INTRODUCTION
Each session we will focus on a specific concept that is key to the development of modern architecture in the English speaking context and to clarify the relevance of this concept to the Chinese audience. We have identified these concepts and groups of associated key words on the basis that first of all they are difficult to translate into the Chinese discourse on architecture, and secondly, how they are used and understood are often ambiguous or misinterpreted. Sometimes these words show a clear departure from their original meanings in the English speaking context. In this space of departure, these words and their translated sense in Chinese would require a critical understanding across this change of language and cultural contexts.
The central question that we will continue to ask ourselves throughout this workshop is how to come to terms with the sense of ‘modern’ in contemporary Chinese architecture.
China is borrowing and at the same time inventing its own concept of ‘modern’ as part of her own discourse on contemporary architecture. It is the task of the workshop to investigate the new architectural significance of these concepts and terms in nowadays China. This is why instead of dwelling on matters of linguistic translation, we wish to open up a space of conceptual translation of these words by clarifying how they can be understood by the Chinese audience.
We will introduce each group of words by references to architectural statements either in architectural writings or as design projects. These are what we would use as markers of specific concepts in the contemporary discourses and practices of English-speaking context. These markers would appear to be quite familiar examples to Chinese architects in general, and to some extent raise contentious issues both professionally and academically. Our discussions will oscillate between two different cultural contexts, and this process would enable us to address miss-interpretations and appropriations across translation can be rich grounds of open interpretation and locations of new meanings in emergent discourses of contemporary Chinese architecture.