Born in 1901 to a prominent Qing-era reformer, Liang Sicheng is commonly referred to as “The Father of Chinese Architecture,” having founded some of the country’s first architecture departments, including that of Tsinghua University. He worked in the field of architecture and archeology throughout the Republican, Occupation, and Communist periods, contributing to significant works both in China and abroad, such as the Monument to the People’s Heroes and the United Nations Headquarters in New York, as well as writing the first works on the history of Chinese architecture, translating the historical building practices of dynastic China into the language of modern design. Lin Huiyin (b. 1904) was a Chinese poet, novelist, and architect. She was the author of several important works of pre-war fiction, such as Ninety-nine Degrees (1931). Having been denied a degree in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania on account of her gender, Lin went on to attain degrees in Fine Arts and Stage Design. Upon her return to China following the end of World War II, Lin joined the architecture department of Tsinghua University, authoring important texts on traditional and modern Chinese design and supervising graduate projects. She, alongside her husband Liang, contributed to the design for the national emblem, the Beijing Capital Plan, and co-designed the Monument to the People’s Heroes.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Voronin, “О Восстановлении Древнерусских Городов {On the Restoration of Ancient Russian Cities},” Исторический Журнал {Historical Journal} 3 (1945): 56.
Lin and Liang chose to emphasize this line and include it in their translator’s forward: Lin Huiyin 林徽因 and Liang Sicheng 梁思成, “苏联卫国战争被毁地区之重建》译者的体会 {Translators’ Experience of ‘Reconstruction of the Regions Destroyed in the Soviet Patriotic War’}” in 林徽因集：建筑 · 美术 （下）{Lin Huiyin Collection: Architecture and Art} (Beijing: 人民文学出版社 {People’s Literature Publishing House} (2014), 356.
N. N. Voronin, Rebuilding the Liberated Areas of the Soviet Union (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1945), 13.
Liangyong Wu, Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing: A Project in the Ju’er Hutong Neighbourhood (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), chapter 2; and Jianfei Zhu, Architecture of Modern China: A Historical Critique (London: Routledge, 2013), chapter 4. Here I refer to the rejection of Liang and Chen Zhanxiang’s plan for Beijing (to which Lin was a contributor and advocate), To be fair, this plan was not merely rejected because of Lin’s involvement, but also for its vision of an administrative center at the periphery of the city. Another early Lin project that was similarly rejected on artistic grounds was her design of the Chinese National Emblem, which was deemed too abstract and bourgeois. Perhaps more indicative of Lin’s relegation to cultural thinker over designer is her involvement in the Asia-Pacific Peace Conference in 1951. Whereas Yang Tingbao designed the hotel for the delegates and Liang the meeting space, Lin was merely invited to present on classical Chinese cloisonné. Most importantly, she was not afforded the same responsibilities as Liang, something that colored her entire career and persisted after the revolution. There was also the reality of reproductive work in her own life, wherein, despite worsening tuberculosis, she was tasked with caring for hers and Liang’s children while he pursued architecture at the highest echelons of the Communist Party. See her letters to Wilma Fairbank for her most explicit critiques of gendered reproductive work within her own life, and how it inhibited her political and design work, in Xiao Chen 若萍, “一代才女林徽因 {The Talented Lady of Her Generation},” 读书 {Reading in Chinese}10 (October 1984): 113–21.
Alexander Alexandrovich Formozov “Роль Н.Н. Воронина в защите памятников культуры России {The Role of N.N. Voronin in the Protection of Russian Cultural Monuments} Российская Археология {Russian Archaeology} 2 (2004): 176.
Formozov, “The Role of N.N. Voronin in the Protection of Russian Cultural Monuments,” 174.
Formozov, “The Role of N.N. Voronin in the Protection of Russian Cultural Monuments,” 176.
This will become clearer in my discussion below of the contents of Rebuilding, but Formozov similarly assesses the goals of Voronin’s published works during the late 1940s, see: Formozov, “The Role of N.N. Voronin in the Protection of Russian Cultural Monuments,” 175-76.
“Books and Articles on Russia Published in 1945,” The Russian Review 5, No. 2 (Spring 1946): 119.
Sergey Vladimirovich Bakhrushin “Воронин, Н. Н. К Истории Сельского Поселения Феодальной Руси {N. N. Voronin on the History of Feudal Russian Settlements},” Историк-Марксист {Marxist-Historian} 6, no. 58 (1936): 191–94.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 76, 26.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 21, 48.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 48.
Bakhrushin, “N. N. Voronin on the History of Feudal Russian Settlements,” 193.
Indeed we can see how Voronin’s chronology adopts the most Hegelian tendencies of the young Marx (as rendered through Stalin). I’m speaking here of early Marx’s nebulous formulation of primitive communism in relation to feudalism, but more relevant is Stalin’s relatively mechanistic or “economistic” adoption of this chronology, e.g.: “The slave system would be senseless, stupid and unnatural under modern conditions. But under the conditions of a disintegrating primitive communal system, the slave system is a quite understandable and natural phenomenon, since it represents an advance on the primitive communal system,” Joseph Stalin, “1938: Dialectical and Historical Materialism,” trans. M., Marxists.org, September 1938, ➝.
Leopoldina Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction: Housework, Prostitution, Labor and Capital, trans. Jim Fleming (Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia, 1995), 10.
Alexandra Kollontai, “The Labour of Women in the Evolution of the Economy,” trans. Alix Holt, Marxists.org, 1921, ➝. While Stalinism led to a regression in the social status of women and an abandonment of this early revolutionary goal, it is important to note that in the period of Rebuilding’s writing, due to the German invasion and the sheer scope of Nazi military executions, women made up half the agrarian work force, and a new generation of Soviet feminists, like laborer-journalist L. E. Karaseva, used the moment to deconstruct concepts of gendered labor. While indeed Voronin was more likely responding to the critiques that appeared in academic journals, it is important to note that his early works, which reified traditional structures, were published precisely in the moment of Stalinist purges, and that the devastation of the 1940s yielded contradictory messages. These feminist critiques are important in articulating Lin’s critique, which, while contemporaneous with Voronin’s text, unfolded amid the early, experimental years of the Chinese Revolution, much like Kollantai’s early feminist critiques.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 25.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 70, emphasis is my own.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 50.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 47, 25.
Voronin, “On the Restoration,” 56.
Voronin, “On the Restoration,” 56.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 78.
See Yang Tingbao’s influential piece in the Journal of Architecture (founded by Liang), in which Yang (perhaps the most successful early PRC architect and, at times, Liang’s chief competitor), lays out some implicit critiques of Liang’s historical preservationism through the confusion of the term “fugu” (复古). See Yang Tingbao “解放后在建筑设计中存在几个问题 {A few Problems Persisting in Post-Liberation Architecture},” 建筑学报 {Journal of Architecture} 9 (1956): 51-53; and Liang and Lin’s contribution to the debate, Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, and Mo Zongjiang, “中国建筑发展的历史阶段 {Historical Stages of the Development of Chinese Architecture},” 建筑学报 {Journal of Architecture} 2 (1954): 108-121; and Liang Sicheng, “中国建筑的特徵 {Characteristics of Chinese Architecture},” 建筑学报 {Journal of Architecture} 1 (1954): 36-39.
Lin and Liang, “Translator’s Experience,” 353.
Lin Huiyin，“现代住宅设计的参考 {Modern Residential Design References},” 中国营造学社汇刋 {The Society for Research in Chinese Architecture Bulletin}, no. 2 (October 1945).
Lin, “Modern Residential Design,” 270.
This acceptance of private property, however, is due to the context she is discussing (the US and UK). She does indeed critique the system of private property: “Because the UK is a deeply rooted capitalist country and cannot drastically address this issue from a socialist economic standpoint…” However, she does not take this critique much further, partially to focus on a scientific investigation of her case study and partially perhaps to hedge, or at least take nothing off the table as the political regime in China at the time was very much in flux. Lin, “Modern Residential Design,” 271.
See for instance: Nelson Mota Libero, “From House to Home: Social Control and Emancipation in Portuguese Public Housing, 1926-1976,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 78, no. 2 (June 2019): 208-226.
Lin, “Modern Residential Design,” 271-72.
Lin, “Modern Residential Design,” 272.
Lin, “Modern Residential Design,” 270-72.
Lin, “Modern Residential Design.”
Lin and Liang, “Translators’ Experience.”
Lin and Liang, “Translators’ Experience,” 353.
For the consolidation and nationalization of design decisions at the start of the revolution, see Zhu, Architecture of Modern China, chapter 4. This claim refers to this consolidation as well as what Lin and Liang saw as the politicization of architecture and the intervention of bureaucrats in design decisions (notably in regard to capital planning, see footnote 4), which, on the one hand, held political promise but, on the other hand, tended to ignore the contested history of architecture and its internal debates on politics and style.
Zhu, Architecture of Modern China, 355.
Zhu, Architecture of Modern China, 354-55.
Zhu, Architecture of Modern China, 356. By economic planning, I mean the degree of intentional measures (and successes) demonstrated by early price controls, land-leasing, small-scale collectivization within Mutual Aid Teams, and distribution; see: Nicholas Lardy, “Economic Recovery and the First Five Year Plan,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. Roderick MacFarquhuar and John Fairbank, vol. 14 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 144–83.
Lin and Liang, “Translators’ Experience,” 354.
Lin and Liang, “Translators’ Experience.”
Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction, 8.
Fortunati, The Arcane of Reproduction, 10.
Lin Huiyin, “对戴念慈《历史遗产》等的批注 {Annotations on Dai Nianci’s ‘Historical Heritage,’ Etc.},” in Lin Huiyin Collection, 419.
Peter G. Rowe and Seng Kuan, Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 124.
Lin and Liang, “Translators’ Experience,” 357.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 78. Voronin uses the word “genuine,” so authenticity is used here in apostrophes to avoid the awkwardness of “genuine-ness.”
Voronin, Rebuilding, 356.
Voronin, Rebuilding, 355, emphasis mine. “Articulate” is taken with some poetic license to capture the meaning of the Chinese “都是互相影响的,” which literally means “all {of which} are mutually influenced by,” but which in this text is explicitly meant to suggest that each building within a landscape affects and is affected by the others. While not quite a direct application of the Marxian notion of “articulation,” my use here is meant to hint at a dynamic of inter-determination comprising both “superstructural” and “base” elements that is similarly well captured by “articulation” (in the common sense) as meaning both a speech-act and a connection of segmented parts.
