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Chinese Exceptionalism in Architecture and Urban Design Wong

constructing Electronics Tower, “First Tower Economic Zone and a “modernizing agenda”
[7]
[4]
in Shenzhen” (p. 163) . More importantly, (p. 149) . The hotel was the first spatial
she notes the towers work debuted neoliberal interface of foreign exchange and served to
work contracts with employees, as well as “a facilitate foreign direct investment. The
variable pay system and floating wages” (p. demand for these spaces however initiated
166) [4] that quickly assumed local and many scales and levels of reform. For
national importance as a precedent of labor example, joint ventures between the Chinese
conditions. She acutely reads that the rise of state and foreign companies were allowed to
tower typology accompanied an emergent facilitate funding of projects, while
financial model that spearheaded labor foreigners/overseas Chinese could participate
exploitation, spelling an “end of the both through investments and expertise in
[4]
communist Iron Rice Bowl policy” (p. 167) architecture and finance. Famously, diasporic
both within and beyond architecture. architect I. M. Pei made ideological
Du’s discussion on authorship followed departures in building the Fragrant Hill Hotel
a similar logic. Overall, she notes the that risked upsetting reform ideologies. Like
alternative lens of history that deviates from the questions posed by King, hotels in reform
official narratives and popular discourses. In China constituted both the infrastructure of
addition to the ignored perspectives of foreign interactivity and the making of it.
construction workers, she notes that tower as Like Du’s account of construction workers,
a new typology in China also omitted the Roskam notes a similar housing shortage for
contributions of indigenous urban villagers in hotel housekeeping staff, which in addition to
Shenzhen. She uses the example of Kingkey other imbalances in the coastal cities, sparked
Financial Tower (KK100) as a case study of national protests in the late 1980s.
such omission. She ridicules British architect Next, Roskam cites authorship as the
Sir Terry Farrell, who is hailed as the single major contention between Western and
author of this architectural centerpiece. Chinese ideologies. It is known that Western
Instead, she outlines the violence behind the observers would come to admire “an
displacement of Caiwuwei Village, where a alternative development model in action that
house protested vehemently against the neatly aligned with certain aspects of
forced land acquisition as a “nail house” architectural work, including collaborative
(holdout). Subsequently, she argues that teamwork” under late Maoism (p. 61) [7] .
Caiwuwei urban villagers like nail house Under the aftermath of the Cultural
owner Zhang Lianhao, are co-authors to Revolution, architecture in China was moving
Shenzhen’s shinning towers and development. cautiously from being a “collectively made
In her convincing account, she accredits art,” and its architect did not rush to
urban villages for providing timely shelters distinguish themselves from the “laborer and
[7]
for migrant workers in Shenzhen factories (an engineer within a work unit” (p. 63) . In the
appropriate and affordable alternative to poor chapter “Architectural Education and the
workers’ dormitories) during Shenzhen’s Profession,” Roskam shifts the authorship
most ambitious phase of industrializations. from design institutions to private and
Du rejects an advanced capitalist mindset to individual practices. He observes a lack of
owe buildings to single authors like Farrell, authorship to be symptomatic of an
and instead gestures towards an expanded excessively rigid collectivity stemming from
[7]
mode of authorship. “state-run design organs” (p. 216) , and sees
the liberation from them an improved
3.3 Internationalized and privatized condition for creative production. Roskam
architecture in post-socialist China comments how post-reform Chinese practices
Roskam’s chapter “The International Hotel” perform differently than “starchitects”
identifies hotel as an architectural typology rampant in the neoliberal West. He focuses on
concurrent with the rise of the Special the “amateurism” that lingers in the works of

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