3.3 Between Form and Spirit: From Liang to Pei – Two Grammar Books of Chinese Modernity




An article reflecting on I.M. Pei’s design of the Fragrant Hills Hotel in Beijing, discussing the challenges and aspirations of establishing a modern Chinese architectural identity. Published in Architectural Journal, the text captures a pivotal moment of re-engagement with global architectural discourse after the Cultural Revolution.





If Liang Sicheng gave us a grammar rooted in historical syntax—of beams and brackets, of measured proportions and inherited ritual—then I.M. Pei offered us a grammar of spirit: a grammar unspoken, sensed rather than seen, felt in voids and thresholds, in light filtered through silence.

Between these two grammars lies a generational debate, one that defined Chinese architectural discourse in the post-Mao era: How to modernise without severance? How to be Chinese without mimicry?

Liang’s answer was material and scholarly. He believed that the essence of Chinese architecture could be found in its structure—its dougong systems, axial symmetry, and tectonic clarity. Through rigorous study and preservation, he sought to establish a native modernism, one that carried forward the tangible DNA of traditional architecture. For Liang, “form” was not an aesthetic indulgence—it was a moral anchor, a vessel of cultural continuity. To abandon form was to lose the very grammar by which a civilisation could speak.

Pei, by contrast, began with a different assumption: that modernism was not necessarily at odds with tradition, but that tradition itself could evolve. While Liang looked to preserve and reinterpret inherited forms, Pei looked to embody inherited sensibilities. For him, the soul of Chinese architecture did not reside in the tiled roof or crimson pillar, but in how space was inhabited—how it revealed itself through time, sequence, and gesture. If Liang was a philologist decoding ancient scripts, Pei was a poet composing new verses in a familiar metre.

The distinction was not trivial.

In the architectural debates of the late 1970s and early ’80s—especially as Architectural Journal reopened its pages to intellectual exploration—two camps began to emerge. One continued Liang’s legacy, advocating for visible traditional motifs as anchors of identity. Another, inspired by Pei’s Xiangshan Hotel and similar projects, sought a deeper spatial translation: to modernise not by what was seen, but by how it was experienced.

This tension—between formal fidelity and spiritual resonance—animated much of the architectural experimentation in the 1980s and beyond. It can be seen in the works of later architects like Wu Liangyong, Zhang Kaiji, and the young generation returning from overseas studies. Their designs toggled between symbolic revivalism and abstract modernism, often uncertain where homage ended and invention began.

In this sense, both Liang and Pei left behind not styles, but questions:

  • Can form carry memory without becoming caricature?
  • Can spirit be preserved without losing identity?
  • And is it possible to design authentically, when authenticity itself is fractured by revolution and rupture?

These are not merely aesthetic questions—they are civilisational ones. For a nation emerging from trauma, eager to rebuild yet unsure what to carry forward, architecture became more than shelter or symbol. It became a mirror of cultural psyche.

Liang taught us to preserve.
Pei taught us to transform.
And between them, a generation of architects would search—sometimes hesitantly, sometimes boldly—for a new language. One not borrowed, nor merely revived, but born from a continuity reimagined.