The MIT Press Series

Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China

by Peter G. Rowe and Seng Kuan

Published 15 April 2002

Built around snatches of discussion overheard in a Beijing design studio, this book explores attitudes toward architecture in China since the opening of the Treaty Ports in the 1840s. Central to the discussion are the concepts of ti and yong, or "essence" and "form," Chinese characters that are used to define the proper arrangement of what should be considered modern and essentially Chinese. Ti and yong have gone through various transformations - for example, from "Chinese learning for essential principles and Western learning for practical application" to "socialist essence and cultural form" and an almost complete reversal to "modern essence and Chinese form."
The book considers such subjects as cultural developments in China in response to the forced opening to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, the return of overseas-educated Chinese architects, foreign influences on Chinese architecture, the controversy over the use of "big roofs" and other sinicizing aspects of Chinese architecture in the 1950s, the hard economic conditions of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution - when architecture was almost abandoned - and the beginning of reform and opening up to the outside world in the late 1970s and 1980s. Finally, it looks at the present socialist market economy and Chinese architecture during the still incomplete process of modernisation.

Design Thinking

by Peter G. Rowe

Published 1 September 1986

In Design Thinking Peter Rowe provides a systematic account of the process of designing in architecture and urban planning. He examines multiple and often dissimilar theoretical positions whether they prescribe forms or simply provide procedures for solving problems—as particular manifestations of an underlying structure of inquiry common to all designing. Over 100 illustrations and a number of detailed observations of designers in action support Rowe's thesis.

Civic Realism

by Peter G. Rowe

Published 1 June 1997

A study of the shape and appearance of civic places and the social, political, and cultural circumstances that bring them into existence.

A civic place belongs to everyone and yet to nobody in particular. In Civic Realism, Peter G. Rowe looks at the shape and appearance of civic places, and at the social, political, and cultural circumstances that bring them into existence. The book is as much about the making and reshaping of civic places as it is about urban architecture per se. According to Rowe, the best civic place-making occurs across the divide between the state and civil society. By contrast, the alternatives are not very attractive. On the one side are state-sponsored edifices and places of authoritarian nature. On the other are the exclusive enclaves of corporate-dominated urban and suburban environments.