NYU MA IN HISTORICAL AND SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE: EDWARD DENNISON (UCL), “A Critical History of Early-Modern Architecture in China: Exploring the Contexts of Modernist History, Current Theory, Heritage Approaches, and the Anthropocene”

https://nyu.zoom.us/j/95831656657
This presentation will introduce China’s encounter with architectural modernity up to the advent of communism in 1949 as a way to critically reflect on theoretical, racial, ecological and other debates within and beyond the heritage industry in the Anthropocene.

More than most places in the world, China presents a compelling case for multiple modernities. With revolution transforming China’s social and political landscape in the first half of the twentieth century, over five different types of foreign settlement on sovereign Chinese territory (including over 60 different treaty ports), the mediating role of Japan, and the cosmopolitan experiences of China’s artists and intellectuals, art practices in China confronted unprecedented change and cultivated entirely new modes of thought and expression that have been largely overlooked in modern history at local, national and global scales. This presentation reflects on this seminal experience as a way of exposing and seeking to resolve structural prejudices in modernist historiography from the twentieth century that have a profound impact on heritage practice in the twenty-first century.

Edward Denison is Professor of Architecture and Global Modernities at The Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), where he is also Director of the MA Architecture and Historic Urban Environments. His research focuses on sustainability, heritage and architectural historiography and modernity outside ‘the west’. He has worked on a variety of research and heritage projects in different global contexts, including Asia, Africa and Europe, where he advises on heritage theory and practice. In 2016 and 2017, he won the RIBA President’s Medal for Research for his work on the UNESCO World Heritage Nomination of Asmara, the modernist capital of Eritrea, and for his work on Ultra-Modernism in Manchuria, respectively. Publications include ‘Architecture and the Landscape of Modernity in China before 1949’ (Routledge, 2017); ‘Ultra-Modernism – Architecture and Modernity in Manchuria’ (HKUP, 2017); ‘Luke Him Sau, Architect: China’s Missing Modern’ (Wiley, 2014); ‘The Life of the British Home’ (Wiley, 2012); ‘McMorran & Whitby’ (RIBA, 2009); ‘Modernism in China: Architectural Visions and Revolutions’ (Wiley, 2008); ‘Building Shanghai: The Story of China’s Gateway’ (Wiley, 2006); and ‘Asmara – Africa’s Secret Modernist City’ (Merrell, 2003).
Sponsored by the NYU M.A. in Historical and Sustainable Architecture and the Society of Architectural Historians, New York Metropolitan Chapter
https://events.nyu.edu/event/285677-1