In the past twenty years, a new generation of Chinese architects, many of whom have carved out an independent practice, have challenged the dominant ideology of architecture in China by offering an alternative experience, visual, tactile, and spatial.1 Since 2000 their exploratory practices, described as experimental architecture (shiyan jianzhu) by architectural critics, have been covered extensively in the Tongji University–based journal Time + Architecture (Shidai Jianzhu).
This article sketches the conditions that fostered the emergence of experimental architecture in the 1990s and the role that Time + Architecture played in presenting experimental architecture in the early 2000s. I focus on two special issues of the journal in which editors and contributors collectively formulated a critical ideology of experimental architecture. These special issues demonstrated both a critical attitude toward architecture rooted in the Beaux-Arts tradition and an alternative publishing practice focused on emerging independent architectural practitioners rather than well-established figures inside the state system.
The Emergence of Experimental Architecture in China
Experimental architecture emerged along with the discourse of experimental art (shiyan yishu). Experimental art in China during the 1980s cannot be described either as “unofficial” or as “avant-garde,” because, as Wu Hung remarked, the first term exaggerates the political orientation of this art, and the second, its artistic radicalism.2 The term “experimental architecture” first appeared in the symposium “Dialogue between South and North: Young Chinese Architects and Artists” (Nanbei Duihua: 5.18 Zhongguo Qingnian Jianzhushi he Yishujia Xueshu Taolunhui), held 18 May 1996 in Guangzhou, where architects, artists, critics, and academics discussed the possibility of experimental architecture in China. That same year the journal Architect (Jianzhushi) published a review article on this event and on projects by emerging architects (Figure 1).3 Wang Mingxian, the deputy editor in chief of the journal Architect, and Shi Jian, an independent architectural critic, in their key …
SAH Member Access
Instead of logging in here, SAH Members obtain access by first logging in to the SAH website, then visiting the JSAH Online page and clicking the link to return to this site with access.