Once Upon a China

Name: Once Upon a China
Brand: Taylor & Francis
SKU: 9781138224438
Price: 63.99 NZD
Availability: InStock

By CJ Lim and Steve McCloy

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Summary

Once Upon a China offers an inventive architectural narrative inspired by four classic Chinese novels: Dream of the Red Mansion, Journey to the West, The Water Margin, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Each chapter explores themes central to Chinese identity—domesticity, consumerism, democracy and adaptability—through the lens of these seminal works. The book uses comic-style drawings to reinterpret architectural concepts, blending fragmented, sequential visuals with rich cultural stories to reimagine the built environment and its cultural significance.
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Format: Paperback / softback

$63⁹⁹

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Once Upon a China

$63⁹⁹

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Ideal for readers interested in arts and culture, particularly those curious about Chinese history, architectural theory, and innovative graphic storytelling techniques.

Once Upon a China is an unconventional architectural story of great beauty, empathy, honour and sadness. The chapters are ingenious re-imaginations of ‘Dream of the Red Mansion’, ‘Journey to the West ’, ‘The Water Margin’, and ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’, and are conceived as specific themes of Chinese identity.

Description

Once Upon a China is an unconventional architectural story of great beauty, empathy, honour, and sadness. The chapters are ingenious reimaginations of Dream of the Red Mansion, Journey to the West, The Water Margin, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and are conceived as specific themes of Chinese identity: domesticity, consumerism, democracy, and adaptability.

These four seminal pre-modern fictions contain diverse voices and philosophical perspectives on history as well as satires that have defined past developments of Chinese societies, politics, and the built environment.

Comics is an unorthodox but extraordinary medium for architectural speculations. The eccentric characteristics of comic-inspired drawings in this book enrich the processes of conception and conceptualisation of design – their fragmented yet sequential nature proves versatile in the imagination of spatial experiences, enabling the complex stories of place, brief, and building to materialise.

At the same time, the politicisation of architecture through comics engenders a sense of optimism to reappraise Chinese design futures and critical thinking beyond the exuberance of non-contextual Western capitalist models.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781138224438

Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 16 April 2021

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Routledge

Illustration: 247 Line drawings, black and white; 247 Illustrations, black and white

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Width: 123.0mm

Height: 186.0mm

Weight: 443g

Pages: 328

Collections

Arts & Culture CJ Lim Education & Reference Non-Fiction Science & Nature Steve McCloy

About the Author

CJ Lim is the Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at The Bartlett UCL and founder of Studio 8 Architects. He has held a long preoccupation with architectural storytelling, exploring how narratives from literature, history, politics and humanity can inform the innovation of resilient architecture and cities. His other authored books published by Routledge include ‘Short Stories: London in two-and-a-half dimensions’ (2011), ‘Food City’ (2014), ‘Inhabitable Infrastructures: Science fiction or urban future?’ (2017) and ‘Smartcities, Resilient Landscapes and Eco-warriors’ (2019).

Steve McCloy is a practicing architect based in London and co-founder of McCloy + Muchemwa. He has worked on a wide variety of projects from public installations and private homes to civic buildings, polar research stations and sustainable urban developments. He has a long-standing association with Studio 8 Architects.