Identity: Towards A Reflexive Regionalist Practice of Architecture

Li Xiaodong, Professor, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University.

Chair: Jeremy Melvin, Curator, World Architecture Festival

I have no intention here to promote the ‘form’ as a blueprint. It, at most, opens up possibilities. This is why that I dare not to use the word “contemporary Chinese architecture” to describe my practice, but “reflexive regionalist architecture”. Here, to be “reflexive” as in ‘dialogue with’ a situation, through which, an objective understanding of the situation could be established; to be “regional” is here different from the ‘picturesque’ or, ‘iconic’ regionalist architecture (by which, architecture was understood as a tool to demonstrate a cultural presence as a fixed entity), what I have been proposing is to understand the “regional” as comprehensive, dynamic and sustainable ‘condition’ of place – a tabula rasa, that solutions could be based on and emerged from.

This episode was recorded at WAF 2018.

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