Routledge Handbook of Chinese Architecture

Jianfei, Zhu , Chen, Wei , Li, Hua

This handbook, representing the collaboration of 40 scholars, provides a multi-faceted exploration of roughly 6,000 years of Chinese architecture, from ancient times to the present.

This volume combines a broad-spectrum approach with a thematic framework for investigating Chinese architecture, integrating previously fragmented topics and combining the scholarship of all major periods of Chinese history. By organizing its approach into five parts, this handbook:

• Traces the practices and traditions of ancient China from imperial authority to folk culture
• Unveils a rich picture of early modern and republican China, revealing that modernization was already beginning to emerge
• Describes the social, intellectual, ideological, and formal enterprises of socialist architecture
• Frames a window on a complex and changing contemporary China by focusing on autonomy, state practices, and geopolitics of design, ultimately identifying its still evolving position on the world stage
• Examines the existing cultural and political theories to highlight potential avenues for future transformations in Chinese architecture that also retain Chinese identity

Providing a pioneering combination of ancient and modern Chinese architecture in one coherent study, this book is a must-read for scholars, students, and educators of Chinese architecture, architectural history and theory, and the architecture of Asia.