Historically, the Chinese approach to architecture has been less formally experienced than the West. The Chinese were less concerned with the actual physical construct and more with the inherent hierarchy and social relationships engendered by space. Social order, ritual, and ceremony prevailed. Procession and awareness of ones social position and relative location and movement dictated the built form. For the traditional Chinese, architecture and city is the codification of its patriarchal and hierarchical society.
Today, through Mao’s revolutionary policies to create an egalitarian society and China’s more recent shift toward capitalism as a necessary mean to modernize into the global stage, many of the traditional social values have started to redefine itself. As a consequence of this social phenomenon, compounded by conditions of the contemporary world, one made up of open borders, merged languages, free markets, translational identities, ephemerality, speed, pragmatism, and size; Chinese architecture and cities becomes the new critical forum for intellectual engagement.
In recognition of this, the USC School of Architecture’s pursuit of a global culture and creative future has sparked the American Academy in China (AAC), which provides a scholastic platform to facilitate academic agendas, maximize local resources, map research fields, and to enable communication and collaboration between institutions and scholars of diverse disciplines. The AAC is uniquely set up to accumulate knowledge gained with each academic offering and seeks to expand its academic offerings. The AAC is part of USC’s ever-expanding China program, providing endless possibilities for international scholars, students, academics, researchers, and patrons of the arts and architecture to examine China’s culture.