Shirley Surya

Title of dissertation: Mediating an Architecture of Autonomy, Authorship & Auteurism in China Since 1995

The ‘mediation’ — phenomena between the production and consumption of architecture that inscribe meanings on the discipline — of architectural production in mainland China in the global site of architectural–cultural production (publications, exhibitions and events), particularly since the national privatisation of the practice in 1995, suggests 
a mythologising of modern Chinese architecture. The subject has largely been represented by the works of a recurring few — practices founded by Chang Yungho, Liu Jiakun, Ma Qingyun, Wang Shu and Zhang Lei — instead of other players behind the building phenomenon, like the state-affiliated design institutes. The motivation, mechanism and effects of such mediation have revealed consistent notions related to independence from an authoritative structure, a discursive practice through knowledge production, and an idiosyncratic artistic practice that characterised not only how these practices were mediated, but also reasons for their mediation.

Testing the limits and potentials of these mediated conceptions against day-to-day operations and design output has both questioned and affirmed the mediated qualities ascribed to these selected practices, while revealing the forces that brought about the inevitability, and necessity, of such mediation. It presents the need for the architect’s deft engagement with multiple levels of socio-economic and cultural forces within and outside China, as well as the inextricable link between mediation and institution, the material and social, the local and global.