

one of the most prominent

publications in the profession. Inaugurated in 1954, the Journal established

its

authentic status

with numerous academic and professional articles that served as an invaluable resource for the

Chinese architectural communit)'. However, during

its first

three decades, the Journal experi-

"The Inaugural Statement,"

Architectural Journal, June 1954, p.

1.

enced intensive interactions between scholarship and

politics,

which are

comprehensive than the actual buildings for understanding Chinese

in

many ways more

socialist architecture.

In fact, this approach had been

employed

in China during the 1920s

and the 1930s by both Western and
Chinese architects. For a comprehen-

Thematic structure

review of Chinese historical

sive

Although the lournal

is

a professional publication, at

its

inception the topics of

its arti-

Ch'in, Chinese

cles
ral

were often determined by

politics.

Taking cues from the Soviet Union, the Journal's inaugu-

commitment was to further the goals and attitudes of

Communist Party. The Journal also published numerous articles on Soviet archiOut of the seven feature articles in the first issue, three were translations of official

statement declared that their foremost

the Chinese
tecture.

Soviet

New Architecture

Classical Style (Taipei, Taiwan:

Book

T'ien

With

Nan

Press, 1993).

'

documents on building and construction. For the

fine arts at large, a policy of "sociahst

content and national form" was established. In architecture, this policy supported historical
revivalism that

Fu Ch'ao-

revival architecture, see

combined massive modern

edifices

with the traditional roofs forms of old

The rhetoric that was used held that old palaces, though having served the rulers in the
were created by the people and represented the people's wisdom; their form could therefore
be proudly used for today's socialist architecture. However, in late 1954, the authorities in the

Stalin died in 1953.

The

attack

against the Soviet ofticia] style started

at the

Soviet National Conference of

the Architectural

and Building

Workers held from November 30

December

6,

to

1954. Although the

palaces.-

Soviet's criticism

past,

posthumous overthrow of Stalinist

Soviet

Union began

was again echoed

in

to attack the costly architectural style favored during the Stalin era.^ This

China

as part of

an ongoing Anti-Waste campaign that attacked the

sponsible use of financial and material resources.

irre-

foreshadows the

ideas in 1956, China's reversal does

not imply a negation of Stalinism, as

the Chinese
later

See

defend

Communist

Party

would

Stalin's political deeds.

Gong Deshun.

et. al..

Moiieni

Chinese Architectural History

(Tianjin; Tianjin Science

Technology

and

Press, 1989), pp. 67-68.

37

c
.to

0)

mud-construction temple

1865. showing the walls

still

In

built in

good

condition.

On March

28, 1955,

an editorial

in China's top official

cized unnecessary projects, lavish planning,

and high

newspaper, People's Daily,

cost construction.

Under

criti-

this criticism, the

its promotion of a grandiose style, and its publication was suspended.

resumed in July 1955, the Journal reprinted the Anti-Waste editorial of the

Journal was blamed for

When

the publication

People's Doily.

With

this reprint, the Journal joined the tradition established

among

professional

periodicals of reprinting important political documents. This tradition climaxed in the Cultural

Revolution (1966-1976)'', and continued until the early 1980s,

when

ideological conditions

Along with the reprint of the Anti-Waste editorial, the

Journal produced a series of articles criticizing "waste projects." Although the Soviet influence
was partially responsible for the costly style, none of the articles challenged the legitimacy of
learning from the Soviet Union. Instead, criticism concentrated on stylistic and design prob-

became

substantially

more

liberal.

Communist

Party's leadership.

lems, with

blame placed on

With such

farfetched criticism, these articles adopted the formula that the Party was always the

their designers' failure to follow the

source of correctness, a formula that was

common

in

popular criticism in

all

political

cam-

paigns.
4

In the

first

half of 1966, the

most

important reprint was "A Criticism

of 'The Three- Family
ten by Yao

Wenyuan,

First

political theorist.

late 1965, this article

a key

publicly doubted the Party's leadership.

published in

Wenhui Bao [Wenhui Newspaper]

for trig-

gering the Cultural Revolution.

Other reprints during

include: "Politics

and the

is

Soul," the

this

this

constructions were

now

seen as socialist rather than professional achievements. Different opin-

on such projects were now seen

became rightists.

ions previously expressed

Party,

and

their authors

Communist

period

Commander
1966 New Year's

Red Flag magazine:

and "Holding High the Great Red
Flag of Mao Zedong Thought and
in the Socialist

was the gandalei, a vernacular building technique

was extensively used in Daching, the largest oil-field in
China, which was constructed in the early 1960s and whose completion was publicized as a great
socialist achievement. Among other merits of this great undertaking, gandalei was highly
Another

involving

politically initiated topic

rammed adobe

praised for

the Liberation Army's Newspaper,

Institute of Construction,

it

fast

construction.

It

1- Illustrated in Design and Research

and Construction of 'Gandalei' Buildings,"

construction and minimal cost [Figure

Cultural Revolution," an editorial of

April 18, 1966.

as attacks against the

the

editorial of the

Taking Active Part

September issue to

in

was considered

document responsible

campaign was launched against the intellectuals who had

The Journal responded by devoting the entire
campaign. Once again, the Party-correctness formula was used. Civil

In 1957, the Anti-Rightist

Village.'" writ-

a hard-line

Daching

Oil-Field, "Design

38

c
(0

>>
o>

o
o

;o

TO

o
o
en

middle school

This three-story

building of mud-construction
built in

Architectural Journal, April-May 1966, p. 31.].

The

architecture of gandalei

was

also

was

1929.

exemplary

of the tradition of "self-reliance," a successful strategy used by the Communists in their difficult
days during the 1930s and 1940s, and two decades later when China experienced serious eco-

nomic problems. Moreover, the

was believed

low, egalitarian living quality associated with this construction

to help suppress the bourgeois lifestyle,

and thus made gandalei

symbol of prole-

propaganda and. fueled by naive enthusiasm, gandalei swept all

construction sites in the country between 1965 and 1966. Locally found materials and backward
methods were preferred to the factory made and technically advanced ones. In extreme cases,

tarian ideals. 5

Aroused by

this

construction teams simply went out to find

had already been shipped

mud

to build with,

and

set aside

standard bricks that

to the site.^

In February 1966, the Journal published

two

on gandalei. The

articles

first

one

dis-

cussed the political significance of applying gandalei in contemporary constructions. It used

extensive quotes from political documents and provided technical evidence from old buildings of
similar construction type [Figure 2

&

3].

The second

article

reported a design project that

involved gandalei construction.'' In subsequent gandalei articles, the concept was extended to

any construction that did not involve modern technology. Most of these articles were formulated with a statement of the political importance of gandalei and a description of adapting primitive

construction types in design.

5

In the context of a socialist ideology that controlled

established

was

"utility,

economy and

aesthetic consideration

widely used in both academic and political writings.

Waste

Gong Deshun, et.

al..

Modern

Chinese Architectural History,

Ideological Elements

It

editorial as the source of correct building theory.

tuted, professional articles rarely

mentioned

it.

It

was

all intellectual activities,

when

appeared

in

after the

Ibid.

Sichuan Provincial Institute of

the policy

conditions permit."

It

was

the aforementioned Anti-

However, when the policy was

p. 103.

first insti-

1957 Anti-Rightist campaign,

which suppressed any doubt of the Communist Party's correctness, that the profession recognized the political authority of such a policy and began to incorporate it in their writings.

Survey and Architectural Design,

"Practicing 'Gandalei' in Civil

Architecture

is

Revolution in

Design Work." "Two-Story

Brick Housing in Baihua
Village,

Mud

New

Chengdu," lournal. February

1965, pp. 20-22, 22-2.^.

39

c
CO
>-

A village

house near Chongqing.

China.

Reiuiwiied architect Yuan Jingshen, in his January 1959 article on creating a

architectural style, defined the
ics

when

From June

by prominent
ities,

style as

"being able to represent

'utility,

new
economy and aesthet-

conditions permit' as put forth by the Central [Committee of the Party]."

maintained that to achieve

ology.s

new

to

this ideal, architects

September of that

architects in a

should embrace other principles of

year, the Journal

symposium held

He

also

socialist ide-

published a series of papers presented

in Shanghai.'^

While a variety of aesthetic

possibil-

including Western modernist ideas, were addressed in the symposium, most papers used

both their theoretical framework and as the criterion with which to judge

this policy as

stylistic

alternatives.

Yuen Ching-Sen (Yuan Jingshen],

"Creation of the

Modern

Architectural Style," Journal, January

1959, pp. 38-39.

The symposium was

the architec-

tural aesthetics section in the larger

Conference on Housing Standards

and

Aesthetics.

particularly

The conference was

known

for the report

symposium, Professor Liang Sicheng praised the poHcy. A 1924 graduate of the
most respected scholars for his contributions in the scholarship of Chinese architectural history. While his academic beliefs had all
developed out of the past and from the West, he often spoke publicly of embracing sociaUst ideology. This dual attitude was reflected in his comments on architectural policy at the 1959 symposium. Although Liang mentioned the apparent similarity between Vitruvius' trilogy and the
At

this

University of Pennsylvania, Liang was one of China's

socialist architectural policy,

he nevertheless viewed the policy as an entirely newcreation of the

policy maker:

delivered by Liu Xiufeng, the

Minister of the Chinese building

Since the ancient time,

Ministry. Entitled "The

ry,

Architecture," this report epitomized

all

'Utility,

Economy

and,

Possible, Beauty' to Tradition

if

and

Innovation," Journal, June 1959, pp.

1-4

find a large

number of buildings

is

delight."

In the heritage of

human

histo-

that present these three elements. In 1953 the

"utility,

economy, and,

if

possible, beauty."

a great creation in architectural theory.^''

Reverence towards the policy can also be understood as a

Liang Sze-chen [Liang Sicheng],

"From

we can indeed

This

and was considered the

official document for the pro-

fession.

10

architectural theoreticians have repeatedly said that the three ele-

Central Committee of our Party put forth the policy of

politically related aspects for

architecture
classic

numerous

ments of the architecture were "commodity, firmness and

Characteristics of Chinese Socialist

tactic to protect scholarship;

many

theory articles treated the policy as an appended element, without drawing a logical connection to the discussion. Mu Xingyuan, for example, used this method in his June 1964 article.

He opened
policy.

the article with a statement that attributed China's architectural achievements to the

Then, throughout the remainder of the

article,

he discussed the relationship between

21

40

t3

IE

o
o
(1>

T3

(0

O
O

Frank Lloyd Wrights Kaufmann

House.

architecture
ings,

and other

fine arts, as well as

between monumental structure and

without further referring to the policy." Treated

political

in

such

common build-

manner, the policy became a

umbrella under which normal scholarship was carried out.

Emphasizing the cultural differences between socialism and capitalism was another
central

theme

in socialist ideology. This doctrine rejected

architecture, such as expressionism

and

many

ideas in

architectural ideas."'^ In the early days of the Journal,

contemporary Western architecture was

occasionally discussed without ideological bias, as in the article by

Mies van de Robe, or

in the

contemporary Western

fiinctionalism, that were often labeled as "capitalist

Luo Weidong on the works of

one by Zhou Puyi on Walter Gropius.'-' After the Anti- Rightist cam-

paign, however, Western architecture disappeared from the Journal for several years. Then, in

November

1962, the Journal published an article titled

Architecture in Capitalist Countries." This article recognized the progressive nature of early

modernist architecture as

it

replaced the historically

more "backward"

cluded that "such a mess" was inevitable in capitalist countries, where architecture was essentially

by

Wu

The

denial of contemporary Western architecture also dominated an article written

Huanjia in June 1964. The subject of

buildings held recently in

was the nomination of distinguished

the American Architectural Forum. The nominated projects included

the Pepsi-Cola Headquarters by

SOM,

this article

state buildings

by Oscar Niemeyer, the

Eero Saarinen, and Richards Medical Laboratories by Louis Kahn. The

article

buildings as "strange," "confusing," "ugly," and "meaningless", and heaped

mockery and abhorrence.

Mu

Shing-Yuan [Mu Xingyuan],

Architecture and

Its

Relation

with Art," lournal, June 1964, pp.

26-28.

classicism; however, the

works of Eero Saarinen, Le Corbusier, Hugh Stubbins, and other popular Western architects were
labeled as formalism
a bad cultural ingredient according to socialist ideology. The article conhopeless.'*

"On

"Some Problems of Contemporary

TWA Terminal by

Zhai

lijin,

.-\rchitecture

"On

Aesthetics of

and National

Style,"

Journal, August 1955, pp. 46-48.

13

Luo Weidong, "Mies van de

Rohe," lournal,

Zhou

May

1957. pp. 52-60;

Puyi, "Walter Gropius,"

Journal, July 1957, pp. 35-38, August,

pp. 60-65.

described these

upon them

!4

great

Guo Chi-yuan [Gu

Qiv'uan],

"Some Problems of the

Contemporary Architecture

'^

in the

Capitalist Countries," lournal,

One may contend

that the anti-capitalist

formula served a function similar to the

of using architectural policy as a political umbrella. But in Wu's

posed of invectives against

capitalist architecture,

and the

bias

article,

the entire text was

was so strong that

suggest the author's firm belief in socialist ideology. Sixteen years

later,

when

it

November
tactic

com-

could only

political pressure

15

Wu

1962, pp. 18-20.

Huan-gai [Wu Huanjia],

"Critique

on 10 Western

.Architectural

Works," lournal, lune

1964, pp. 29-33.

41

0)

The "Refuge

Confucius

Pavilion" in

Residence at Qufu. Sfiandong. used

in

turbulent times by masters waiting

for outside help

for a

new village
commune near

proposal of a
people's

plan

Shanghai,

on scholarship was
art in a
16

In particular,

Wu

tual

Wu

still

maintained his abhorrence against Western modern

'^

described

cubism, expressionism, and surreal-

ism as "reflecting the

greatly loosened,

chapter he contributed to a college textbook.

social

and

Flexibility

and Dualism

spiri-

decadence and emptiness of con-

temporary bourgeoisie." He

paintings as "messy formalist stuff."

See Tongji University,

et. al..

and Contemporary History of the

China Building Industry

Press, 1982), p. 71.17

promoted

topics usually

met supportive responses in the Journal.

symposium on gandalei organized by the

Occasionally, different voices could also be heard. In a

Zhou

Journal, a few authors were allowed to express their reservations.

Genliang, for example,

Recent

Architecture of the Foreign Countries

(Beijing:

Politically

also

scorned Marcel Breuer's Bauhaus

questioned the practical

tended that following a

able.'"

of adopting a single construction type nationwide, and con-

feasibility

political fashion

without considering local conditions was question-

Another paper, presented by Huang Kangyu, warned that

to imitate gandalei

by lowering

Zhou

Genliang, "Comprehensively

construction standards would inevitably result in poor durability and reduced safety.'* Given the

Understand the 'Gandalei'

political seriousness

lournal.

18

May

Spirit,"

1966, p. 59.

Huang Kangyu,

"In Prevention of

In addition to these occasional dissenters, the Journal also published a small

Excessive Quality Reduction,"

Journal,

May

of the subject, these disagreements, though moderate in their tone, were

indeed very noteworthy.

1966, p. 59.

works that did not come with

straight scholastic

Guangfii's article,

"On

Simplicity

a political umbrella.

One

number of

of them was Zheng

and Superfluousness of Architectural Decoration," published

Cheng Kwang-fu [Zheng

Guangfii), "On Simplicity and

January 1963." In

Superfluousness of Architectural

decorated and plain buildings.

Decoration," Journal, January 1963,

Tugendhat House, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Kaufmann House

in

19

pp. 30-31.

20

& 5], without

Zheng compared the

He used Le

differences in visual effect

between heavily

Corbusier's Villa Savoye, Mies van der Robe's

the ideological precaution that

as

examples for analysis [Figure 4

one would otherwise expect

in such contexts.

Lin Biao was chosen as Mao's

successor but later lost Mao's trust.

He was
on

this article,

his

killed in

way

campaign

an

to exile.

aircraft accident

Although the

criticized Lin

Confucius, the

Bao and

unnamed

target

was

the conservative group in the

Communist
resented by

While Zheng's writing represented

the articles produced around the political campaign, "Criticizing Lin Biao

Enlai.

and Confucius," in the

blame the Confucian doctrine as the
the Communist Party's vice chairman who died when fleeing

mid-1970s. The stated purpose of

philosophical source for Lin Biao,

Central Committee rep-

Zhou

a high degree of thematic integrity, articles involv-

ing stronger political influence could also be scholastically informative. This was exemplified in

from an unsuccessful

this

campaign was

coup.-'^ In the past,

to

numerous temples had been

erected to worship

42
<u

D
O

CO

en

o
o
a>

;o

icism.
"to

Of all

and most sacred

was the temple- residence compound in Confucius' hometown Qufu, in Shandong Province. The
compound is also a prominent site in Chinese architectural history. These architectural attributes established a unique connection between the temple-residence compound and political critConfucius as a deified master teacher.

The

article

by

Wu

Liangyong

these worshipping

in the ]une

sites,

the largest

1975 Journal argued that, since Confucian doc-

trine provided the ethics and legitimacy for the old rulers, the worshipping of Confucius

condemned, and with

it

However, an

the

compound

article

for

its

important role

in facilitating

must be

Confucianism.^'

published in August 1974 presented serious scholarship within the

"The Temple of Confucius in Qufu and the Struggle Between

Revering and Opposing Confucius," this article set out with a statement that the study of the site
was to deepen the criticism of Confucius. The article also aligned itself with the politics by

same

political confines.-- Entitled

blaming the old

rulers'

admiration of Confucius and praising the peasant rebellions against

then presented a well-organized cluster of historical data about the

Confusianism. The

article

compound, from

original to current condition,

its

from

historical events

on the

site to its

rebuilding and repair, including costs and concurrent political and cultural background.

described the damages to the

article also

Returning

theme, the

to the political

cally served as the center place for

denied as

it

was, after

all,

compound caused by

article

concluded that although the compound had

worshipping Confucius,

its

The

peasant rebellions [Figure 6].

histori-

architectural value could not be

the creation of the people.

Wu

21

Liang-yung [Wu Liangyong],

"Worshipping Confucius and

Repairing Confucian Temple Cannot

Reactionaries," loitrnaL June 1975,

pp. 10-12.

Theory Group of the

22

Construction Committee of

Shantung [Shandong] Provincial

Capital, "The Confucian Temple in
Chu-fu [Quful and the Struggle
between Revering and Opposing
Confucius," Journal, August 1974, pp.
11-17.

23

The Design Revolution

late

1964 in the areas of technology

started in

and engineering, including architectural design. Although the purpose of

the

campaign was

to reduce the

between theory and

practice, as

it

was carried out, emphasis was placed

on the practice side, which was considered to be part of the proletariat

was associated with bourgeois

fashioned with political idioms, this article offered a dual reading for both political and profes-

many

gap

culture as opposed to the theory that

Structured both as political criticism extended to architecture and as academic study

sional interests. In fact,

of

.\vert tfie Inevitable Extinction

ture.

cul-

major blame on the Journal

was for overlooking building practice.

writings involving political themes also exhibited this dual quality.

Bibliography

For example, the gandalei

The dual reading was

building.
People's

Commune

trolled local

brought the
articles

articles

on

could be considered as

the study of vernacular

also offered in the articles published in late 1958,

was established

in rural areas. Installed as

government units

when

the

Commune. Although

the idea of the

using Utopian terms, proposals for specific, localized

and town plans [Figure

7].

Commune was

communes turned out

Architectural Journal, Beijing,

often discussed

Dittmer, Lowell, China's Continuous

Revolution: The Post-Liberation

Epoch, 1949-1981. Berkeley,

California: University of California
Press, 1987,

to

China

Building Industry Press, 1954-1980.

that also con-

economy and communal life, the Commune was heralded as a giant step that
country closer to a communist society. The Journal immediately filled its pages with

the People's

ied regional

critical for

be carefully stud-

Chapter

2,

"Engineering

Revolution."

These plans were not only professionally appreciable, but

Gong, Deshun,

also practically appropriate for the vast rural population in China.

et. al..

Modern

Chirtese Architectural Histor}', Tianjin,

China: Tianjin Science and

In retrospect,

between

politics

we

find that

when

political control

and scholarship would favor the

target of the next pohtical criticism twice:

once

latter.

in 1955,

was

For

relatively restrained, the

this

dualism

reason the Journal became the

during the Anti-Waste campaign and

again in 1965, during the Design Revolution.--^ During the Cultural Revolution, the Journal was

suspended again
mise between

for seven years.

socialist

Intertwined with the dramatic political events and the compro-

ideology and professional scholarship, the Journal as witness and partici-

pant, played a special role in the discourse of Chinese socialist architecture.

Technology

Press, 1989.

Hausmann,

\J.,

"China: Architecture

for the People," Archttectiiral

Association Quarterly. January 1980.

Lewis, lohn Wilson, ed.. The Cit}-

Conmiumst China, Stanford,

California: Stanford University Press,

1971.

C harles Correa & Tu n n ey

Inte rviews with

Constance

Lee

43

lai
0)

o
c

(0

interviewed Charles Correa

them

and Tunney Lee on separate

occasions.

specifically

aimed at

a younger generation, especially current students of architecture. Rather than ask them about their

to

questions that addressed larger issues of style, culture, history,

The questions posed are

asked identical questions of both architects in order

question

and not

own

work,

posed

cross-culturally.

a ''virtual" dialogue. Note thai their responses are

to the original

each other.

to

On

Biographical sl<etch
Could you give a brief bio of yourselffor

who may not be

the readers

to create

and working

irUroducirig

familiar

architectural style

Could you comment on the current

oretical debate

on architectural

the-

style?

with you?

Charles Correa

Charles Correa

my schooling

After finishing
India,

came

United States to

to the

study architecture -

and then here

learned
after

my

first at

MIT. But

at

lem
got

by studying the wonderful

and cities there - as well

as the new work by Corbusier. It
seems like architecture is something
you have to teach yourself as you go
old buildings

through

attitudes.

A good

styles

up

What

a problem.

will actually

school, for

you how

the prob-

be depends on

many

other variables: the actual time and

place in

which you

will

work, the local

forges his

own

natural style.

is

most impor-

to try to avoid

making

Chinatown.

studied architecture

Michigan. Later

that

worked

express the

live.

human and

Instead, try to
cultural deep-

structure that generated those patterns

at

for

in the first place.

to speak.

And

The

genetic code, so

the further

you go

into

New York

the specifics of that deep-structure, the

Franzen and I.M.Pei. After

more you might find it turns out to be

about universals - that is, feelings and

Buckminster
for Breuer,

which you

Fuller,

came back

to

then in

Boston to work for

economy

tors. In

is

in

Hong Kong

Chinese University of
establish a

helping the

Hong Kong

department of architecture.

a result, the architecture

it

used to

be. Traditional societies are very clear

in their intents,

but

and modernizing

modern

societies

societies are

much

more complex and ambiguous.

What is more important is
ty

and

heart)

identity

The

is

identi-

in here, (point to his

external forms of architec-

ture are out there and, by definition,

it's

worked

everything

not as clearly identified as

superficial.

to 1998,

cul-

now,

balls to

pening and as

emotions shared by other human

MIT. From 1990

and

computer moniChina, the same thing is hap-

beings around the globe.

at

that

to an industrial econo-

now manufactures

then to Washington to work on Urban

teach

means

socially

even internally.

the Boston Redevelopment Authority,

Renewal, and then back to Boston to

it

China and Taiwan are

from tennis

ture in

age

society" as a truism,

my, and

was born in China, in

Guangdong. came to Boston

at

always reflects what's really going on in

tural

superficial cartoon version of the cul-

is happening in Asia.
you take the statement "architecture

Taiwan has gone from an agricul-

and so forth. These are the

elements from which an architect

Tunney Lee

seven and grew up in Boston's

If

turally very confused places right

culture,

tant caveat

Well, I'm going to translate this

question to what

materials available, the climate and

In this process, the

life.

example, shouldn't provide solutions

to pick

got back to India and started

awftii lot

about

about

isn't

to problems, but should teach

really

most important lessons

trying to design buildings myself.

an

it's

Michigan
I

Tunney Lee

Architecture

in

So when looking

at Asia,

important to remember that to

these cultures, what's in here (points to

his heart)

transition.

is

something that

is still

in

44
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TO

o
5

Working abroad
W/iflf are

f/ie

positive ejfects, in

opinion, of working

your

and teaching

two

in

different parts of the world?

Tunney Lee

Charles Correa
Well, the perspective

it

generate the micro-climate the envi-

gives you.

doing a studio elsewhere

a construct that seeks

nessed in the wonderful courtyards

learn

non-Manifest world

and water fountains of the Alhambra

in Granada, trapping and cooling the

you

A Hindu

wonderfully ambitious.
ple

is

it is

to represent the
in

tem-

not trying to be just a "pretty"

building -

think travelling or working or

ronment needs. Traditionally, this has

always been the well-spring of the
architectural imagination - as wit-

find the old buildings in India are

which we dwell. In short:

is

not that

important for what you learn about

the other place.

You don't ever

much about

really

the other place, but

more about your

You often see things done
and you have to ask why. At

will learn a lot

own

place.

hot dry winds of Andalusia.

A true

differently

Cosmos. Just as the Buddhist stupa

models the mythic Mount Meru and

Machine

a lesson of

home, you never question your

fundamental importance - one

assumptions because

the seven levels of Nirvana. In con-

almost impossible to learn in the

way

Architecture as a

trast,

Model of the

United

the buildings in our contempo-

tects

it is

not the fault of the archi-

- but of society

itself

is

For example, in America high

States.

bad, automatically. High rise

is

buildings are bad. People don't even

consider

What

that's just the

it is.

density

rary cities seem myopic and banal.

Perhaps

for Living! This

it

as

an option anymore. Well,

where highrises may be

exactly can a 40-story office building

are there places

or a 500-room hotel express - except

right?

perhaps the commercial aspects of the

Hong Kong and there is nothing but

highrises! And you say, "Wait a minute,
something is different here!" And then

society in

which they

Then

exist?

again, the contrast in the

available resources in different parts of

the world can teach us a

For

lot.

instance in India, air-conditioning

luxury
tect

- which means

cannot design in a

arbitrary

an archi-

willful

manner and hope

mechanical engineer

On

that

is

him

then of course you go to

you really have to look at those

assumptions about density. Who

Or perhaps
right?

Why

it's

is it

right,

but

why

says?

is it

right here, but not

somewhere else? That's probably

the most important thing to learn
from traveling or studying abroad - to
right

and

that his

will bail

And

out.

the contrary. His designs must,

through their very form and topology,

learn about the context for designing.

45

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TO
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Problems

Asia

in

WImt do you

see

m Asia

now?

right

is

the greatest

problem

Tunney Lee

Charles Correa

One

of the most discouraging

aspects of Asia
tectural firms

is

the

who

Well, there are a lot of architects

number of archi-

see themselves as a

in Asia right

now who

find cultural identity through architec-

kind of second-hand re-run of

ture and, basically, they're

America. They are almost the exact

wrong

equivalent of the kind of

nessman who

sits in his

dumb

busi-

postmodern

house watching re-runs of tacky soap

operas

like

Dynasty - when

while they have their

own

the

all

traditions,

which could generate wonderfully

and

different kinds of

We

TV

certainly don't

rich

programs.

kind of

on

under the

street

lamp. The policeman

comes and says, "What are you looking

for?", and the guy says, "I lost my ring."
The policeman then asks, "Did you
lose it here?", and the guy replies, "No,
lost it over there." "Then why are you
looking over here?" "Because the

all

- and only

ings look for identity, but

find identity there.

how

you

not there. The

It's

perfect

God-given opportunity of working

tion in Beijing a few years ago,

example of

mayor of

build-

can't

Chinese architects have the unique and

at

light's

over here."

People are looking to

pecking order. Only China can address

this

was the

situa-

when

would not
you didn't

the cutting-edge of that exciting

the

adventure. lust as only a mid-western

permit go through

American architect could have developed the Prairie houses of Oak Park.

some Chinese architectural detail on

the building. Now, what does that represent? A kind of authoritarian com-

In that sense,

all

great pieces of archito

Frank

Lloyd Wright, are regional. By

fulfill-

tecture,

from Fathepur-Sikri

ing these parameters so brilliantly, they

become

universal. In short: Asian

architects should forget

going on
at their

in the

own

about what

West and

context.

start

looking

if

let

stick

munist party boss mentality that

is

dis-

guised as a forward-thinking nationalism.

In the

is

Beijing

meantime

those get solved, architecture

emerge. But don't ask "What

there are hous-

ing problems to be solved in China.

What is the emerging nature of cities?

What about health care? Schooling?

is

the

right stylistic stuff to express

Chineseness?" This

the

like the story

about the guy looking for something

the various countries in a kind of

the problems of China

It's

need to see

ourselves as in a sort of queue, with

track.

When
will

are trying to

tion!

It's

clothes should

the wrong ques"What kind of

is

like asking,

wear today

to

appear

modern and competent?" or "Don't

me by my behavior, judge me by
my clothes!"

judge

46
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3

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1.

O
o
w
o

The

Advice to young architects

role of history

Wliat can we learn from the past?

what advice would you

give to the

younger generation?

Charles Correa

The

past?

would look

Here

in

America,

place like

at a

saw

Oak

a Brave

New

Illinois. If

ever

World,

One feels the optiwhole new century getting

this

mism of a

is it.

underway - and Wright was undertaking the problem of inventing the

way Americans were going

the next hundred years.

to live for

He

did this

through his firm grasp of the cultural

deep-structure

we spoke about

- and through

his intuitive

before

new

was just beginning.

Architecture is informed by the past but it also must embody our aspirations, of what must come into being.
America

mine was working in

Corbusier's office in Paris. After two
years or so, he decided to

that

My friend

find

...

discussion on national identities in

and a Japanese architect

"Look we went through this when
Japan was a fascist country with a mili-

architecture
said

tary dictatorship.

To promote national-

ism and to counter western influence,

the military dictators decreed that

buildings had to be built in the

Style based

on

architecture.
rid

of

it

after

all

Crown

traditional Japanese

We

were very happy to get

World War

2!"

to

said:

get there".

jump on

And

Make

sure

its

your

because

it's

is

it

isn't

to

Born

am

in Japan.

Japan. Traveled abroad,

get a project in Japan

Japanese

Does

it

client,

a Japanese

Trained in

and did some

why

And

if

funded by a

isn't

what

do

have to look "Japanese"?

generation

It's

gradu-

think

is

is

important for your

the process of discovering

because you won't find

searching under the street

there.

train".

handed out

to the Japanese archi-

said, "I

studying and working abroad.

this,

leaving.

think that's excellent advice.

shame

he also

What

get to a station, there

just

...

architect.

"Be careful, eh?

always a train leaving the platform.

Don't

tect

'Japanese architecture' by definition?

replied: "No, but I'U

something when

Corbusier

ates every year.

Tunney Lee
One thing I was sitting in an
ARCASIA Conference during a long

come back

Bombay. Corb, who was very old and

intimidating at the time, came up to
my friend's desk and said: "So you are
going back to Bombay? Do you have a
job?"

Going back

friend of

Whenever you

under-

standing of the aspirations of the

Tunney Lee

Charles Correa

Park,

it

by

light. It's

not

How

and Unite Us:

Buildings Divide

bhatt

ritu

&

47

lajidal_(CujanaJU[ndia}_

alka patel
TO

a.
(0
CO

oa
00

Jami Masjid, Mandel

Thomas

MelcaJf,

An

In Indian architectural history, reUgious categorization of buildings, as

Imperial

Vision, Los Angeles, 1989; Ritu Bhatt

and Sonit Bafna. "Post-Colonial

Narratives of Indian Architecture,"

Hindu,

Buddhist, Jaina, and Muslim, has been the basic methodological tool for scholars. This distinction

is

a legacy of the British historians,

who

used

it

in

an

initial effort to

come

to

terms with the

Architecture +Desigti, Nov-Dec, 1995,

bewildering variety of architecture in the subcontinent. This taxonomic classification, which

pp. 85-89.

began

in the

mid-I9th century and which continues to the present, has transformed buildings
Mosques have become Muslim and Temples have become Hindu.

into religious identities.

2 lames Fergusson, History of Indian

and Far Eastern

Recent scholarship has uncovered the political motivations of the British colonialists that under-

Architecture,

London, 1876. Fergusson, however,

later

recognized the simplification

lie

these divisions

and has pointed

to the pitfalls of continuing with such a taxonomy.'

these religious affiliations be completely abandoned?

Is

some

Should

identification with religion vital

that such classification entails. In a

lecture given to the Royal Society of

Arts entitled,

"On

the Study of

live

Indian Architecture," Fergusson said,

learnt that there

"I

but several species of

style

ascertained ethnological divisions of

the people." Reprinted in lames
the Study of Indian

Architecture Delhi, 1977, pp.5-6.

However,

it

will

review

how

communities of diverse

this classification

belief systems to

of buildings as Hindu or

and practices of those for whom the building

and integrated part of their daily lives.

is

not an object of

class;

provinces, and belonged each to

On

we

Islamic affects the perceptions

study, but a living

that these occupied well-defined local

Fergusson,

for the everyday negotitations that enable

together? In this paper,

was not only one

Hindu and one Mohammedan

in India,

and necessary

The

categorization of Indian architecture as Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist,

who

be traced back to James Fergusson,

in his

Eastern Architecture (2 vols., 1876) turned

categories.' Architecture, for Fergusson,

and so forth can

pioneering text entitled The History of Indian and

them from merely

was fundamentally

stylistic

a "racial

descriptions to operative

art".-^

In his taxonomy,

buildings resembled the races that built them. Structural clarity, simple rhythms, and large

was not long before

architectural historians were casually

expanses of walls were not the attributes of Islamic buildings, but rather were the characteristics

writing about two fundamentally dif-

of the Muslims

ferent architectures in India, each

See, for

Method London:

The superimposition of the

World

Architecture on the Comparative

1899, pp. 889-909.

Fergusson, "Introduction", pp.3-49.

The

be mysterious, meta-

tradition of studying Fatehpur

Sikri as a confluence

religious categories of 'Hindu'

and

'Islamic',

have funda-

mentally distorted the writing of the history of architecture in India. For example, any building
that represents a mixture of elements

whole

political

new

from both

styles

is

necessarily seen as a confluence of

two

Akbar founded in 1571, is a case in

history of the construction of the complex is based on a simplified read-

thoughts. Fatehpur Sikri, the

point: a

to

example, Bannister

Fletcher's History of

3.

who built them. Similarly, a Hindu mind, considered

and transcendental, created complex Hindu forms.

communi-

identified with a religious

ty.

physical,

ing of the confluence of

Hindu and

capital near

Agra

that

Islamic architectural vocabulary.''

of Hindu and

Islamic styles was criticized in an

issue of

MARG,

The superimposed

v.38, no. 2, entitled

Bombay,
1986. This approach was found to be

"Akbar and Fatehpur

Sikri",

too simplistic to define the profusion

religious categorization has

of misperceptions. For example, there

ples

by Muslims

in

is

been

in

turn perpetuated by a

number

the repeated mention of pillage and destruction of tem-

northern and western India, and the belief that from the end of the 13th cen-

48

JmA

The Khan Mosque (Khan-ki Masjid).

Dholka (Gujarat), dated 1333. This

mosque shows many elements

that

are considered typically "Islamic": the

domical construction, the use of plastered bnck, and the

tall

flanking

minarets.

tury

till

the close of the

6th century, no

Hindu or

Jain temples

were

consistent deprecation within traditional western scholarship of

built.-''

Hindu

In addition, the

aesthetic vocabulary as

profusely sculptural and mysterious, in comparison to the Islamic as structurally clear and

of styles in Akbar's palaces. Fatehpur

to

several factors: the formative character

expansive, has further reinforced this dichotomy.^

was attributed

Sikri's eclecticism

of the Mughal court, Akbar's sup-

port for e.xperimentation in the arts,

and

In medieval Indian architecture,

it is

true that there was a confluence of two building

was indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, while the arcuate, stressing surface decoration and simple volumes, developed in Central
Asia. In the scholarship, however, this confluence is not described as the meeting of two building
traditions, but is rather interpreted as a religious and political statement of the domination of
traditions: the trabeate, belonging to a plastic aesthetic,

Islam over the

Hindu population of

Thereby, architectural traditions are

the subcontinent.

his fascination

First,

they are

some

autJiors

have suggested that the British projection of Fatehpur Sikri as a repre-

sentation of the Akbar's religious tol-

erance was politically motivated.

role

was to legitimize

An

Its

British rule

over India. See, for example,

Metcalf,

given successive politico-religious purposes by the scholarship:

with his Timurid

ancestry. Furthermore,

Thomas

Imperial Vision.

made synonymous

with the predominant religions of their respective places of origin (Central Asia/Islam,

5 Alka Patel, "Archaeological Survey

India/Hinduism); and second, they are interpreted as

symbol of the triumph of Islam over

Hindu India. If the superimposed religious dichotomy were de-emphasized, surely confluence of
building tradition, and not the competition of religio-political entities, would inform the conclu-

and Art

sions of scholarship.

February 12-15, 1997.

Historical Analysis of Early

Islamic Architecture of Western

India."

Annual Conference of the

College Art Association:

6 Parlha Mitter in

In this vein, scholars have in recent years underscored the political motivations that

underlie the categorization of Indian architecture into

out that, for the British, the use of these

communal

communal

styles.'

These scholars point

categories advanced important political

objectives, aiding in the division of the people

Metcalf, in his

were defined

as 'Hindu' or 'Muslim',

dome, the bracket

What

book The Imperial

and thus strenghtening

British rule over India.

Vision (1989) states that, "if

all

architectural elements

nothing remained unknown. Everything - the arch, the

capital, the decorative

motif- had

its

place in the comprehensive system.

the colonial ruler had explained, he, of course, controlled."'*

Much MciUgned

Monsters (1977) points out that while

Islamic art in the

form of Mughal

paintings and descriptions of

architecture

Thomas

New York,

was acceptable

Mughal

to the

Europeans and even found admirers,

Hindu art still presented problems of

accommodation to Western aesthetics. Most particularly Mitter attributes the resistance of Western histori-

ans to Hindu iconography and to

profuse ornamental sculpture of

The

political

motivations of the British are also evident in the

first

few reports of the

South Indian temples to a fundamental classical

Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

British

Government responsible

monuments of
"to

throw

on, as the

for

The

ASI, formed in 1865, was the official

body of the

completing the survey and documentation of the historical

India. In ASI's first report, Sir

Alexander Cunningham outlined the motivation:

upon the early history of England's dependency; history which, as time moves
country becomes more easily accessible and traversable, and as Englishmen are led to

light

bias in the Western art

historical tradition. See Partha

Mitter, "Western Bias in the Study of

South Indian Aesthetics," South Asian

Review\'o\

6,

1973, pp.l2.S-136.

.Anthony Welch

& Howard Crane,

"The Tughluqs: Master Builders of

49

CO

a.

15

3
Silva
1

Temple, Menal (Rajasthan]

2th century

According to

typical scholarship, this

temple exhibits

Hindu ele-

traditional

ments: trabeated construction, extensive sculptural ornament,

tall, curvilinear

and a

sikhara

give

more thought to India than such as barely suffices to hold it and govern it, will assuredly
more and more, the attention of the intelligent and enquiring classes in European coun-

occupy,
tries."'

Even scholars,

who do

also agree that division of the

not see the political interpretations as an adequate explanation,

monuments

into religious categories

They underscore that it should remain precisely that,

uhimate aim in the study of Indian architectural history.
struct.

Now
its

we

that

are aware of the dangers, both in terms of

intellectual limitations, of

gious pedigree of
bility,

and

its

object,

Muqarnas

it is

identification of buildings

Same

as footnote

buildings as
8 Metcalf,

An

9 Alexander

Imperial Vision, p,52.

Cunningham,

Archaeological Survey of India,

Annual Report,
Reports

(1862-63) (Four

Made During The

10

been noticed

of the 19th century,

when

or Islamic.

It is,

is

how everyday practices of responsibility and

not abstract - as in the academic classification of

instead, a subtle negotiation of occasional exclusion

own

and

deep religious

conscious preoccupation with the boundaries between them. By doing

faith in one's

in freezing buildings as

belief system. This allows the sys-

we hope to point to the

"monuments of importance" under the pretext of sav-

first

at the

end
trict,

the

still

and thus divorcing them from

their real inhabitants.

is

rural village

named Mandal

The population

Archaeological Survey of India

consists

aries of the village,

and

is

com-

most of whose earning members are dedicated to agriculture.

of both Hindus and Muslims, living in separate areas within the bound-

Survey of India conducted prospecBurgess,

located in the northwest corner of Ahmadabad dis-

Gujarat, approximately 25 kilometers northwest of Viramgam. Presently the village

prised of about 2000 inhabitants,

1.

abandon them completely,

by the people points to

British-governed Archaeological

tions in Gujarat. Cf.

to

study of the residents' perceptions of the religious buildings,

problems involved
ing them,

The mosques of Mandal

to have

and

at identifying the reli-

Years

1852-65].

seem

Hindu

mutual neglect based on

tems to co-exist without
a detailed

political implications

demonstrate the inadequacy of both the

and the recent suggestions

attribution are negotiated at a level that

necessary con-

and not become the

isolated, non-descript village settlement in Gujarat, India. Here, the religious

(1983).

at first a

time to entirely rethink the issues of religious identity, identifia-

their relationship to architecture. In order to

we have chosen an

its

an architectural analysis aimed exclusively

earlier colonial religious categorization

the Delhi Suhanate,"

was

a construct,

in daily contact

(New

with each other.

Imperial Series) vol. 33,

(Archaeological Survey of Western
India vol. 8), The

Mubammadan

Architecture of Ahmadabad, vol. 2

(1905), pp. 92-93.

1 1

Idem,

p. 92.

Presently,

Mandal

is

a relatively isolated setdement, located in the interior of Gujarat,

and off the major highways connecting the nearby important cities, such as Ahmadabad or
Palanpur (Mahesana District). However, historical evidence, such as that provided by the presence of historical monuments, indicates that the village did not always occupy such a politically
non-descript position.

50

Mandal

The

relatively

prominent position of Mandal

by the architectural remains found

the 15th through 16th centuries,
there

was

a significant

vifere

as

built within

Muslim community

Jami Masjid, built in the 14th century,

the Sayyid-ni Masjid

is

The roof

in

disrepair

evidenced

is

approximately datable to

one kilometer of each

other,

and indicate that

even during medieval times. The

the largest of the three buildings, the other two being

examples of Sultanate-period architecture

and

medieval period

in the village,

in the settlement

and the Qazi-ki Masjid.

the visits of occasional tourists

in the later

Three mosques

there.

It is

the presence of these

monuments

in

Mandal,

and
community.

in Gujarat, that primarily attracts the attention

architectural historians to the site of the village

10

The Jami Masjid was considered "a very poor specimen of Muhammadan
architecture"" when it was first documented by the Archaeological Survey of India, and has
no scholarly attention thereafter.'- Nonetheless, it is relevant to the point
namely the religious identifiability of architecture. It has been discussed above that the identification of buildings by scholars as 'Hindu or 'Islamic' has much distorted architectural analysis. However, in eschewing this classification, we may be committing an
error of equal magnitude, since in the everyday lives of the people of Mandal, the historical
received virtually

raised in the present work,

monuments

in their

midst do indeed have

a clear religious identity

and function.

As has been the case since the medieval period, the quarters of an urban or semi-urban
setdement are largely distinguished by the religious demnomination of their inhabitants. It is
also the case that these quarters are situated in close proximity with each other, having unofficial,
and thin boundaries between them. In Mandal, the Hindu quarter is tightly pressed
against the walls of the Jami Masjid, whose southern wall seems to function as an unofficial
fluid,

12

As

Due
monsoon

itself.

to the disrepair into

on

rains

is

a particularly difficult one, both for the building

fallen, the

and the

season of

community. The

ponding of excessive water on the roof of the mosque causes spillage into the area adjacent to the
southern wall, precisely where the Hindu community has put up its dwellings. Many of the
dwellings are mud-walled and metal-roofed, so that this spillage causes great inconvenience to
these inhabitants,

and occasional damage

to their

homes. The weight of the water, coming down

hard atop the structures, causes loud noise and even some bending of the metal roofs.

its

analysis

the religious categorization of the

buildings. Within this general trend,

rigiditA'

and inaccuracy of

categorization

which the congregational mosque has

on

northern sub-continent, continues to

base a large proportion of

the

quarter boundary

stated above, scholarship

the medieval architecture of the

this

becomes apparent:

Most

studies of 'Islamic' architecture

focus

upon

the Tughluq buildings of

Delhi, as these

fit

more

readily into

the definition of Islamic architecture.

Unfortunately, the buildings of the

western region do not

into this definition,

fall

so easily

and hence have

received only cursory attention in the

scholarship.

&H.

Cf

Crane, op.

especially A.
cit.( 1983).

Welch

51

According

one

to

villager,

Diwan Yusuf Muhammad,'-* during every monsoon

the

Hindus of the

quarter understandably complain with great vigor to the Muslims that the Jami Masjid needs

they and their

repair, so that

and injury

homes

are not unexpectedly splashed

05

Q.

by heavy water, and damage

are avoided.

(0

o8

Even though the Muslims of the

and even eager to resolve the disThe mosque is still the congrethe Muslims' concern for its maintenance is

village are willing

pute, they find themselves in a position of helpless desperation.

gational

mosque, and

is

used for Friday prayers;

motivated by their concern for conducting what they consider proper worship. But, since the
lami Masjid

is

an historical

also recognized as

they are forbidden to intervene in any

way

monument by

in its physical

trained conservationists of the ASI, or other designated

legal jurisdiction to

upon

the

members from

perform repairs upon the building. Due

electoral importance, however, the

monument, much

less

the Archaeological Survey of India,

appearance or maintenance. Only

the institution, have the

Mandal's minor

to

political

ASI has not even sent regular surveillance deputies

deploy a team of conservationists to the

site.

and
check

to

'"*

Herein resides a conflict which, Diwan Yusuf claims,

is serious enough that it threatens

would tear at the fabric of the village community of Hindus and Muslims - a fabric of mutual and reciprocal dependence that has been
woven over the centuries. The Hindus clearly associate the Jami Masjid with the Muslim community of the village, and assign the responsibility of its upkeep to that Muslim community and
not to the ASI. Thus, according to this point of view, blame for the inconvenience and occasional damage which Hindus have suffered on account of the mosque's disrepair is also assignable to
the Muslims. The latter themselves accept these assignations, both of responsibility for upkeep of
the building, and of blame for the inconvenience suffered by the Hindus; they are, however, lim-

to cause sectarian violence. In such an event, the

ited

by governmental institutions

rift

in exercising their responsibility for

its

maintenance.

For the citizens of Mandal, then - and indeed for rural Indian society in general - the
built

environment where

religious practitioners

religious

who

use

it,

worship

is

conducted

is

unquestionably associable with the

and, abstractly, with the religion itself

The

layer of identity of

monument', added to the Jami Masjid by the Archaeological Survey, is a definition and
perception of the building which the villagers cannot integrate into their understanding, or into
'historical

their actions.
1

regarding this state of affairs in the

vicinity of the lami Masjid

was

obtained through a personal inter-

view with Diwan Yusuf

on October
his

1,

Muhammad

1997. In addition to

occupation as

a tailor,

It

would be not be conceivable,

for example, that they consider the

part of the national patrimony, to be preserved and valued for

The majority of information

which was

members of
generations, Diwan

the

mosque

as a

function as a sign and repre-

would not consider it within the

upon the ASI to conduct repairs on
Jami Masjid so that the building stands for posterity. The MusUms have been made aware of
identity of the building as a historical source and, to some degree, of the necessity for its

sentative of 15th-century architecture.

bounds of their
the

The Hindus,

its

especially,

rights or duties to exert additional pressure

preservation in this capacity, not out of their everyday experience but out of their dealings and

carried on by the male

his family for

Yusuf was part of the Khidmat

Azhar Committee, based

at the

Masjid, and encharged with

ters

al-

all

he was also considered the

spokesperson for the Muslim com-

munity of Mandal.

Diwan Yusuf Muhammad,

sonal communication, l-X-97.

The Jami Masjid,

then,

is

primarily a place of worship, and undeniably

lami

mat-

As seen

involving the building. In this

capacity,

14

frustrations with the ASI.

associated with Islam.

that has

been

above example, Mandal should encourage architectural historians

mainstay of the study of architecture

identification that
per-

in the

reassess the religious identification of architecture in scholarship.

is

practiced by those for

daily lives. This dissonance does not

mean

altogether, but rather that the application

whom

The

in India clearly

the building

is

does not

alive

reflect the religious

and integrated into

that religious categorization

and aims of

to

religious categorization

ought

this intellectual tool

to

their

be eliminated

must be re-examined.

TO

r:

52

Nek Chand's Garden:

text

by

nilay

oza photos by

t.

luke

Chandigargh, India

young

a
nj
(n

o
<u

In the

making of Chandigarh, Le Corbusier's

sole contact with the

dyons of Indian

Administration proved to be a confirmation of what, throughout the course of his

career,

he had

come

to accept as a certitude:

The path

to social order

was through

benign and benevolent administration.' By spatially conditioning the urbanit)' of

Chandigarh, Corbusier made what
very

clear.

is

'officially

Chandigarh was thus defined

permissible'

and what 'impermissible'

in the administration's consciousness as a city

with a hermetic order that the generic Indian city did not possess.
tion, in

sharp

relief

history of Chandigarh.

urbanism

It is

this distinc-

both physically and administratively, that would define the short

On

the cover of La Villa Radieiise, Corbusier defines his

thus:

"The rational and poetic monuments

set

up

in the

contingeneies: "people places, culture, topographies,

mates; only to be judged as they relate to the entity

midst of
cli-

- MAN.

"

53
(0

N
O
>.
CD

08
TO

C
o

In Chandigarh's case, these contingencies

villages,

These

would include the twenty-six

comprising 30,000 people, removed to make way for the

villages

were converted,

city's stated objectives

city.

in part, into labor colonies. "In spite of the

of providing amenities for the poorest of the poor,

by 1975 15% of its population of 500,000 lived in squatter colonies. "^

These clumps of humanity lying within and around the matrix of the city
are still kept in continual motion by the authorities. They have become,
in the curiously officious parlance of bureaucracies, "informal sectors."

Simply put, they are deviants from the

official

norm of Chandigarh.

54

c
(1)

p
(D

O)
tn

c
<0

o
C

Another urban deviant, of a quite different nature than that of squatter

colonies but no less troublesome to the official culture, is what is now called

"Nek Chand's Garden".^ It is a landscape made from salvaged bits of urban

detritus produced during and after the making of Chandigarh. It was conceived of by its builder Nek Chand as a mythical kingdom, with a program
that included,

among

other features, a hall of audience, quarters for the

queen, and army barracks. Built as a clandestine project from the debris
that the city produced,

it

has grown to over 25 acres during the 30 years

it

Road Works Inspector working for the Public

Works Department, he was a minor functionary in the Chandigarh project.
Nek Chand would work only at nights, in the light and stench of burning
tires and in constant fear of discovery by the authorities. A vast gorge in the
woods to the east of the Capitol complex (immediately behind the High
has taken to build

it.

As

Court) proved ideally suited to his project.

for this "vast ruins of a fort",

he

started.

It

also supplied the

an image he held of

this

kingdom

rudiments
well before

55
to

O
>.
TO

C
o

In his garden

one comes across

almost transfixed,

at the

Does Nek Chand have

figures that

seem

a political

message in

Apparently not, for according to Nek Chand

self,

to recall tribals staring,

Capitol complex, at what was once their land.

and was never intended

to

be looked

at

his sculptural
this

madness?

garden was for him-

by anyone.'* More

over,

does not see the making of Chandigarh as negative. To someone

Nek Chand,
city

marked

the skeletal beauty of the rapidly growing but unfinished

India's destined

emergence into modernity, and could have

been nothing short of inspirational. He seemed

and

this

he

like

to

admire Le Corbusier,

admiration was not born out of ignorance.

He was

aware of the processes of construction used in the buildings.

keenly

56

CD

CD
U)

T3

TO

While using the waste from Chandigarh and constructing

ture

from

it.

Nek Chand seems never

ized environment

around him. He

is,

a labyrinthine sculp-

to take aesthetic recourse in the rationalin a way, picking

up pieces

as

he goes

about the task of constructing his dream, never looking up to see what

dropped them. The nature of

his creation

is

thus, in every aspect of

an anti-thesis to the ideals on which Chandigarh was founded.

mocks

Its

its

making,

inherent

assumed by Chandigarh's architecture,

Today his work, despite its creator, is a
form of protest, not so much against an architectural idiom as against an
urban order and a administration that perpetrates it. He was a squatter, e.xcept
one that was to bring the ethos of re-use from a domestic to the urban realm,
spontaneity

yet does not seek to

the self-importance

be a

political act.

from the realm of the profane

to that of art.

see further Brian Brace Taylor. Technology-, Society,

and

Social Control in Le Corbu.sier's Cite de

Refuge, Paris 1933, Equerre, 1980

2
3

Madhu Sarin, "Chandigarh Oggi", Casabella, Feb 1989, p 16

For a discussion on the nature of this deviance see further Devyani

Unpublished Thesis, C.E.P.T, Ahmedabad, 1995

4 S.S.Bhatti, Nek Chand's Testament of Creativity, Raw Vision, Spring
- photo credit for first image: Maggie Super

lain.

Out of the Normative,

1989, p. 22.

Inverted Office
toshihiro

komatsu

N51-ir^

57

D
<n

TO

e
o

58

O
o
T3
<U

>
c

59

3
<n

k
L_

60
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y
o

o
c
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c

61

3
tn
00

E
o

62

o
o

The process of building

the

Inverted Studio required the

artist

not only to research

building materials that were

foreign to his architectural

vocabulary, but also to learn

how

to put

them

together.

The dialogue between

local

hardware store

the

sales-

man, defensive union members, the artist

just passing

by

and people
is

as

much

part of this project as the

physical object. These

ephemeral conversations did

not merely reveal to the
artist

building conventions,

but also

how

personal rela-

tionships within a society

can form, revolving around

the simple initiative of an
artist

trying to create the

inverse of his office.

It is

therefore revealing to

view

this project as a process

of learning about foreign

building materials and methods; about understanding a
different culture;

about

interacting socially with for-

eigners

might

no matter who they

be,

and ultimately

ating an urban space for

everyone.

- Constance

Lai

cre-

Am

Orientalism and PrOpa.ga.nda.:th e construction of a wartime national

63

id entity

akiko takenaka

(0
ns

c
o

as

Japan has donned an assortment

into a

modern

on an

national design

of masks, varying from the exotic land

international stage was an overwhelm-

of Zen and geisha

ing success.

Tiger," the

the 80s.

girls to an "Asian
economic superpower of

It is

also

remembered

That

in the 30s,

and the disreputable

enemy of World War

prise attack

on

II

.^>illljkuu

that cast a sur-

Pearl Harbor.

Particularly during wartime,

shrine. (Fig. 2)

many

of

the ways the country was perceived

from the outside were an outcome of

intentional image-making by the gov-

ernment and the people. Such images

are created tor a specific audience with

a distinct purpose. During the 1930s,

ions at seventeen occasions prior to

World War

II,

but

it

was not

until the

Paris exposition of 1937 (Exposition

Internationale des Arts et Techniques

dans

la vie

Moderne)

ited its first pavilion

that Japan exhib-

not modeled after

religious architecture, castles, or histor-

The

Paris pavil-

in the political turbulence prior to

ical edifices. (Fig. I)'

World War II, the national image

desired by the government was in con-

ion was designed by Junzo Sakakura,

flict

with the

style that a

generation of

Japanese architects were trying to create

why

a style capable of representing a

it is

so curious that

just

country that aggressively invaded

China

is

two short years later, for the 1939

New York World's Fair, the Japanese
authorities insisted on a conservative
design modeled on a traditional Shinto

as the

was that
officials

Even more surprising

this decision

was taken

overwhelmingly

by the Japanese

in the face of the

futuristic bent of the

Buck Rogers
Tomorrow"
theme. The Japanese pavilion was one
1939

fair,

with

its

"Building the World of

of the few traditionally styled national

pavilions at the Fair. Based
archival research,

my

on

challenge the usual

then a young architect training under

interpretation that the Paris pavilion

Le Corbusier in Paris. Rather than

a brilliant

looking to past precedents for inspiration,

Sakakura designed a building

is

example of modernist

Japanese architecture, while the pavilion at the

New York World's

Fair

is

with the characteristics of his master's

"humiliating regression" in the history

works, that also incorporated elements

of Japanese architecture.

of traditional Japanese residential

challenges this interpretation by inves-

reception of two Japanese national

architecture. This

tigating the process of creation of the

pavilions designed for two internation-

Japanese pavilion so successfully repre-

two

sented the modernist theme of the

an aggressive Japanese military

Paris exposition while maintaining

discovered in records of

Japanese qualities that the French gov-

tion to e.xposition

ernment awarded Sakakura the Grand

cials, reveal

modern

country. This tension can be

observed in the curious differences

that arose in the creation

al

and the

expositions in the 30s.

Japan has a long record of atten-

dance

at

international expositions,

starting with the exposition in

of 1873.

It

Vienna

has exhibited national pavil-

Prix in design.

first

The

non-traditional

first

Japanese foray

What

follows

pavilions. In fact, the pressure of

state, as

communicaarchitects and offi-

the design for the

New

York pavilion as a sophisticated and

64

This pavilion was designed by

successful political strategy in appre-

hension of World
larger

War

propaganda

II

effort

- part of a

Yasuo Matsui,

by the gov-

practicing in

ernment

displays were by Iwao

image of

to create a peaceful

light of this,

failed

can

attempt

examined

in

production.

artistic

design for the national pavil-

many

ion at Paris had undergone

changes prior to

its

workers. That Sakakura took great

erties

to significant dis-

his

agreements between the governmental

authorities in charge of the exhibition

and the

architects involved in the

design of the pavilion.

The

organized by the Ministry of Foreign

But the selected design

and

steel pavilion

the International Style

young modernist trained

did not receive approval due

what the government saw

ernment

as a lack

The gov-

re-selected another entry, a

"traditional Japanese style structure

with

tiled

roof for the tower

...

black

lacquered pillars and ornamented

whitewash walls, randomly decorated

with red lacquered

pillars."^

However,

the opportunity to "modernize" this

government-mandated design
be undertaken in France with the
exclusive use of French materials and
workers. Junzo Sakakura - working
in Paris at the

Shoichi Inoue, Sakakura's pavilion was

in "digesting the 'historical

West'."'* It

time

received the

Grand

Prix, and the design was praised by an

American magazine as having achieved
"in steel and glass those qualities which

characterize traditional building in

wood, and which now

are ideals of

modern architects all over the world."^

The Japanese modernists regarded
this incident as a victory

ion's dual intention

new awareness of the

ideologi-

of architectural design

on an international

stage.

But the

modern and

remained

New York World's

unfulfilled.

Fair

the traditional by the

integration of technology

and

crafts-

manship. Photographic murals and

montage - cutting edge technology of
the time

- covered the

interior walls of

the Hall of Nations, which housed the

traditional arts

and

crafts

of Japan.

An

innovative movie projector, capable of

showing films in daylight, projected

exotic scenes and images of the cultural activities of Japan. While the techno-

form was modern,

its

content

seemed old fashioned, especially when

compared to the other, overwhelmingly futuristic, theme pavilions at the fair.
If an attempt was made to create a certain

image through the presentation,

was

lost in the

the displays.

it

confusing selection of

What was

the image that

Japan was trying to project in 1939?

The government's
the

modern, and the

preference for

arts

instead of technology

was based on
rience.

anticipation they held for the next

event - the

in

presenting the traditional instead of

Sakakura's success in Paris raised in

a

was apparent

the displays, which presented both the

over the old-

fashioned government authorities.

them

of Japan. "^ The pavil-

est technologies

style of Japan' into a 'progressive style

cal significance

appeared, since the construction was to

under Le Corbusier

and

the words of architectural historian

of the

in France,

of Japanese aspects. (Fig. 3)

revised the origi-

pillars

through "simphcity of form," while at

the same time "equipped with the lat-

logical

by Kunio

Maekawa,
to

He

ornamented walls, into his own innovative but markedly Corbusian style. In

an exercise

influenced by
-

that the pavil-

would "demonstrate a Japaneselike quality making the best use of

ments, such as the slender

Tokyo University professor and the

Paris Exposition Committee, and was

glass

ambiguous comment

ion

nal design by infusing traditional ele-

closed competition supervised by a

In the

be an "expression of magnificence"

lib-

with the design was concealed in

French materials."

pavilion

design was originally selected in a

Affairs.2

- was commissioned to oversee its construction and make any necessary

adjustments and translations for the

presentation in the

foreign context, due

for-

words of the Japanese Commissioner

General to the fair, this pavilion was to

be read as a

governmental

at the

manipulation of

The

now

and

interior

Its

Yamawaki, a

mer member of the Bauhaus.

prewar Japan. The more typically

hailed pavilion for Paris,

Japanese architect

New York.

The

and

and

crafts

industry,

their long standing expe-

first

impression obtained

by the Japanese when comparing their

own exhibits to those of the European
nations was at the Vienna exposition

65
(D
(D

of 1873. Government

observe the

fair

officials sent to

were dismayed

long in conflict with China, invading

and occupying various regions, and

the American view of Japan was start-

the

at

technological immaturity of their

own

contribution, and astounded by the

ing to change. Since the United States

advances demonstrated by the

had trade

European

tries,

and

were well received

crafts

occasion.
at

participants. Japanese arts

The

quite delicate. In the

at this

officials rightly

analyzed

the time that this favorable recep-

tion was the result of curiosity, due to

knowledge of Japanese
will

As

well, the

for the Fair in

European

the scientific

however, seems to have strongly deter-

mined

the Japanese display of

own

its

During preparation

New

for the

wire correspondence

Fair,

was constantly exchanged between the

Minister of Foreign Affairs in Japan

and the Japanese Consulate General of

New York.

spirit

New York suggested

and

that

industrial progress of

Japan was "so far behind our

that of

European nations

This correspondence reveals

and "American

own and
be

as to

interest in Far East

would be negligiThe American committee con-

industrial progress
ble."

cluded that "indigenous exhibits such

as rugs

ment abolished

Advisory Committee

and porcelain" should be

appropriate as the exhibits of the Far

Of course, the
were by now well

coun-

summer of

1939,

American govern-

for example, the

their Treaty of

Commerce with

wholly uninteresting and undramatic"

culture for the next 60 years.

York World's

and

not be able to appreciate the

Japanese exhibits from those of the

This analysis,

culture,

of true Japanese architecture."''

"the difference in the nature of the

nations."''

relations with both

the international situation was

Japan.

In such an atmosphere, the

Japanese government needed to carefully reconsider their country's presen-

tation strategies for a fair to take place

in

New York.

have uncovered the

suggestion of an unmistakably radical

presentation strategy in the records of

wire correspondences. In 1938, the

Japan International Press Photo

Association of

New York

advised that,

in consideration of the relationship

between the two countries, the main

the difficulties that the Japanese gov-

Eastern countries."'

objective of their presentation should

ernment was facing concerning

planners in Japan

be to "banish the public opinion pre-

presentation strategy.
the

fair called for

their

The theme of

an exhibition of

progress, something that could well be

demonstrated

in a

modern

style pavil-

ion not unlike that presented in Paris.

aware of these opinions.

vailing in the United States

In light of this, the 1939 pavilion

government felt was a safe design. The

exhibits were in keeping with the

"high-handedly promoting the ideals

"whose beauty

tation that introduced science

simplicity, will not have

prominence?

when

in

enough

placed

Western pavilions."^

minimalist

among

the

Comments made

correspondence suggested that the

pavilion be designed in a "style easily

already held by the audience.

architecture" because "the general

American public is used to large scaled

buildings and wide streets, has no

presen-

and

was

to

be performed by

of peace." Thus the exhibition should

present "a traditional Japanese spirit

which
istic',

is

neither aggressive nor jingo-

and present

a discourse

empha-

technology as secondary to cultural

sizing the significant role played

by

aspects was unlikely to raise any con-

the United States in introducing

mod-

troversies, since that

was what the

audience was expecting to receive from

Japan.

And

crucial for

associated with traditional Japanese

or an

invader." This

stereotypical image of the country

its

which mis-

enemy

seems to have been based on what the

The theme troubled those concerned

that modern architecture in Japan,
resides in

takes our country for an

was particularly
the Japanese government to
in 1939,

it

keep the status quo of this

commonly

ern culture to this "fairy tale-like

dream

island."

Furthermore, the press

association instructed that the poster

for the Japanese exhibit

"Japanese

should depict

girls in traditional attire"

held image because of the political

with captions inviting the visitor to

up between the
two countries. At the time, Japan was

experience the "changeless, timeless

uncertainties building

Japan.""

(Fig. 4)

66

Thus,

in 1939, the

Japanese gov-

propagated that pan-Asian unity was

ernment willfully "orientalized" itself.

That is to say, it presented Japan as a
was not

peaceful, exotic land that

advanced

as the

the antithesis of nationalism, individu-

and

alism, liberalism, materialism,

other negative conditions associated

as

United States or the

with Western countries. Emphasis was

European countries. The text and the

image on the poster suggest an

placed on rebuilding, regenerating,

Orientalist presentation of a culture,

tive

established by the creation of a

ral

and

reawakening, and rebirth

tempo-

we

frequently

make such

greatness."

on

Saidian

this case.

be more complex

For in 1939

(if

its

own images

Through

to

in

itself

advantage.

its

the pavilion in the 1939

fair,

the country reflected the orientalizing

stereotypes projected

Western

upon

it

back

to

eyes. This was, of course, not a

true illustration of the state of devel-

opment and

capabilities within the

country. For example,

when much of

the world was struggling to recover

from the Depression

Japan's annual

percent of

in the 1930s,

growth

GNP. By

1939, buildings

in Japan,

ing large scaled buildings. As a trading

had already become

major exporter of manufactured products

and a major importer of raw

materials.'-'
nialist

within

lapan was also

its

itself

colo-

sphere of influence in

the Philippines, Korea,

and Manchuria.

Japan was in fact not

at all

"changeless and timeless", but

Japanese colonialism in Asia

had proceeded under the theory of

pan-Asianism - essentially, a theory of
domination. Pan-Asian

ideology',

prevalent in wartime Japan, situated

Japan as the leader of East Asia, with a

mission to unite the countries in the
entire area so they

would not be

oppressed or endangered by the West.

Pan-Asian thinking was celebrated by

cation of their aggression in

China (an

une.\pected development initiated in

1931 by Japan's ex^peditionary forces in

and engi-

neers were fully capable of construct-

nation, Japan

taristic.

the government, partly for the justifi-

rate averaged 5

designed in the International Style

were being built

becom-

ing increasingly aggressive and mili-

cultural policy toward

had

1939

China

for too

past

its

states

long

that Japan should "totally put an

not earlier),

Japan intentionally orientalized

to

treatise written in

looked down on "things Oriental" and

depended upon the West. It stressed

by the West, the method of

analysis needs to

that the lapanese

analysis of Eastern countries "orientalized"

and restoring Asia

patterns

observer and the observed.''^ While

today,

indica-

all

about ending "Western-dominated

between the

spatial distance

of Japanese self-consciousness

North China), and

to the

also as a response

need for a new national ideology

under which

it

could unite

its

citizens

in prosecuting the war. Interestingly,

pan-Asianism looked both eastward

and westward. The Japanese government issued the "New Order for East
Asia" in 1938 in order to liberate the
citizenry's

minds from the uncon-

scious following of familiar Western

patterns of thought.

The

idea was

to the long period of

end

dependence on,

and copying of, the West," and overcome, on their own terms, their status
as late-comers to industrialization.'''

Whereas

earlier

modernizing attempts

were made with the West

an

effort

the

first

by the Japanese

as the
is

model,

made

look back upon themselves. This

why

for

time under pan-Asianism to

is

the displays in the 1939 pavilion

presented such things as a reproduc-

The
and improvements
industry shown in Japan's own,

tion of the Liberty Bell in pearls.

natural ingenuity
to

developed spheres of production,

"dramatize the pearl culture industry

which today employs 1,000 people

from Japan and

sets

out annually

about 3 million oysters." Thus the ideology'

behind the 1939 pavilion was

both aggressive and coy about

its

pres-

entation to the West. While the

lapanese press association produced

advertising copy for

New York

declar-

ing "changeless, timeless Japan," at the

same time

it

internally

denounced "an

67

TO

c
<u
TO

O
03

ideology of an eternal peace, a true

consisted of "static and traditional art

and a world peace established

without armament" as "absurd, but

forms for

foolishly supported

the militarism of National Socialism

peace,

wide populacountry such as the

tion in a liberalist

United

by

in the

previously

1939 pavilion, the

national identity

and

non-

The

overlooked. This

is

hand

in the

pavilion, also seen at the Paris

The German

pavilion, created

during Germany's extreme National

Socialist regime, reveals interesting

similarities to the

strategy

concept and design

employed by the Japanese

authorities in the 1939 Fair.

tion of the Third Reich in

The

its

presentation was to "market

In the

German

pavilion, simultaneous

made

references were

historical antecedents

number of

to a
-

a classical

medieval church, and

ple, a

in

tem-

huge

inten-

1937
itself in

order to

at

the 1939 Fair

had been modeled

after the Ise Shrine

of the Shinto

exterior wall

Kyoto Imperial Palace

in

sect,

from the

linear beauty."'''

were

in

The two

pavilions

agreement with the modernist

aesthetic that rejected excessive orna-

ment. Both employed

steel for

sup-

porting structure, yet concealed

it

with

a facade to give the desired impression

advanced nation and as a people rooted in timeless tradition." The country's

swastika-patterned gold and red mosa-

devoted participation in the exposition

was meant

to illustrate

to "world peace"

tion of a healthy

its

commitment

and the "reconstrucand

solid economy."'^

and

was an extremely

the

ic tile,

the Japanese pavilion with white

stucco and lacquered pilasters. Further

parallels are

found

played inside.

in the material dis-

The German

well aware of

its

historical struggle to

formulate a national identity. The

highly orchestrated production of this
pavilion

is

a testament to the sophisti-

display

aesthetics, politics,

when

and modernization

presenting or concealing one's

national identity or intentions to others.

By 1939, various approaches

to

the representation of national identity

through architectural design had

order to

express the "most modernized form of

German pavilion was finished

with native German limestone and

Paris both as a technologically

Fairs,

cated balancing act required between

achieve the desired monumentality. In

and adapted the

Exposition of 1937. (Figure 5)

two

creation of a national image

political relations,

quite a parallel, the Japanese pavilion

Japanese modernists might have

learned, existed close at

at the

demanding endeavor for Japan in the

1930s. The Japanese government was

ancient sarcophagus

unfortunate,

have

ing a time ot an increasingly volatile

1937 aug-

because a similar example, fi-om which

similar analyses of the

to present to a foreign audience, dur-

The simple, mod-

in Paris in

mented negative attitudes in the architectural community about the New

York pavilion. The pavUion drew only
severe criticism from Japan's modern
architects. The sophisticated intention
behind the 1939 presentation went
unrecognized, and its subtlety was

German

scientific

da" in Japanese journals of the 1930s.''

duction, were never understood by

triumph

away from

also of the various "cultural propagan-

Western model of technology and proarchitects in Japan.

made

Japanese displays

sheer subtlety of their expression of a

ernist

propaganda,

achievements of the regime."'*'

But the intentions invested by the

modern

visual

shift attention

towards the cultural and

States." '5

government

its

intended to

already been taken: ornamentation of

Western-style architecture with

Japanese elements; reinterpretation of

Western architecture

to claim as their

own; and concealment of technology

acquired from the West inside a traditional Japanese design. The 1939 pavUion used the third approach

- it

was

constructed out of steel and concrete,

albeit

covered with stucco and topped

with pitched roof.

Yet,

it

was consid-

ered obsolete by contemporary architects,

who

modern

argued more naively for a

stvle

without awareness of

its

68

political impact.

maHgned 1939

But the

achieve a design easily associated as typically

Japanese. In the case of the PhoenLx Pavilion at
the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago
1893 for example, the presentation consisted of
three buildings connected by corridors each
designed in styles representing three different time
periods. The pavilion in Paris 1900 was said to be
designed after Horyuji, a temple, but with many
ornaments not present in the original structure.

much

same modern

began to willingly engage

The

Paris Exposition

with the Japanese

1940s, under the strong influence of

architects

Committee was organized

by the Ministry of Foreign Aftairs

come. In the

ultranationalism, these

in

in collaboration

Chamber of Commerce and

Industry, Ministr>- of Trade, the Association for

the Promotion of International Culture, and

Japan Trade Association. (The English naming of

come from the translation of "Tokyo
Paris 1936-37" written by Tadayoshi Fujiki and
translated by Bill and Lou Tingey. in Process
Architecture: Sakakura Associates - Haifa
Century in Step with Postwar Japanese Modern
ism, vol. 110, 1993, 31-38). The competition was
supervised by Hideto Kishida. a professor of
these groups
-

nationalistic design. This

is

in the competitiondesigns

seen clearly

submitted

in the 1940s for projects associated

with Japanese colonial endeavors in

East Asia. (Fig. 6) Fortunately for the

reputations of these designers* the out-

break of World

War

saw

II

little

of this

colonial Japanese architecture built. So,

these once modernist, then wartime

nationahst, architects have never been

forced to

come

to

terms with their easy

compliance with the

political agenda.

With few colonial Japanese buildings

architecture at Tokyo University, as a competition

among five young architects.

Nihonkan (The Jn of International
Culture, and Japan Trade Association. (The
English naming of these groups come from the
translation of "Tokyo - Paris 1936-37" written by
3 "Pari-haku

Tadayoshi Fujiki and translated by Bill and Lou

Tingey, in Process Architecture: Sakakura
Associates - Haifa Centur)' in Step with Postwar
Japanese Modernism, vol. 110, 1993, 31-38). The
competition was supervised by Hideto Kishida, a
professor of architecture at Tokyo University, as a
competition among t1ve young architects.
"Pari-haku Nihonkan (The Japanese Pavilion at

realized, their design portfolios are not

Paris Exposition)."

stained with the built evidence of this

1936, 35. All

author's unless otherwise noted.

nationalism.
is its

The 1939

most resounding

paragraph are from: DRO:

meeting of the Japanese
Committee for the New York Fair, a strategy "to
1

All quotes in the

July 8. 1938. Also, in a

alleviate the negative feelings of the .\mericans

pavilion forecasted the

architectural trend to

10 NYPL: Box 352; File PR2.01. Far East Advisory

Sub-committee, Foreign Participation Advisory
Committee, Public Relations. From the minutes of
"Meeting of the Advisory Sub-Committee on the
Far East." Dated Februar\' 4, 1937.

Kenchiku Sekai, September

translations from Japanese are the

pavilion, then,
built testament.

towards Japan," that they "make prodigious participation ... and publicize our interest and
enthusiasm in the maintenance of a harmonious
relationship with the countr>'" was suggested.
(From a progress report dated June 1, 1938)
12 The
writers

method

in

which Orientalist

14 All quotes on the governmental policies of

1938 and 1939 are from: Akira Iriye, Power and
Culture: the lapanese-American War 1941-1945.
Cambridge and London: Harvard University
Press, 1981.7-9.

15

DRO: Correspondence

NYPL.

Box: 101; File P0.3 Japan, Foreign

Participation.

The design of most of the

eclectic style with

pavilions was an

7 From "Nihon to Bankokuhaku (Japan and international expositions)" in R>Taichi Hamaguchi and
Hiroshi Yamaguchi. Bankokuhaku Monogalari
(The story of international expositions). (Tokyo:
Kajima Kenkyujo Shuppankai. 1966). 138-170.
8 DRO: from Ambassador Kaname Wakasugi in
New York to Foreign Minister Hirota in Tokyo.
February 19, 1938.

combination of elements

derived from several historical buildings to

dated July

8.

1938.

16 Karen A. Fiss. "The German Pavilion," in Art

and Power: Europe under the dictators 1930-45,

108-110.

4 Shoichi Inoue. "Pari Hakurankai Nihonkan 1937

(The Japanese pavilion at Paris Exposition 1937)"
in Bankokuhakurankai: Sono Rekishi to Yakuwari
(International expositions: their history and
roles}, Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai ed., (Tokyo:
Nihon Hoso Shuppan Kyokai, 1985), 147.
5 Elizabeth Mock, "The Paris Exposition,"
Magazine of Art 30, May 1937, 269.

and

13 The information comes firom Japan in War and

Peace by John W. Dower (New York: New Press,
1995) in which Dower gives detailed account of
the growth in pre- World War II Japan, with and
argument that Japan's position in global economy
today is not the result of the post-occupation
period, but of the rapid growth of the country in
the early 1930s.

17

DRO: Correspondence from Wakasugi

18 Ibid.. 109.

Wartime

The Construction of a

Identity: the Japanese Pa\ilion at

York World's Fair 1939/40, Master's

DRO: Wakasugi

to Hirota,

May

16. 1938.

New

thesis.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where i

have made analyses of Japanese imagery being
exported overseas in the 1930s and 40s through a
variety of media. Included are Nippon and
Contemporary Japan, examples ot Japanese journals translated into English and other European
languages. In these publications, the foreign policy
and overseas achievements of the country were
interspersed with texts introducing the cultural
side of Japan. In

my

thesis.

suggest that this

similar strateg)' of presentation that

the pavilion

and

its

displays

architectural presentation

to

Hirota. on the basic policy of the pavilion and

garden design; dated February 19, 1938.

19 See, Akiko Takenaka,

footnotes
NYPL: the archives of the New York World's Fair
1939/40, on deposit in the manuscript division of
the New York Public Library.
DRO: the Diplomatic Records Office in the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Tokyo. Japan.

artists

had constructed the "exotic Oriental

world" by the creation of temporal and spatial distance, is discussed in detail by Edward Said in
Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978).

ty within the veil of culture.

is

is

observed

a
in

- both the textual and

conceal political reali-

authors
O
CO

Ritu Bhatt

is

Ph.D. candidate in History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture

Stephen Cairns
Kerry

S.

Fan has

He

University.

on the Faculty of Architecture, Building

is

is

teaching

Howeler received

Eric

background

a design

at

in architecture

Planning

He

has worked

and
at

his

KPF

MIT.

The University of Melbourne.

at

and studied the history of architecture

Bowling Green State University while completing

his B.Arch. in 1994

of SubMission Magazine.

&

at

M.Arch.

in

1996 from Cornell University, and was Editor

for the last three years

Manila, Pusan, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, San luan, Baku, and

Cornell

at

his dissertation.

is

on the design of tall buildings

now working on

a project in

in

Washington,

D.C. Eric has been published in Forum, SubMission, Fifth Column, Akcelerntor, and Pnrntnctia.

Khon Kaen

Bundit Kanisthakhon

is

February of 1998 and

his B.A. in Architectural Studies

a lecturer a

University, Thailand.

He

received his

M.Arch

from the University of Washington

Toshihiro Komatsu was born in Shizuoka ken, lapan.

He

at

MIT

in

in 1993.

received B.F.A. in 1991 and M.F.A. in 1993 from

Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He completed the post graduate program at
Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, in 1996. He is currendy a candidate for the Master of
Science degree in Visual Studies at MIT.

San San Kwan

is

a Ph.D. candidate in

marily on performance culture in

Andrew I-kang

Li is a

Oza

Program

at

New York

Asian America. She

Ph.D. candidate in Design and Computation

the Department of Architecture at

Nilay

Performance Studies

Hong Kong and

at

University.

is

Her work focuses

pri-

also a professional dancer.

MIT, and an associate professor

in

The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

received a degree from the School of Architecture,

for Islamic Architecture at

MIT. He

is

Ahmedabad, and

is

currently in the

working on structural redundancy

in large

Aga Khan

bamboo

struc-

tures in urban areas.

Alka Patel

is

a Ph.D. candidate in the

Department of Art and Architecture

at

Harvard University.

Akiko Takenaka received her B.Arch. in 1990 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and then received an
S.M.Arch.S. in History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture at MIT in 1997. She is currently a
Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art

Cherie Wendelken

is

at Yale

University

an Assistant Professor of Japanese Art and Architecture

of Art and Architecture

at

Harvard University. She received her Ph.D.

Department of History
Theory and Criticism of

in the

in History,

Art and Architecture from MIT.

B.S. in Historic Preservation from Roger Williams University. Before coming to MIT,
Newport Collaborative Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Mr.
Young is pursuing a dual degree in Urban Planning and Architectural Studies, and is interested in evaluating the potential of cultural heritage initiatives that are socially valuable and economically viable for devel-

Luke Young holds a

T.

he worked

for the

oping countries.

photo credits
p.2

Nilay

p.

&

p.

72

Oza
Zachary Kron

Jaime Solan and

p. 5 - Allen Tsai

Lilian

Tan

'

thresholds4fi^

call for papers^

http://architecture.mit.edu/thresholds/

& money

design

t)

The design and construction of the physical environment shapes much of our society's economy and consumes much its wealth. The distribution of this wealth has become more conceneconomic gains have disproportionately accrued to the already wealthy.
does the influence of a minority on the physical

trated in recent years, as

As

this disparity magnifies, so too, perhaps,

world.

can offer

financial elite

made up of corporations,

most of the commissions that support

institutions,

and

'high' design. In

few wealthy individuals

though, architects are expected to further the financial, social and personal aims of their
patrons. Those goals, though private, collectively define the terms of the public space and
Thresholds 18 asks

ture.

how our understanding of the profession,

If all art relies

on patronage,

cul-^

and design

is

art patronage.

exist

What does

without

I'I

on a unique scale. Big, expensive, and long

and demands outside the bounds of traditional

architecture does so

lasting, a building has stakeholders, functions,

it

aesthetics,

.;

by the system that finances them.

affected

Can

exchange for that support,

the concept of 'avant-garde'

a specifically social

When

agenda?

mean when

applied to architecture?

selfpromotion so often drives patron-

how could such an agenda avoid co option by private interests? Avant-garde forms can
much about weahh and power as about the development of ideas or culture. High budget
'high design' is often the wellspring of our aesthetic sensibility. What happens to the built environment when the exceptional case sets the standard for mainstream designers (with main-

age,

be as

stream budgets)?

How does

method of disseminating forms shape

this

Architecture creates the public space, and sets

its

object.

How does

that architecture?

Do

terms of interaction. Similarly, the cost of a

building affects both the physical object and the aesthetic criteria

the physical world?

we use

to

.
^

understand that

the status of architecture within culture shape our aesthetic judgement of

Do

avant-garde forms really advance culture, or just spur

refined aesthetics just create

new

social

and

new consumption?

financial barriers to participation? If soj

can design be anything but socially conservative?

Design and construction technology creates new spatial and formal

possibilities,

how r

*"

and makes

'

and components more quickly obsolete. Staying on the technology curve is

often expensive. Does that expense set technology's meaning by controlling its use? Could
cheaper building technology change the relationship between wealth and architecture? This
same advancement creates new forms of infrastructure, and new possibilities for aesth|^c*inte:
existing buildings

vention.

How does

this affect a designer's responsibilities?

Design must serve both a private

client

and the public good. How can a designer respect, or

What happens to critical distance when jobs a

even evaluate, the needs of public and private?

involved?

How can

art

and architecture transcend these

distinctions while respecting thi:

both?

Can you understand design without understanding how

it's

paid for?

I!li

J!

arch

1,

1999

thresh(ia)mit.edu

'17.258.8439/9455fax

Thresholds

^ Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Department of Architecture, 7-337
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, (VIA 02139

No

culture can develop withou

a social basis, without a source
of stable income. And in the
case of the avant-garde, this
was provided by an elite among
that ruling class of that society

^^rom which

f.

assumed

%.

off,

...,^vw^ .^brrfit'paperSf projects,

Wworks" on a computer disk. Images

|g|^
^P*^hould be grayscale. Include two hard

itself >iii^**^

but to which it has

ways remained attached by an
mbilical cord of gold.

to be cut

it is

,^

copies,

good

quality photocopies of

all

images, and a two sentence bio of the

Essay text

author(s) for publication.

limited to

is

2500 woixU^Thresholds

aims to print only

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v-Clement Greenberg

\cleslgnoc

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Ellen

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Dennis

chair

Thresholds advisory board

Adams

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thres hol ds 17 -"asian"

errata

Please take into account the following changes as you

read the issue. Thank you.
Constance Lai and Andrew Miller
editors

A^
^

How

'

By

47

63

Buildings Divide and Unite

Ritu Bhatt

Us The Case

of

Mandal

(Gujarat, India)

and Alka Patel

Ihe nnage caption should read Jami Masjid, Mandal.

Pan-Asianism vs Changeless, Timeless Japan The Construction

Wartime National Identity By Akiko Takenaka

63

In line 3

of the middle column. Exposiiion Internationale des Arts

et Techniques

68

dans

All the italics

la vie

m the

Modeme

should be

italicized,

footnotes have been erroneously deleted

printing.

iillej^aooa.
Akiko Takenaka's

63

of a

article

should be

titled:

Pan-Asianism vs Changeless, Timeless Japan;

of a Wartime National Identity

The Construction

..

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