The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has unveiled an ambitious new research initiative and institutional collaboration with M in Hong Kong, titled "How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949-1979." This comprehensive project seeks to reframe architectural histories of modernism during the first three decades of the People's Republic of China, examining how design operated under shifting ideologies and socioeconomic pressures through the perspectives of architects, institutions, and residents.
The multi-faceted project is presented through an exhibition in the CCA's Main Galleries running from November 20, 2025, to April 5, 2026, alongside commissioned films and oral history videos by artist Wang Tuo, online editorial content, public programming, and a companion book co-published by the CCA and M BOOKS. This collection of content aims to reveal how design functioned during a period of dramatic political and social transformation in China.
The research project aligns with the CCA's ongoing commitment to producing new interpretations of modern architecture across different sociopolitical contexts and geographical frameworks. Previous related projects include "Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War" (2011) and "Building a new New World: Amerikanizm in Russian Architecture" (2020). These initiatives demonstrate the institution's dedication to interrogating the political forces that shape how architecture is created, utilized, and interpreted.
The "How Modern" project challenges prevailing assumptions about architectural development in China during the era between the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and the Reform and Opening Up period beginning in 1979. During these three decades, architecture served as an essential instrument in shaping the state's vision of socialist modernity. However, the CCA's curatorial approach questions the widespread notion that modern architecture development in China was stunted or virtually non-existent during this period.
This research initiative directly confronts what the curators identify as "persistent misconceptions and narrow assumptions" about Chinese architecture of this era. These include beliefs that nationalization and collectivization eliminated architects' creative agency, that projects prioritized industrial productivity over design quality, and that the state's emphasis on developing a "national style" severely limited diversity of architectural expression. The project serves as a historiographic exercise, reconsidering these assumptions by highlighting the varied conditions under which modernism was conceived, realized, and experienced.
The research explores three central questions about how architects responded to cycles of political, cultural, and social transformation during these crucial decades. It examines how political power was exercised to facilitate social betterment, how a new culture of inventiveness emerged through the adaptation of architectural precedents, and how the spirit of the times was embodied through the use of industrial technology. By identifying how principles of the Modern Movement were accepted, rejected, or adapted in New China, the project conceptualizes modernism not as a rigid framework but as a dynamic field shaped by purpose, economy, and political will, even under constraining conditions.
The project is organized around three thematic categories that provide structure for understanding this complex period. "Agency" examines the shifting and often intersecting degrees of agency exercised by the state, architects, and architecture itself, particularly within systems of collectivized design and mass resource mobilization. "Industry" investigates how architects adapted to the realities of China's transition toward socialist industrialization, with its emphasis on standardization, scientific rationalization, economy, and productivity. "Style" reconsiders both the intention and dominance of the "national style" by presenting the stratified realities that gave rise to heterogeneous formal experiments and expressions both domestically and internationally.
The exhibition component was curated by Shirley Surya, Curator of Design and Architecture at M in Hong Kong, working in collaboration with Li Hua, Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the School of Architecture, Southeast University in Nanjing, along with members of the curatorial and editorial teams at both the CCA and M. The exhibition assembles archival documentation, propaganda posters, and selected artworks from personal and institutional holdings, largely drawn from the M Collections, as well as specially commissioned films representing key architectural sites, practices, concepts, and figures across the three-decade period.
Designed by Johnston Marklee with graphic design by Alan Woo, the exhibition presents to the public specific social and cultural microhistories of modern architecture that are not necessarily evident in purely textual historical sources. By foregrounding documentation of architectural production across various media formats, it reveals the complex lived experiences behind major architectural projects of the era.
These lived stories are significantly expanded through a series of commissioned films and oral history videos by artist Wang Tuo, who was selected for his reputation for weaving together historical facts, cultural archives, fiction, and mythology into speculative narratives. The film series, titled "Intensity in Ten Cities," captures ten significant architectural sites built between 1949 and 1979 across China, providing intimate glimpses into diverse architectural typologies and their social contexts.
The ten featured sites include a popular park in Hangzhou, a former agricultural commune in Shanxi province, a former iron and steel mill and an apartment complex designed for collective living in Beijing, a university auditorium, workers' housing, and an exhibition hall in Shanghai, a water pavilion and a hotel in Guangzhou, and a scenic site in Guilin. These films introduce the "social biographies" of architectural projects and examine the various agents involved, including the state, officials, architects, workers, and inhabitants, framing the project of building socialism not simply as a monolithic, top-down phenomenon, but as a complex process shaped through everyday practices.
The selection of sites deliberately reflects the plurality and tensions that characterized architectural production during this period, highlighting the dynamic relationships between agency and control, scarcity and abundance, policy and practice, competition and collaboration, craft and standardization, and the impact of both domestic and foreign relations. The commissioned films and videos will become permanent parts of the CCA Collection, ensuring their preservation for future research.
The comprehensive dissemination strategy for "How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949-1979" extends beyond the physical exhibition to include online editorial content and public programming that further invite reflection on how overlooked histories can open new frameworks for understanding the political and cultural agency of design. This multifaceted approach is captured in a companion book co-published by the CCA and M BOOKS, edited by Surya and Li and designed by Sonja Zagermann, which is now available for online purchase.
The project represents part of the CCA's broader commitment to examining contemporary architectural practice and its historical foundations. Other recent CCA projects include the three-part film and exhibition series "Groundwork," which explores how contemporary architects cultivate alternative modes of practice to address the current ecological crisis. This series follows various architects including DnA's Xu Tiantian as she ventures "Into the Island" of Meizhou, China, examines bplus.xyz's HouseEurope! European Citizens' Initiative, and documents Carla Juaçaba's process in designing community pavilions in Brazil, demonstrating the institution's continued commitment to understanding architecture's role in addressing contemporary global challenges.
