Can I read Ephemeral China/Handmade China on EtoBox?

Ephemeral China/Handmade China by Xing Ruan is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Ephemeral China/Handmade China about?

A China that is in a frenzied state of economic boom and potential social instability, which is most vividly represented in its architectural and urban developments, is, I hope I will convince you, ephemeral. A quite different China, perhaps is not so visible as its new buildings and cities, is metaphorically ‘handmade’. I should like to extend the meanings of the handmade to the more stable and long lasting attitudes towards social life, and even mortality. My sources for the second China are partially from literature (not from architecture). With the construction boom since the mid-1990s, mainstream Western architectural journals and galleries have been racing to expose new architecture in China; celebrity Western architects have been winning major commissions in China: the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is a case in point. The sheer quantity and speed of China’s development, as evidenced in architecture and urbanisation, causes an ‘unbearable lightness of being’ (to paraphrase Milan Kundera). Does all this then suggest that China, as solidified in its buildings and cities, is no longer ‘handmade’ in the sense that memory and a sense of history are redundant (particularly for a count

Author

Xing Ruan

Publisher

Footprint: Delft School of Design Journal

Published

2008

Language

EN