Architecture for the Multitude The Logic and Dialectics of Urban Forms in Beijing in the 1950s
Ling Fan Dissertation Defense, Friday, May 9th 10-12 Harvard Graduate School of Design, Portico Room 123 Committee: Peter G. Rowe, Eve Blau, Joan Busquets
To define a position on the city as architects is to make a claim for architecture’s relevance for the city. This dissertation proposes to rethink the contemporary Chinese city in light of a unitary interpretation of architecture and the city. It is put forward via the dialectics between built architectural forms and the urban space in the Beijing in the 1950s. From state-driven planning economy (1950s) to statedriven market economy (2000s), the logic of the Chinese city, I argue, remains unchanged: the city is “the spatialization of the collective”. My attempt is to theorize China’s urban forms through the dialectics of state-collective-individual relationship. Instead of focusing on the city as a whole, I concentrate on three
exemplary urban forms in Beijing. Adopted as modernist forms and still remaining instrumental in the contemporary city, they are the Mansion (Communist Mansion), the Square (Tiananmen Square) and the Factory (Beijing No.2 Textile Factory). These examples are not normative but “singular formal events that serve to define the possibility of a milieu of forms�. The instrumentality of these exemplary urban forms is precisely on what they do, what they confront and what are the effects, not abstract rules or principles. Thus, they have the possibility to be appropriated as archetypes for architects as critique against the conventional notion of urban design as a master plan.