Polemic Design in China Japan Korea (ABPL90388)

Fragments of design thinking in East Asia, such as those of Japan and of current China, are well known or at least accessible. Yet there is hardly a concise, critical and comprehensive study on modern and current architecture of China, Japan and Korea together, as a whole and as a challenging case in design thinking on the world stage. This subject aims to provide such a study. The teaching and the debate in this subject focus on ‘polemic’ designs in these countries from the 1950s to the 2010s – designs that are interesting or controversial in formal, urban, cultural, social or political sense. By focusing on these critical cases, a broader history of design thinking dating back to the modern and ancient pasts, and generic currents of design practice in relation to the modern political history of the countries and the region are also studied. This subject aims to explore a gap of knowledge in the current design discourse on modernism and contemporary architecture. It aims to help construct a pluralist and multi-polar knowledge of architecture of the world in which a non-western case provides a critical contribution.