|
EXPERTISE
Modern Chinese architectural and planning history, urbanism and urban theory, housing design and neighbourhood planning, architecture and identity, cultural analysis of the built environment in developing countries.
PROFILE
Duanfang Lu is an architect, architectural historian and urbanist who has worked in China, the United States and Australia. She holds a BArch from Tsinghua University, Beijing and PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. She has taught as Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney since 2004.
Lu’s research interests include Chinese architectural and planning history, neighbourhood planning, architecture and globalisation, and Third World modernism. Her research melds new material with new ways of interpretation to study the built environment as a social field with important political implications. She is the author of Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949–2005 (Routledge, 2006). Her published and forthcoming articles appear in edited books and leading scholarly journals such as Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Planning Perspectives, and Journal of Architectural Education. She co-organized an international conference on ‘People in Place in People’ in Sydney in February 2006, and is co-editing a book based on the event (Springer). She is an international editorial advisor for Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, and an invited referee for various journals in spatial disciplines. Her research has been supported by awards and grants including the US Social Science Research Council International Field Research Fellowship (1999–2000), UC Berkeley Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant (2000–2001), Chancellor’s Fellowship for Dissertation Research of UC Berkeley (2001–2002), and the University of Sydney Research and Development Scheme grants in 2005 and 2006. Current research focuses on architecture, modernity and nation building in contemporary China within a global context.
Lu teaches architectural theory, history and design at both graduate and undergraduate level. She serves on 8 doctoral committees and supervises undergraduate students doing research regularly. She leads a Teaching Improvement Fund program which aims to building a collegial research milieu through Faculty-wide workshops and social events in 2006. She also serves as a Faculty representative on research-led teaching and scholarship of teaching.
She is Principal of GZ Architects (co-founded with Gang Gang) and has extensive experience in architectural design and neighbourhood planning. She won the First Prize in Bao’an Central Area ‘Green Axis’ Complex Design Competition, Shenzhen, in 2000 (with Gang Gang). Her work was exhibited at the 2002 Bay Area Architectural Computer Graphic Exhibition in San Francisco. She was invited as a representative from China to comment on global architectural practice by Architecture California in 2003. Most recent design projects include Zijinchanghe Residential Complex (270,000 square metres, Beijing) and Xindao Holiday Residential Complex (100,000 square metres, Beijing).
COURSES TAUGHT
Contemporary Architectural Theories (Graduate)
Architecture and Urbanism in Asia (Graduate)
Architecture, Globalisation and Urbanisation (Graduate)
Architecture, Place and Society (Undergraduate)
Design Practice 2A (Undergraduate design studio)
Design Practice 2B (Undergraduate design studio)
EXCERPTED FROM SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949–2005 (Routledge, 2006)
Click here to download the book flier.
Contents
1 Introduction: Socialist Space, Postcolonial Time PART I: China Modern 2. Travelling Urban Form: The Neighbourhood Unit in China 3. Work Unit Urbanism Part II: Urban Dreams 4. The Socialist Production of Space: Planning, Urban Contradictions and the Politics of Consumption in Beijing, 1949–1965 5. Modernity as Utopia: Planning the People’s Commune, 1958–1960 PART III: Shifting Boundaries 6. The Latency of Tradition: On the Vicissitudes of Walls 7. The New Frontier: Urban Space and Everyday Practice in the Reform Era 8. Epilogue |
The Blurb
Contemporary Chinese urban space is viewed as the product of socialist modernization and Third World scarcity. This volume is an insightful analysis of the urban built environment in the context of a transforming political economy within material constraints. The narrative has a rare insider’s perception and understanding. In the fields of Chinese development and architecture, this is an essential addition.
Reginald Yin-Wang Kwok
Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Hawai’i at Manoa
In her study of the work unit as a socialist concept, living and working environment, and fundamental element of the distinctive morphology of the Maoist city, Duanfang Lu illuminates both space and society. Her nuanced interpretation of the work unit, based on extensive research and utilizing a sophisticated theoretical framework, makes a major contribution to our understanding of the socialist production of space. This book is an important benchmark in the study of Chinese urbanism and urbanization.
Margaret Crawford
Professor of Urban Design and Planning Theory, Harvard University
In this pioneering study of contemporary Chinese urban form, Duanfang Lu provides an analysis of how Chinese society constructed itself through the making and remaking of its built environment. Drawing on archival documents, professional journals and her own fieldwork, she explores hitherto overlooked issues including the history of China’s residential planning paradigms and the development of the work unit as an urban form.
Lu shows how China’s quest for modernity created a perpetual scarcity as both a social reality and a national imagination. Although planners attempted to apply modern planning techniques to the city, the realization of planning ideals was postponed. The conflicting relationship between scarcity and the socialist system created specific spatial strategies. The work unit – the socialist enterprise or institute – gradually developed from workplace to social institution which integrated work, housing and social services. The Chinese city achieved a unique morphology made up in large part of self-contained work units.
Today, when the Chinese city has revealed its many faces, Remaking Chinese Urban Form presents a refreshing panorama of the nation’s mixed experiences with socialist and Third World modernity which is both timely and provocative.
|
Arriving at a time of disorientation in the face of new historical conditions, Fukuyama’s thesis has been well received in popular, post-Cold War political discourse in the West. Yet, in light of the relationship between past and present framed above, I contend that such a view ignores the role of tradition in the making of history, and thus is far from an accurate account of reality. Traditional characteristics of nations do not disappear easily. Some may be held back temporarily during times of political and social change, but like the traumatic experience in Freud’s account, after a latency period, these traditions may resurrect themselves under new conditions, and once again actively participate in shaping, for better or worse, distinctive presents. Therefore, if in Fukuyama’s vision, a quietus has currently descended on history’s long storm, I suggest instead that the debris that has been smashed by the previous storm is more than just a residue: it holds the potential to bring about another storm.
Duanfang Lu (2004) ‘The Latency of Tradition’, in Nezar AlSayyad (ed.), End of Tradition? New York: Routledge, pp. 210–230.
In the essay ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,’ Fredric Jameson identified the disappearance of a sense of history, manifested by a pervasive denial of various ‘depth models,’ as the ‘supreme formal feature’ of postmodernism. Later, he claimed that only a new ‘cognitive mapping,’ which unifies past, present and future, can link contemporary ideological positions with contemporary imagination. As does Jameson, I also maintain that the weakening of historicity will lead to ‘a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense.’ But unlike Jameson, I would advocate a sense of historicity that gives position to localized and plural histories, rather than seeking to construct one grand history which binds distinct narratives together into a linear and centralizing schema. Only when various trajectories of the temporal movement of things are taken into account can people understand the spatial connections between things at any specific moment. One might term this way of seeing space – to paraphrase Jameson – a ‘depth model of space.’
Duanfang Lu (2000) ‘The Changing Landscape of Hybridity: A Reading of Ethnic Identity and Urban Form in Late-Twentieth-Century Vancouver’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 19–28.
SELECTED DESIGN WORK OF GZ ARCHITECTS
Bao’an Central Area ‘Green Axis’ Complex Design Competition, Shenzhen, China, 2000 (first prize)
Zhuzhilin Section Subway Centre design proposal, Shenzhen, China, 2000
Rover Residential Complex, Chengdu, China, 2000–2002
Daheng Technology Building and Zijinchanghe Residential Complex, Beijing, China, 2001–2005 |
- ACADEMIC FACULTY STAFF MEMBERS 
