Chinese Renaissance Architecture in China and Hong Kong

Abstract

Chinese Renaissance Architecture represents the vision of China’s first-generation Western-trained modern architects to create an architectural identity for the New China. Fuelled by the optimism and idealism of post-revolution Republican China, these architects launched the first modern architectural movement in China’s history. While it was a bold attempt to modernize and rejuvenate Chinese architecture through an architectural language that combined the desire for Chinese aesthetic tradition and Western construction technology, the movement’s nationalistic aesthetics became its Achilles heel, and rendered it unsustainable in a globalized modern world.