Still of the former Sino-Soviet Friendship Building, Shanghai, 1955, from Intensity in Ten Cities, a film by Wang Tuo commissioned by the CCA and M+, Hong Kong, 2025. CCA © Wang Tuo

How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949–1979 is a research project organised by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal, in collaboration with M+ Museum in Hong Kong. It reframes architectural histories and experiences of modernism in the three decades between the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the later Reform and Opening Up. Drawing on the perspectives of architects, institutions, and inhabitants of the buildings, it shows how architectural production was carried out during a period of shifting ideologies and socio-economic pressures. The exhibition is curated by Shirley Surya, Curator, Design and Architecture, M+, in collaboration with Li Hua, Professor, Architectural History and Theory at School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing, and members of the curatorial and editorial teams at M+ and CCA.
The project and exhibition comprise three thematic categories: ‘Agency’ presents the shifting and often intersecting degrees of agency exercised by the state, architects, and architecture, especially within systems of collectivised design and mass resource mobilisation. ‘Industry’ looks at how architects adapted to the multifaceted realities of China’s pivot to socialist industrialisation and its emphasis on standardisation, scientific rationalisation, economy, and productivity. And finally, ‘Style’ reconsiders the intention and dominance of the ‘national style’ by presenting the stratified realities that led to diverse formal experiments and expressions locally and abroad.

Construction of Tiananmen Square and surrounding areas in Beijing, ca. 1950s. Chang Tsong Zung Johnson

How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949–1979 assembles archival documents, propaganda posters, artworks from the M+ Collections along with loans from personal and institutional holdings, and newly commissioned films to represent significant architectural sites, practices, concepts, and figures across these three decades. By highlighting the documentation of architectural production in this period in a variety of media, it sheds light on the social and cultural microhistories specific to modern architecture that are not revealed by purely textual historical sources.

People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, East Entrance Colonnade of the Great Hall of the People, 1959. Hand-painted colour photograph. M+, Hong Kong © All rights reserved. Image courtesy of M+, Hong Kong

The selected case studies also reflect the plurality and tensions—between agency and control, scarcity and abundance, policy and practice, competition and collaboration, craft and standardisation, and the impact of domestic and foreign relations—that characterised architectural production in this period. Collectively, these case studies frame the project of building socialism not just as a monolithic, top-down phenomenon, but as a process worked out in everyday practices that engaged the senses and creative will of citizens.

Liang Sicheng, Zuguo de Jianzhu [Architecture of the Motherland] (China National Asso-ciation for the Popularization of Science and Technology, 1954)

Together with M+, CCA commissioned Beijing-based artist Wang Tuo, winner of the Sigg Prize 2023 organised by M+, to put lived histories at the centre of How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949–1979. Wang’s work is known for interweaving historical facts, cultural archives, fiction, and mythology into speculative narratives. In Intensity in Ten Cities, a series of films and oral histories, Wang looks at ten significant architectural sites built between 1949 and 1979 across China, including a popular park in Hangzhou, a former agricultural commune in Shanxi province, a former iron and steel mill as well as an apartment tower built for collective living in Beijing, amongst others. Bringing together fact and fiction, the personal and the historical, in a narrative about love, architecture, and politics, Wang reveals the tensions and layers that characterised architectural production in China during this era, and how these architectural sites continue to frame collective memories and experiences today.

“Ugly architecture. Some architects blindly worship the formalist styles of Western bourgeois design. As a result, grotesque and reactionary buildings like the Lingnan Cultural Palace in Guangzhou have appeared.”

Manhua 44 (1954). CL.2017.4.36, M+, Hong Kong

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, says, ‘How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949–1979 exemplifies M+’s commitment to advancing critical research and expanding the narratives of visual culture in Asia and beyond. As a museum that aims to foster deeper understanding of the region’s nuanced cultural histories, we see this project as a meaningful contribution to architectural discourse, one that foregrounds lived experience, historical complexity, and creative agency. Our collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture reflects the importance of cross-institutional partnerships in generating new knowledge and presenting underexplored perspectives. M+ continues to support scholarship that challenges established frameworks and enriches public engagement with design and architecture.’
Giovanna Borasi, Director and Chief Curator, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, says, ‘How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949–1979 responds to our curiosity in producing new readings of modern architecture across different sociopolitical contexts and geographical frameworks. Uncovering the relationships between ideology, policy, and the built environment, and documenting the role that architects play both in advancing and challenging them, is at the core of much of CCA’s work. This project was also conceived as a test: an institutional collaboration combining expertise and resources in Hong Kong and Montréal. I’m convinced that this project would not have been possible if we had worked alone. We thank M+ for the gratifying and fruitful collaboration. In a world in which open dialogues are becoming more difficult to maintain, and in which organisations are becoming more closed-in, this kind of collaboration exemplifies the possibility of building new narratives together.’

Guilin Architectural Design Office, Perspective drawing of Reed Flute Cave waterfront pavilion, Guilin, ca. 1975. Drawing. Urban Construction Archive of Guilin

Shirley Surya, Curator, Design and Architecture, M+, and Li Hua, Professor, Architectural History and Theory at School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing say, ‘How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949–1979 offers an opportunity to reconsider the architectural developments in China between 1949 and 1979 beyond a framework of modernism that prioritises professional autonomy, formal tropes like transparency or a flat roof, and the rejection of traditional forms. The project reevaluates how architects attended to cycles of political, cultural, and social transformation during these three decades. How was political power used to improve social wellbeing? How did a new culture of inventiveness emerge from employing architectural precedents? And how was the spirit of the times embodied in the use of industrial technology? By identifying how principles of the Modern Movement were accepted, rejected, or adapted in New China, the exhibition accounts for modernism’s diverse manifestations across varying historical and geopolitical contexts. This inquiry is timely, as it invites reflection on how architecture continues to apply values of purpose and economy through a strong political will, even under limiting conditions.’

The exhibition is designed by Johnston Marklee (Los Angeles) with graphic design by Alan Woo (Berlin). It includes a series of commissioned films and oral history videos by artist Wang Tuo (Beijing), online editorial content, public programming, and a companion book co-published by the CCA and M BOOKS (Weimar), edited by Surya and Li, and designed by Sonja Zagermann (Zurich).

About the Exhibition

Dates: 20 November 2025 to 5 April 2026

Venue: Main Galleries, Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)

Curator: Shirley Surya, M+, Hong Kong

Research: Li Hua, Southeast University, Nanjing

Curatorial team: Francesco Garutti, Megan Marin, Charlie-Anne Côté, Victoria Addona, CCA, and Naomi Altman, M+, Hong Kong

Exhibition design: Johnston Marklee, Los Angeles

Graphic design: Alan Woo, Berlin

Design development: Sébastien Larivière, Anh Truong

Courtesy of Canadian Centre for Architecture, edited by CAFA ART INFO.