The impact of foreign building traditions on Chinese architecture had been limited until the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, dramatic changes in construction occurred as the result of the introduction of Western architectural practice and methods of architectural history, as China transformed from an imperial society to a republic to a communist state. In Chinese Architectural History in the Twenty-First Century, Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt examines the state of architectural history in China at the end of the twentieth century and the impact that recent social and cultural transformations are likely to have on the field in the future.

The National Central Museum in Nanjing (1935–48) was co-designed by the most distinguished architectural historian in twentieth-century China—Liang Sicheng. It has long been regarded, however, as a representative work of “conservative revivalism” in modern Chinese architectural history. Idealizing a Chinese Style: Rethinking Early Writings on Chinese Architecture and...

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