Automated system test schedule

Abstract

This paper investigates the pedagogical reforms in the early 21th century architecture education in China not only as a resistance to the ideologized functionalism in mainstream education system, but as the promoter of a university-affiliated production mode for the emerging experimental architects against the state-owned design institutes. Around year 2000, three revolutionary architectural programs were established at Peking University, Nanjing University and China Academy of Art by reformers struggling against the orthodox Beaux-Arts doctrines. Influenced by overseas education experiences, these architect-professors established curriculums based on modernist and experimental ideology. While unlicensed, independent architects were unable to get commissions and the new architecture schools were marginalized, the reformers were able to test their design philosophy on the university projects which differ drastically from the dogmatically functionalist projects mass-produced by the design institutes. Their works quickly attracted foreign curators and scholars, who discussed the pedagogical reforms in a series of exhibition literature and periodicals, while the conventional, mainstream education programs were seldom mentioned overseas. The wide publicity both affected the architectural education and practice that further developed into the recognized “contemporary Chinese architecture” today. This paper looks into the media exposure of these revolutionary architectural programs in overseas exhibition publications and periodicals which reveal the self-sustaining architectural production model necessitated by the co-dependence between independent architect-professors and their home institutions. Through an analysis of the establishment, the development and the promotion of the pedagogical reforms, the paper concerns with: first, what the high media-awareness of the reformers informs about their architectural practices and their pedagogical ideas.