Opening Up
Shirley Surya and Li Hua interview Zhang Guangyuang about discovering lost design records
This oral history was led by Shirley Surya and Li Hua and filmed by Wang Tuo for the exhibition How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949-1979.
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Zhang Guangyuang oral history, from Wang Tuo, Intensity in Ten Cities (2025), co-commissioned by the CCA and M+, Hong Kong for How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949-1979. © Wang Tuo
- SS & LH
- At the China Architecture and Design Research Group (CADG), you preside over a valuable archival, especially photographic, record of China’s large-scale work in modern society. Why did you begin searching for these materials, and how did you make your selections?
- ZG
- This collection has a very significant origin dating back to 1970. During the Cultural Revolution, CADG was disbanded and its original drawings and archival materials were destroyed because they were considered symbols of the old power structures.It wasn’t until I’d been working there for over ten years that I began to feel a desire to rediscover the old archives. Even when I first began, I didn’t fully appreciate the significance of what I was doing. I was mainly looking for aesthetically pleasing images, yet architecture photography seemed to offer little room for personal creativity; photographing buildings seemed monotonous. Since I didn’t have access to old photographs from our destroyed archives, I began buying photo albums from the 1950s at secondhand bookstores. Through examining these old images, I came to understand how architectural photography could serve a crucial purpose as historical documentation.
Sometimes when we look at photos from the 1950s, we might think the lenses weren’t very good, or the lighting was poor. But later, when those photos become part of an archive, the technical quality no longer matters. What matters is that they captured and preserved a moment in history. Especially valuable are the kinds of social details these images contain. For example, in a photo of the Beijing Hotel, you don’t just see the building—you see the people walking on the street, a policeman standing on duty, bicycles, cars from that era. All these contextual details surrounding the building make the photo extraordinary. They help you understand why a building like that has endured and become so well known: because it stood tall in that specific environment, at that moment.
Wu Yinxian, Photograph of the Beijing Hotel East Wing, 1975. © Wu Yinxian
- ZG
- The real turning point in my collection activities came in 2000. That year, due to institutional restructuring, our offices had to be relocated. As one of the new departments was moving, an administrator called me and said: “We found a torn-up cardboard box in the back. It looks like it might contain negatives. Do you want them?” I went up to take a look. Sure enough, the box was covered in dust and completely disorganized, but when I looked inside, it was full of negatives. The paper envelopes were crawling with tiny insects, but I didn’t care. I’d been thinking about this kind of discovery for a long time. I randomly pulled out a few negatives; they were covered in dirt, and right away, I could tell they were from the old projects we had lost documentation on. That night, I didn’t go home. I stayed and began cleaning the negatives.
As the office relocations continued, more discoveries surfaced. Eventually, I became known as the “trash picker,” so when someone came across something old or dusty, they’d let me know. I stacked all the materials I found over the course of the year in my archive room: photo albums, handwritten notes, even glass plate negatives. What I still hoped to recover, especially the most important pieces—the original architectural drawings—hadn’t survived.
These materials can only serve as fragmented records of our architectural design institute’s history. They don’t form a complete narrative. The result is certainly not a fully comprehensive account, but it is a reliable one.
- SS & LH
- Among all the things you’ve uncovered, what do you feel are the most meaningful?
- ZG
- I think the significance of the collection lies in two aspects: one is practical, and the other is emotional.
Its practical significance is that, even though the materials are incomplete, they still provide evidence of many of the projects we worked on from the founding of the People’s Republic of China to around 1979, during the Reform and Opening Up period. At the very least, they confirm a great deal of our design reform during the first thirty years of the PRC.
We were even unaware of some related events until we discovered these materials, including our participation in nuclear testing projects, our involvement in certain special engineering works like the construction of shortwave transmission towers, or our bid for the bridgehead design of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge. These were all things we hadn’t known about before we found the documents. It was through this process that we realized we had done more than just build buildings.
The Friendship Road—The TAZARA Railway poster, 1976. © Shen Yu
- ZG
- Then there’s the emotional side of the discoveries. When we look back at those classic buildings from the 1950s, we sometimes feel that the later generation of architects didn’t do as good a job; that they lacked respect for traditional culture, or their work wasn’t as refined. But through this process, what I came to feel was that the generation of architects after 1979, after the Reform and Opening Up—including both older architects who continued working and the newer generation—made important contributions to architectural design. They fundamentally shifted the trajectory of Chinese architecture. They introduced us to new forms, new ways of life, and at the same time, they managed to carry forward traditional culture by expressing it in new ways.
- SS & LH
- Could you talk a bit about foreign aid projects led by Chinese architects, including those working for CADG?
- ZG
- Around 1958, the central government decided to promote foreign aid projects in places like Pakistan, Ulaanbaatar, Cambodia, and Tanzania, among many other sites. When we started on these projects, architects realized they didn’t have enough reference material. Sometimes, when it came to projects by internationally renowned architects, our team was at a loss. There was very little cultural exchange at the time, even a certain degree of cultural blockade, so it was very difficult for us to access the latest reports, documents, or magazine articles about design abroad—we couldn’t see any of it.
When the foreign aid projects began, our effort to collect technical reference materials became a priority. At that time, a special institution was set up called the Technical Intelligence and Information Office. It was a dedicated department with Russian, English, German, and Japanese translators. Without going into too much detail into how they worked, they managed, through various means and channels, to acquire foreign publications and books, which they then handed over to the staff in the documentation room for translation and compilation. While our main goal was to support foreign aid projects, these materials were also helpful for our domestic architects and designers.
Ministry of Construction and Engineering of the People’s Republic of China, Photographs of foreign aid projects in Mongolia from Yuanwai jianzhu sheji jianjie, 1966. © CADG
Ministry of Construction and Engineering of the People’s Republic of China, Photographs of foreign aid projects in Vietnam from Yuanwai jianzhu sheji jianjie, 1966. © CADG
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- ZG
- I should also mention how these foreign aid projects were perceived. Even looking at a few photographs of these sites, it was clear that these designs were markedly different. That’s also tied to the fact that, in the 1950s, we had gone through at least two major movements: one was the anti-waste campaign in architecture, which started at the end of 1954 and into 1955, and the other was the Great Leap Forward in 1958, during which we built the National Day projects. These foreign aid projects instead allowed architects to break out of the material and stylistic constraints they faced domestically. That’s why you’ll find that many of the designs from foreign aid work were quite elaborate, especially compared to domestic architecture at the time. A lot of design strategies used in these foreign aid projects from decades ago didn’t show up again in China until the 1980s and 1990s, after the Reform and Opening Up.
Beijing Industrial Architecture Design Institute, Photographic reference of various furniture types, ca. 1960s. © CADG
- ZG
- Notably, foreign aid projects also impacted furniture design. In fact, our decision to establish a furniture group in 1961 and begin interior design work stemmed from our early foreign aid experience. Back then, there was still no division between architectural and interior design. Everything was done by the architect. Through our foreign aid work, we realized we hadn’t studied interior design enough. After these projects, a group of architects essentially became interior design specialists.
Many furniture pieces weren’t designed for domestic use but were used in the context of foreign aid projects. Some of them were built-in furniture, the kind we didn’t even see in domestic projects until the 1980s. It wasn’t that these design ideas didn’t exist back then, it’s just that we didn’t yet have the conditions to produce or use them domestically. Take tubular steel chairs, for example, they were common abroad at the time but rarely seen in China. It wasn’t because we couldn’t design them, but because our economic conditions didn’t allow for mass production.
Both the CADG archive and the founding of the “interior design group” arose directly from the needs of foreign aid projects. Today, when people talk about foreign aid, they often say, “Why were we giving aid to other countries when our own nation was struggling?” But from the perspective of architectural design, the benefits were tremendous.
It wasn’t just that we helped other countries build a few buildings; we also trained a whole generation of talent, accumulated an archive of valuable materials, and gained a body of knowledge. This became useful in the later stages of national development. If the country hadn’t had the foresight to launch the foreign aid architecture program back then, this entire developmental process might have been delayed by many years. That’s something I really feel we can appreciate.
