Routledge Handbook of Chinese Architecture

<p>This handbook representing the collaboration of 40 scholars provides a multi-faceted exploration of roughly 6000 years of Chinese architecture from ancient times to the present.</p><p>This volume combines a broad-spectrum approach with a thematic framework for investigating Chinese architecture integrating previously fragmented topics and combining the scholarship of all major periods of Chinese history. By organizing its approach into five parts this handbook:</p><ul> <li>Traces the practices and traditions of ancient China from imperial authority to folk culture</li> <li>Unveils a rich picture of early modern and republican China revealing that modernization was already beginning to emerge</li> <li>Describes the social intellectual ideological and formal enterprises of socialist architecture</li> <li>Frames a window on a complex and changing contemporary China by focusing on autonomy state practices and geopolitics of design ultimately identifying its still evolving position on the world stage</li> <li>Examines the existing cultural and political theories to highlight potential avenues for future transformations in Chinese architecture that also retain Chinese identity</li> </ul><p>Providing a pioneering combination of ancient and modern Chinese architecture in one coherent study this book is a must-read for scholars students and educators of Chinese architecture architectural history and theory and the architecture of Asia.</p>