Architecture Asia, as the official journal of the Architects Regional Council Asia, aims to provide a forum, not only for presenting Asian phenomena and their characteristics to the world, but also for understanding diversity and multiculturalism within Asia from a global perspective.
This issue focuses on the topic of Architecture Writing and Literature, and features five essays and ten projects that elaborate on this topic. The five essays, separately, introduce Writing Architectural Pedagogies, Indian Architectural Literature in UKs Academe, Architecture of Writing and Criticism, How to Believe in Architecture becoming Author of History and Writing Habitation and Inhabiting Writing. The ten projects, accompanied by full-colour photos and text descriptions, highlight various types of architectural works from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, showing how architects show their projects through words, depending on the types of architectural work.
Professor Wu Jiang is a full professor at Tongji University's College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He was the former deputy director of the Shanghai Urban Planning Administration Bureau, and the former executive vice president of Tongji University. He was also elected a member of L’Académie d’Architecture de France in 2015. Since 2019, he has been serving as the vice president of Architects Regional Council (ARCASIA). He is also the board chairman of Global University Partnership on Environment and Sustainability (GUPES), as well as a member of UIA Education Commission (EDUCOM). He is the vice president of the Urban Planning Society of China (UPSC), and serves as a standing council member of the Architectural Society of China (ASC), as well as the director of Institute of Architectural Education, Architectural Society of China (IAE-ASC), and the chairman of Asian City Forum. He has been invited worldwide to well-known universities and research institutes to deliver keynote speeches, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton. He is also the founder of several joint international design studios with top world institutes such as Princeton, HKU (University of Hong Kong), ETH-Zürich, Yale, UIUC ( University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ), and TU Berlin (Technical University of Berlin). He was the juror of the final review of the Dubai Awards hosted by UN HABITAT. He was the curator of the 2002 Shanghai Biennale Urban Construction, as well as the founder and chief curator of the first Shanghai Urban Space Art Season (SUSAS 2015). As a devoted architecture scholar, he has published a dozen of important books on architectural history, urban planning, urban regeneration, and urban governance. Dr. Li Xiangning is deputy dean and full professor in History, Theory and Criticism at Tongji University' College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He is a member of CICA (Comité International des Critiques d'Architecture) and has worked as a curator for numerous exhibitions, and has published widely on contemporary Chinese architecture and urbanism. He is the chief editor of Architecture China and the president of the Architecture China Foundation. He has been working with international museums and institutes and has been a jury member to many international awards and competitions.
