Beyond abstract space: Architectural experiments for dwelling and concrete utopia in urban China

Urban transformation in China is witnessing a diversification of architectural designs and the more prominent roles played by architects. Notably, recent architectural practices in urban and regional China have increasingly emphasised the social functions and uses of architecture – architecture is mobilised by many architects and their clients to promote public goods, social improvement and extra-economic purposes. The dialectic between material and social transformations constitutes the focus of this paper. To reconceptualise architecture as an active social intervention, this paper first delineates a theoretical outline that starts from Henri Lefebvre’s thesis on the alienation of everyday life and proliferation of abstract space in modern cities. We then engage with the notion of concrete utopia that highlights alternative urban spaces produced by architectural works, which do not radically transcend the dominant capitalist system but intervene into the current conditions by enriching and improving them incrementally. To illustrate this perspective, this paper develops a preliminary reading of two empirical cases based on second-hand materials collected from public media and social media, namely the Aranya project in Changli County, Hebei Province and the renovation project of a traditional house in central Shanghai.