Corridors: Pathologies of Mixed-Use Space in Socialist Chinese Architecture
Corridors: Pathologies of Mixed-Use Space in Socialist Chinese Architecture
Throughout the Cold War, Americans remarked on the congestion and density of urban Chinese homes. In addition to the per capita square feet and multiple generations living under one roof, these accounts dwelled on the blurred lines between public and private space. In 1987, a journalist for the New York Times gawked at an apartment corridor doubling as a dining room, families cooking on an outdoor stoop, and women using a shared courtyard for laundry. My project explores this anxiety over “public” and “private” by examining the discourse surrounding tongzilou, China’s iconic concrete public housing structures constructed between the 1940s and 1990s. The tongzilou, modeled on Soviet public housing, were initially conceived as dormitories for single factory workers. However, because of the high demand for urban housing, the dormitories were converted for use by families. A long corridor connects the apartments and much of the space available to tenants is outside of the rented unit. Subsequently, activities conceived as “private” are often conducted in “public” space.
Families living in tongzilou share bathrooms and kitchens. The rows of collectively used coal stoves in these “mini communes” act as direct adversaries to the private, “modern” kitchens of the nuclear family, touted by America’s Cold War home exhibitions. The collective kitchens, crowded corridors, and mixed-use spaces embody a fast disappearing kind of urban architecture and community. Chinese cities grow and change with notorious speed. Contemporary historic preservation efforts overwhelmingly focus on the hutong, narrow alleys surrounded by tile-roofed courtyard homes. Hutongs, recalling the heyday of pre-socialist Chinese architecture, have long been celebrated and fetishized by the west. The hutong became a status symbol and today, many hutongs not preserved by the government, are purchased and renovated by wealthy westerners or Chinese. Conversely, widespread destruction of the remaining tongzilou is overlooked.
This project, diverting from the mold of traditional historical work, combines fieldwork, archival research, and visual art. I explore how memory intersects with architectural history and pathologies of the home. When is domestic space deviant? How do societies respond to domestic deviance? Discussions surrounding domestic space are not neatly contained within national borders. Instead, I’m interested in understanding where prescriptions for domestic space come from, how discursive networks on clutter, cleanliness, hoarding, and congestion are constructed; and how these global discourses are politicized.