Cole Roskam, Designing Reform: Architecture in the People’s Republic of China, 1970-1992
Cole Roskam, Designing Reform: Architecture in the People’s Republic of China, 1970-1992, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2021
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1A political history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is difficult because it is so close to us, and its dramatic turbulence is still ongoing. An architectural history of the PRC, on the other hand, is challenging because there are no agreed terms and frameworks for describing the architecture of a socialist and East-Asian nation. A history that aims to do both — political and architectural — is even more difficult. Cole Roskam’s Designing Reform proposes to achieve exactly such a history. It aims to describe the relationship between reform and architecture between 1970 and 1992, roughly the time from the late-Mao (1970-76) era to the end of the early reforms of Deng Xiaoping (1976-1992). There are immediate difficulties for connecting these two times since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the rise of Deng Xiaoping in 1978 are considered a break or divide between a radical communism and a secular market economy. There are indeed connections — the pragmatic engagement with the West and a pivot to economic modernization in the early 1970s already anticipated Deng’s reform, for example. Nevertheless, the seismic shift of 1976-78 is still commonly considered the beginning of a very different China. It would probably be more persuasive to extend Deng’s reform era down through the 1990s into the 2000s. The second difficulty is connecting architectural history to political history, as this would involve a careful selection of certain aspects and understandings of architecture, as well as a sociological selection of certain spaces and process to elaborate such a connection.
2Roskam’s book is ambitious given these considerations. Roskam considers “architecture” and “reform” as two categories that can be related whereby a study of one illustrates the other. The book aims to provide an architectural history of reform, as well as a history of reform that illuminates architecture in China and even in other global situations. He considers architecture a useful realm of ideas, objects, and practices that can illustrate social processes of political reform; he also considers China’s reform a useful case for examining socialist and non-Western architecture, and global processes such as postmodernism and neoliberalism.
3With this twining, Roskam sets out to examine China’s reform and architectural history. The book has three parts arranged chronologically — “Anticipation”, “Implementation”, and “Integration”, which describe architecture and politics in the late-Mao era, in that of Deng Xiaoping, and further aspects of Deng era, respectively. Each part has three chapters, on the various aspects of architecture in which political reform can be studied. The first three chapters examine new architectures dealing with an opening to the West (hotels, airports, diplomats’ apartments, and an “International Club”, among others) in the early 1970s; cultural tours between China and the West; and development towards industrialization in construction.
4In Part II, Chapter 4 explores changing attitudes towards architectural history; the next two chapters turn to the planning, designing, and production of the key projects of reform: the Joint Venture and the SEZ (special economic zone) in Chapter 5, and a special architectural typology blooming out of the market economy; and the international hotel in Chapter 6. The hotels examined here include prominent designs such as the Fragrant Hill by Pei, the Jinling by P. & T. Group, the Great Wall by Becket International, and the Shanghai Centre by John Portman, all in the 1980s.
5Part III then moves on to examine some deeper aspects of reform in and via architecture: “Postmodernism” in China (Chapter 7); reform in education and design practice, chiefly at universities and the Design Institutes, considered a specifically socialist organization (Chapter 8); and China’s continuing engagement since the Mao era with the developing world, especially Africa (Chapter 9).
6A separate chapter “Conclusion”, to close the era, briefly chronicles the 1989 Tiananmen event and its abrupt suspension of reform with various tensions, as well as a re-opening and re-orientation in 1992, with a new generation of architects emerging in the 1990s and after.
7The book provides a rich tapestry of historical cases and developments of both architecture and political reform of the period. The level of detail in the descriptions is impressive, demonstrating a persistent reading of a broad range of materials, especially those recorded in their original Chinese. That alone is important as the book provides a close reading of the Chinese world for a global audience. While the richness and the historical texture in the work are impressive, the work also invites a discussion on methodological concerns and empirical gaps.
8The first methodological concern is the historical frame adopted for the book. Although any historical period is related to previous events (indeed, Deng’s reforms since 1978 were related to an emerging pragmatism and opening in the early 1970s under Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai), the break of 1976-78, dividing China into Mao and post-Mao eras, remains more critical and should be viewed as a breakthrough rather than a continuation. If this is the case, then a study of Deng’s reform that connects back to the 1970s rather than the later period requires explanation and reconsideration. Any reading of some breakthroughs as a legacy of the Mao era rather than an opening to a new context also requires careful reconsideration. For example, connecting, as Roskam does, architects such as Wang Shu, Liu Jiakun, and Yung Ho Chang (a new generation emerging in the 1990s), along with their interest in vernacular tectonics, to an earlier Maoist revolutionary interest in primitive technology, rather than to a wider global tectonic aesthetic, indicates a general historicism. This suggests an insensitivity to the specific breakthroughs on both political and architectural grounds.
9A larger misreading of the historical dimension is the place of Africa in China’s politics in the Deng era, emphasized in Chapter 9 of the book. In fact, Deng’s reform, as a diversion away from Maoism, was exactly a forgetting of Africa and the Third World in an attempt to embrace the United States and the West. For sure, Africa is now re-emphasized in recent years, but that is evidence of the current swing back to Mao and away from Deng. Thus, identifying a few projects relating to China’s aid to Africa in the 1980s and 90s — a lingering of the Mao era, and an added layer of historical complexity — is not necessarily evidence of the characteristics of Deng’s reform.
10The second methodological concern, perhaps my main issue with the book, is how architecture is studied in conjunction with socio-political history. Architecture is indeed treated this way in its various aspects throughout the book, but how this works to inform a political history of reform remains eclectic if not random in terms of structure. It is not clear how a study of the designs and buildings in Chapter 1 is related to a cultural history of exchange and construction development in the following two chapters, apart from a broad historical co-presence. Similarly, it is not clear how a study of architectural heritage in one chapter is related to the following two concerning joint ventures and the international hotel in the middle three chapters (although these last two are indeed closely related). The last three chapters also remain casual in their interrelations. It is not clear why postmodern architecture and the aid projects for Africa are related apart from historical co-existence, for example. The issue is not that we cannot juxtapose a few different currents together, but that architecture should be deconstructed with a clear approach and method, not casually or eclectically.
11As indicated in the book’s Introduction, the study treats “architecture” externally for its “contributions” (in author’s word) to reform and usefulness in illustrating political history. As such, “architecture” is used freely whenever something can be discovered, to illustrate socio-political development. There is no methodology on how architecture is to be studied in and with political history. Further, the author has missed some key developments at the level of internal logic and coherence unique to architecture during this period, especially on design language and formal ideas. Overall, the book is strong in illustrating reform through architecture rather than in illustrating the architecture of China in the reform era.
12If one is looking for an architectural history of China during this period, more might be expected. It must include architectural events or cases that have internal and formal values. It must cover formal transformations taking place in China when old models — Beaux-arts, neoclassical, and imperial in their ideology — were deconstructed and new design ideas came into being. These currents included a new vernacular, a late-modern abstract formalism, and elements of ornamental post-modernism, in the 1980s and early 1990s. In this sense, I. M. Pei is relevant not just because of his ornamental Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing, but also his late-modern formalism in the United States. In this juncture, key architects such as Qi Kang, Wu Liangyong, Peng Yigang, Bu Zhengwei, Cui Kai, as well as Feng Jizhong in a different and more modernist category, must be included. International influence into China through Kisho Kurokawa from Japan, and Rocco Yim from Hong Kong, should also be included for a sophisticated post-modern architecture that surrounded China. They specifically defined architecture in China at its most formal and self-conscious. Unfortunately, apart from Pei’s hotel in Beijing, these figures and their designs are not included, let alone studied in the book.
13Admittedly, how architecture should be studied remains an open question. What we are discussing here is a situation where architecture can be studied both “externally” as part of a social process, and “internally” as part of its own logic and aesthetic concern unique to the discipline. For sure, the situation can be more complex, but an awareness of these two readings is necessary. The book has not demonstrated a sufficient concern for the internal or formal development of architecture, especially about design language and its dramatic change in China; nor has it treated consciously the complexity between these two readings of architecture. Empirically, it has missed some important figures and cases of architecture in China in the 1980s.
14Having said that, all research monographs are in a sense “incomplete”, and the value of a work must be acknowledged. Roskam’s Designing Reform is an important contribution on aspects of Chinese architecture during the reform era with rich empirical details. It provides a detailed account of many ideas, designs, buildings, personalities, and events with a global perspective on China at a dramatic and transitional moment. It should be included in any reading list on China’s cultural transformation of the reform era.
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Jianfei Zhu, « Cole Roskam, Designing Reform: Architecture in the People’s Republic of China, 1970-1992 », ABE Journal [En ligne], 21 | 2023, mis en ligne le 07 juillet 2023, consulté le 25 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abe/14029 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.14029
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