| to clarify, "cultural destruction" i mean by the traditions that mao destroyed during the cultural revolution. that is why there isn't much of an identity stemming from the chinese past in chinese contemporary culture and why chinese people today are so open to foreign ideas and exchange after people soon realized that mao's communist ideals have failed and are incompatible with the contemporary world.
the lack of a theoretical basis will give these new chinese architects the freedom to discover a new identity for chinese contemporary culture. since china's current unprecedented condition and transformation is unlike anything the western world has seen before, such condition will become an interesting point of departure for chinese architects to establish their own theoretical grounds, as it had for modernists when they were faced with a revolution of their own. |