Photo: courtesy of: G.Chiri
The project for the new Paifang square and Lakefront of Zhaoqing
-A Cultural Gateway and a Big Contemporary Concern –
By Silvio Carta
“The impersonal character of the Chinese system has led some of us here to conclusions, such as that <the art of architecture, as we have known it in Europe> as one writer put it <has never been born>”[i]. This sentence –written in the early sixties- can provide a sort of measurement of the distance between European and Chinese cultures.
Let us look back for a moment and remind briefly the past interactions of those immensely distant cultures. Europeans had been arriving in China since the late sixteenth century (Macau was occupied around 1557). The Jesuits at that time were playing a key role because they held a sort of monopoly over sources of information about China. Under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in fact, there was a notable increase of the European missionary activity in Asia followed by a more concrete activity based on material profits: the goods trades. At the beginning of the seventeenth century (it was the same time of the chinoiserie) there was a sensible fascination for Asian art in general – which represented an amazingly new repertoire for European artists. China was at that time simply ignoring the European production in terms of art and cultural activities. “China’s high-level equilibrium trap had given it a sense of complacency where they dismissed as irrelevant anything that might come from outside its borders. A good example of this would be the Renaissance innovation of perspective in painting. The Chinese found this singularly unimpressive, preferring to stick their own methods, which showed a multiplicity of viewpoints, on the sensible grounds that it better reflected their way of life“[ii], explains International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) member and researcher Gregory Bracken.
A key character of this period has been Matteo Ricci[iii], a Jesuit and one of the most famous commentators on China before the modern era. Thanks to Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri (another Jesuit of the Jesuit China Mission) the Chinese culture was becoming closer to Westerns, or at least more understandable. In fact, until 1579, no one among the Christian missionaries there would even seriously learn the Chinese language.
Ricci was appreciated by the at-the-time governor of Zhaoqing Wang Pan, who was interested in Ricci’s skill as a mathematician and cartographer. In fact in 1584 he composed the first European-style map of the world in Chinese, one of the first significant examples of attempt to find common points between the two cultures[iv]. Ricci had an approach to Chinese culture rather different than other Europeans. While others in fact, were interested in expanding trades (mainly drugs and fabric) between the “two continents”, the Jesuit priest started to dress like a Chinese scholar, speak Chinese and read and write classical Chinese, the literary language of scholars and officials (a sort of Latin for Europeans)[v]. Unlike other missionaries, he used existing Chinese concepts (mainly from Confucianism) to explain Christianity’s concept of God and faith. So Ricci’s main merit consists in having transmitted a part of western knowledge to Chinese, while learning part of their culture and forwarded to Europe.
Glimmers (fragments) of Chinese cultures continued to arrive in Western culture over eighteen and nineteen centuries through key persons like scholars or artists. Those fragments however have been maneuvered by local policies and ideological purposes. The books of Du Halde[vi] for example, became soon a reference for Enlightenment philosophers and scholars of Chinese culture in general. After thinkers like Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire, Hume, or Goldsmith, China arrived in Europe through the writings of Voltaire. His positive opinion and fascination on the secular nature of Confucianism and the absence of the clergy in the government are probably responsible for the positive light in which China was perceived by the cultural elite at that time.
Afterwards, China started to be seen under a certain negative light in Europe. In a tense period in which the powerful nations were scowling at each other to find a balance in setting their global empires, European nations pushed forward trades in Asia with extreme insistence. The Chinese government replied with reserve and restrictions. Concessions for trade control within China’s empire were slow and insignificant[vii].
However, the real situation and balance between the two civilizations were quite different from what appeared on the surface. Europeans were extremely intended to expand their presence in Asia[viii]. It is not surprising if the image the European people had at that time of China was influenced by those political tensions.
Moreover, while the Western powers were gaining enormous confidence in Asian territories, China was facing an internal crisis which eventually witnessed the decline of the Qing Dynasty (1616-1912). The struggle of the peasantry – one of the national minorities-, followed by the rising of the Chinese bourgeoisie against the Manchu government, the insurrection of the Miao and Hui peoples, and others contributed to create an instable political and social situation within China[ix]. The internal struggles, the social tensions and unbalanced trade concessions to foreign powers, and finally disastrous events like the destruction of the Yihe Yuan (the Summer Palace) in 1860 or the sack of Beijing in 1900, brought the 2100 long empire of Qing Dynasty to its decline with the abdication in February 1912.
It is again interesting to notice that while Western views of China remained voluntarily negative throughout the nineteenth century for evident political reasons, it is understandable why China was not really interested in cultural exchange with Westerns. The only common language at that time was the one of the trades and political tension.
At this point we will jump over the complex and delicate panorama of historical vicissitudes, national political fragmentations and power settlements in which China underwent from the establishment of the Republic of China on 1st of January 1912, to Deng Xiaoping’s period; passing through the Sino-Japanese War, (1937–1945) and the World War II, the period of the Communist Party of China (CCP) led by Mao Zedong with the “Democratic Dictatorship”, the 1958-1961 Great Leap Forward and continuing with the 1966-76 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The twentieth century influenced in an important way all the aspects of Chinese society.
In 1978, two years later Mao’s death, China was about to undergoing one of the most rapid periods of change in her 5,000 years history. Following the Xiaoping‘s free-market economical reforms, the global China’s economy transformation had already started. Robert Benewick and Stephanie Hemelryk Donald clearly explained this particular moment of China: “Only 30 years later, China had developed from an economically desolate country ruled by a totalitarian government into an industrial powerhouse, rapidly overtaking developed western nations in recession”[x]. From these years onwards, China witnessed a train of reforms which enormously changed the economical activities in the nation. Starting from de-collectivization of agriculture (Bao Chang Dao Hu) and following with the liberalization and privatization of business, China began to re-acquire her voice in international transactions. The Shanghai Stock Exchange reopened in 1990, after 41 years. China was going out of its isolation and self-referenced cultural period to appear the international world.
Beside the internal liberalization, Deng Xiaoping also established a series of “Chinese special economic zones” in which foreigners investors could take advantage of a lower labor costs and an advantageous taxation. This establishment helped the Chinese economy to have an out-and-out boom. In addition, the Chinese government established several collaboration relationships with foreign countries in order to establish companies in industries hitherto unknown in China. The success was enormous. In 2001, China became a member of the World Trade Organization, which has boosted its overall trade in exports/imports—estimated at $851 billion in 2003—by an additional $170 billion a year[xi]. Jiang Zemin –successor of Deng Xiaoping after his death in 1997- continued the reformist policies maintaining a vibrant and growing economy.
In 2005, China witnessed a relevant property bubble: property prices tripled from 2005 to 2009, and are continuing to rise[xii]. In July 2010 Yi Gang, Deputy Governer of the Bank of China, claimed China`s economy had overtaken Japan as the world`s second biggest economy[xiii].
It is inevitable that such economical boom would have affected the city in itself. The urban scenario of major Chinese cities has been in fact widely transformed during the last decades. Although in extreme terms, a recent publication: The Chinese Dream, a Society under Construction, raises some fundamental questions over the massive China’s growth: “What if you built the whole mass of western Europe in 20 years? What if 400 million farmers then moved in? What would it look like? How would it work? Would you be able to go to sleep at night? And if you did, would you dream of somewhere else …?[xiv]” One of China’s main goal in terms of urbanism –announced in 2001- is to build 400 new cities of 1 million inhabitants each by 2020, or 20 new cities a year for 20 years. Within some decades China will definitely be at the centre of the world powers as a global superpower “with hundreds of millions of new urbanites flooding into the rapidly swelling cities. But this process – presenting no less than the construction of a new society – is taking place almost without time to think”[xv] explained the author the above mentioned book. The main question the book arises is whether the current speed of construction in China will “eclipse any real forward planning”. China is now the world’s fourth largest economy and its configuration changed so much than it deserved the appellation of “the world’s workshop”, not for its cheap workforce –as a matter of facts other countries present this unpleasant record-, but for its geographical position. It sits in a “relatively stable part of the globe and offers reliable and capable workers kept in line by government-enforced discipline”[xvi] explains Bracken.
Big money flows, important investments and extreme speed in the economical processes considerably attracted European and North Americans professionals of almost every field.
Like they already did in the sixteenth century with commercial products; nowadays Westerns are trying to bring in China their proposals taking advantage of the difficult situations, crisis and economical slowdowns they face in their own countries. Architects did basically the same. We witnessed in fact several outstanding interventions dotting China’s major cities. Koolhaas’ CCTV Headquarters or the Beijing National Stadium by Herzog & de Meuron are just two of the most remarkable examples. These kind of projects need to be considered as the consequence of what the Western culture recently underwent. The iconic building period[xvii] in fact has brought the attention to the direct relationship existing between the iconic building and the commerce. The more a building is eye-catching and outstanding, the bigger the image of the company which owns that building will be worldly spread. By following what Hans Ibelings defined as “passion for collecting architecture” in his book about Supermodernism, several capitals in the world began to strive for big and unique buildings. Bigger cities of China did the same, dotting their major cities with big and enigmatic buildings. The iconic architectures have certainly had an international diffusion. In this sense, they have some similarities with the International Style, in the meaning that architecture is able to releases it-self from the weight of the context. From this point of view, a picture of a certain building can rarely give clues on its location (maybe it tells more about its author). Thanks to this liberation from the context from a conceptual side and to the continuous technological achievements from the other side, the same building can be rendered in almost every part of the world. Iconic buildings emphasized the disregard of both architecture and architects about climate or resources condition, or even cultural preexistences. It is easy to understand in this perspective the reasons of the success of iconic architecture in a fresh, effervescent and dynamic market such as the Chinese one. If iconic buildings represent in fact the last phase of an internazionalization of architecture world-wide, the globalization did the rest. Globalized culture in fact entered in the majority of the world countries laying upon and partially mixing with the local cultures. It is safe to assert that a sort of global taste for international architecture is nowadays present in our major cities and it became rather common to pass by a gigantic building designed by Zaha Hadid or Norman Foster without even understand it. Such buildings have now become part of our urban daily scenarios almost world-wide.
When world architectural attention was addressed to the East (remember the Koolhaas’ precept “go East), China did not represented an exception. This approach has been simply re-proposed in fact in China too. As many other part of the world, China asked for big iconic and representative building and Western culture architects -in some cases- simply shifted a good shape they designed for some place in US to some big city in China. The result has been always the same: a big and spread mediathic success.
However, this text is intended to shed lights on a different side of the phenomenon. If we reduce in fact the architect’s skills to just the ability to conceive an astonish building able to convey different and ambiguous significances, we could assert that western architects are really successful in what they are doing these years in China. However, if we enlarge the architect’s spectrum of skills and we look back to our architectural history, we could call into question in our discourse concepts like context, space, identity, type, typology, style etc. which are characteristic of the western culture. When all these conceptual and design tools are used within a rather different context, the results can be seriously important. European architects can use in their design what they learnt from their predecessors, from their history. Romans, Greeks, Middle Age or Renaissance are continuous references that are summed to the fundamental lessons from Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe. All the background of knowledge European architects inherited from the past represents to them a sort of evergreen toolbox to use while facing potentially every site. As a matter of facts, when European architects go nowadays to China they are inclined to use the same design tools they would use in their countries and that they got from their masters. There is another point: Chinese clients ask them a project because –while planning some new city pattern- they have in the back of their mind the examples they saw in Europe. In order to achieve that level of urban quality they appreciated in some cases while traveling outside China, clients sometimes simply ask a design to whom is able to do it by addressing their requests directly to the source. They pick some well known Western architect up and ask to bring a piece of modernity to China. This last sentence can sound arrogant or ungentle, but it is safe to say that the skyline of Shanghai or Beijing is not really representing the thousand-year long and various cultural history of China.
However the iconic building approach -which simply knocks down every potential debate that can arise from the differences that Eastern and Western cultures offer- is not the only approach observed in the way to work of Western architects in China.
In order to clarify this point, a key project will be analyzed. The project for the new Paifang square and Lakefront of Zhaoqing has been conceived as a research for common points between the two cultures by using the mutual knowledge. It offers in fact a clear overview of the meeting points that can be acquired via an architectural project conceived with a non-iconic approach.
In general terms, the main difference for a project to be iconic or not consists of the attention paid to the surrounding context. Every project –obviously- has a deep relationship with its context and there are not exceptions in this. We could think for a moment to the city as a chessboard with a number of given pieces. Some of the pieces have been placed in the past (sometime it is rather difficult to know even from who) and some of the squares are still free. Architects and planners (as very last actor of a political and economical system) are called to propose where to place new pieces or whether leave some of them empty. The chessboard’s final goal is to gain equilibrium and a wealthy and productive environment for those who live in it. In order to do that, an architect –dramatically simplifying the system- has to choose while placing a new piece. He can think about the position of the knights, the bishops (whether they are), or the pawns and the queen; he can also try to understand why the rooks are in that position and where the king will be in three moves. The second option the architect has is to place pieces randomly and be delighted for how beautiful is his new piece or how brave he has been while placing his piece in an unusual position. To the other players an unusual position within the squares or a different piece can cause interest and curiosity. The extreme situation is when some player just throws his piece on the chessboard without any care or respect for the existing situation. In all cases, the preexisting configuration of the game will be inevitably changed. That is roughly what happens in the city. The iconic approach is based on provoking stupor and astonishment to the world by building something new, fresh and unseen before[xviii]. However, what is interesting in our discourse is the fact that every move in the chessboard, like any intervention in the city, changes its configuration and its equilibrium. In this sense the project new Paifang square and Lakefront of Zhaoqing has a non-iconic aim and it seems not to throw any other existing piece out of the chessboard.
One main way to imply this approach is concerning the public space conception of the project. Gregory Bracken, while analyzing Shanghai’s public space, explained that “Shanghai’s new public space is curiously dead – and while Asians tend to blur distinctions between public and private more than we do in the West (which can render these spaces harder to read for Westerners) – the fault lies more with the fact that some of Shanghai’s new public spaces are simply ‘left-over’ spaces, particularly in front of the newer skyscrapers. This space has been designed for movement, not for use, and it contrasts starkly with the traditional alleyway houses of the colonial-era city where communal activity, graduated privacy, and organised complexity made for a rich and dynamic street life”[xix].
The approach of the project team led by architect Gianmarco Chiri offers instead a different view. As the project is a masterplan, it deals with a large scale and –due to its peculiar geographic position- it stays between the “densely-crowded historic city and the landscape of the Seven Stars Crags park”[xx]. In this project the conception of open space becomes a key aspect. The treatment of open space and the elements in it can be intended as a feature able to create a sort of dialogue between the two ways to conceive it. In Chinese culture in fact the conception of public (and open) space is rather different from the Western one. By following Bracken’s reading, we see that the word gong (usual transliteration of the Western concept of ‘public’) “combined with other characters, can result in words such as gongkai (open, public, overt), gongyuan (a public park), gongyong (public use), and even, oddly, gongji (a rooster)”[xxi]. However, gong does not mean ‘public’ in the same positive sense we can confer to it in the West, but “denotes ‘non-private’” in a sort of negative sense. Bracken at this point suggests to refer to the term chang, that stands for ‘open space’. This latter “denotes a site or a field” and is the same term which appears in “airport (feiji chang), a tennis court (wang qiuchang), and a stadium (tiyu chang) (at least a stadium that is open-air)”. In Bracken’s explanation chang is what Chinese designers are providing in their cities: “open-air spaces, not public ones (in the sense of the Western traditional of the agora)”[xxii].
In the new project for Zhaoqing instead the concept of the urban square is the backbone of the construction of a new public space. First of all, the new public space around the south part of the Star Lake is the element able to shift the centre of masses of the city towards the north. The aim behind the project is in fact to “turn the public space into an urban square” and to “create a real “centre” despite its tangential position to the consolidated city”. The passage from open space to public space is achieved by making the two ways (Chinese and Western) to conceive the spaces interacting. The project team led by Gianmarco Chiri in fact tries to combine the notion of public space they inherited from the European experience to the Chinese conception (of space). They conceived the public space “in a set of more clearly-delimited spaces, of recognisable “urban rooms” while maintaining its large public accommodation capacity and aperture towards the landscape” as they explained. Of course, in this process of spatial conception comparison the constant reference to European projects (especially Italian) has been compulsory and it provided a big help while trying to understand Zhaoqing by European reading tools. The Piazza della Signoria in Florence –for instance- has been brought as example to underline the “importance of a sequence of compact public places” and “considered a highly effective example of this concept”. If on one hand Italian squares provided an interpretation key while analyzing Zhaoqing open space, traditional Chinese paintings have suggested an interpretation for the local representation of space on the other hand. They reflect “the concept of sequence, based on a clearly-defined spatial hierarchy between figures in the foreground and others located on gradually more distance planes” explain the architects. That is why they tried to “valorize the sequel of episodes (city, square, lake, peaks, mountains) according to the concept of sequence”. Beside the general focus on the public space, several urban elements have been introduced. The project’s main object as a matter of facts- is a long portico. This architectonic feature -originates from Greek and Roman ancient architecture- has been a featuring element of many of the Western cultures. In Bologna (Italy), for example, there is one of the longest porticos in the world: a 3.5 km long structure which extends from the edge of the city to Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca. The portico -being a buffer space between an interior and an exterior space- has found a perfect application in this masterplan for its hybrid features. A major part of the program has been compacted within this continuous roof offering to the inhabitants a covered yet public space. Designers looked at the portico as a possibility to have a “continuity of the path, useful both for guiding and protecting visitors” but also they relied on it for its “ability to generate a feeling of community and intense use, both absent today in this area of ZhaoQing”. Portico implant also offers the inhabitants of Zhaoqing a novelty in the way to experience the public space because it can be seen as a long walkway in which simply lying out is possible sheltered from the elements. Porticos in Bologna offer the citizens a welcoming alternative to the street to have a walk o even meet people. In this sense a portico can play the role of mediating space between two different cultures.
It is important to underline that all the introduced urban elements like the portico (“the masterplan’s intention of adopting the “portico” as an urban element of unification able to achieve a balance between the various artificial and natural features”), the vegetation and the natural presences (“the lake participates in constructing the public space”) are conceived in general terms by the architects as fundamental design elements. They are not mere presences in a given context or results of some other intervention (like existing trees or the underneath part obtained while cantilevering a building); they have been rather used as fundamental elements in the masterplan. The architects in fact explained to consider design of the urban vegetation –for instance- “not as a mere complement to the decorative elements of the public space but a specific project aimed at establishing a link with China’s secular tradition of parks and gardens, especially in the South where, due the climate, the vegetation is rich and luxuriant”.
Through a patient attempt of understanding of the other culture and a cautious introduction of “new” elements in their context (like the portico) the architects have tried to build a common ground for discussion with Zhaoqing.
Beside the peculiar architectural aspects, what is more interesting for our discourse is the speculative side. By means of this project architecture has been used as an attempt to create a comfortable common ground for the two cultures to exchange their richness. Moreover, this project proves that architecture is suitable for this intent, at least as much as a diplomatic program. Architecture can really represent a meeting point whereas trades or religions have demonstrated to be moved by different logics. Jesuits tried to Christianize Chinese while trades were based on the profit. To put it poetically (and deceive ourselves), architecture can be at this globalized times the last chance to have an intelligent exchange amongst different cultures. This does not mean –like in the iconic building approach- to impose part of one culture while taking advantage of the tangible difficulties in the mutual understandings. It is rather easy to confuse differences with absences. Cultural exchange means confrontation based on mutual will of understanding. This latter issue –of course- requires a common base for discussion. Architecture can represent this common ground which passes through porticos or the combination of the conceptions of the space.
The project for the new Paifang square and Lakefront of Zhaoqing probably does not solve this huge and deep question, nor it was its intention, but it can be seen as a tangible example of an intelligent way to proceed and a common will to know and discover fragments of the two cultures.
To conclude, if architecture is intended as a mere exchange good or as a product, then it should follow the market rules and be presented always as fresh, innovative and able to create everyday new interests and catch attention. But in this meaning, it also gets old and useless pretty soon. If it does not produce profit anymore, it becomes immediately useless. On the other hand, if architecture is conceived differently, as a common ground for debate rising amongst different culture, as a threshold element between two civilizations, then it becomes a practice able to improve people’s life while creating urban conditions fitting in their needs. Sharing and exchanging cultures means enrich them. Is it not richness one of the major engines of our world?
Silvio Carta
[i] Boyd, Andrew, Chinese Architecture and Town Planning 1500 B.C. – A.D. 1911, Alec Tiranti, London 1962
[ii] Bracken, Gregory, Thinking Shanghai, A Foucauldian Interrogation of the Postsocialist Metropolis, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft, Delft 2009 p.190
[iii] Ricci was a missionary who went to China (he arrived to Macau –the main Portuguese trading post on the South China Sea coast- in 1582) at the end of the Ming dynasty. While following the attempt to expand the Christians’ presence in South China outside Macau, Ricci traveled several times to Guandong’s major cities, Canton and Zhaoqing (residence of the Viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi at that time). Ricci is a key person for this text because –together with Ruggieri- settled in 1583 in Zhaoqing .
[iv] Ricci and Ruggieri -among others- also compiled the first ever European-Chinese dictionary (Portuguese-Chinese). While doing this, they needed to develop a consistent system for transcribing Chinese words in the Latin alphabet and viceversa.
[v] About the importance of dress and Ricci, Bracken tells in his book an interesting anecdote. It is reported that Ricci made a mistake while adopting the costume of a Buddhist monk when he wanted gain respect and veneration in late-Ming China. “Ricci made a terrible blunder when he assumed that monks in China were afforded the same respect as priests in Europe. Nothing could have been further from the truth. In the China of that time, the Confucian scholar-gentry were venerated, not the monks, monks were invariably regarded as dirty, drunken mendicants, despised rather than respected. Quickly realising his mistake, Ricci reverted to the more traditional Jesuit garb”. The little story can tell a lot about the distance between the two cultures.
[vi] French Jesuit and historian Jean-Baptiste Du Halde edited the Volumes IX to XXVI of Lettres edifiantes et curieuses (1709-43) and was author of the “Description de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise”: a description of the Chinese politics, geography, history which became one of the most important and comprehensive product of Jesuit scholarship on China. Appeared for the first time in France in 1736, the book was subsequently translated into other European languages.
[vii] In 1793 the Emperor Ch’ien Lung, for instance, received the diplomat George Macartney – from the Macartney Mission, a British embassy to China from 1792 to 1994- in a pacific and even humble way, gently and politely welcoming his requests and conceding nothing.
[viii] One of the first signals is represented by the Opium War of 1840 in which Britain was able to impose its commercial presence by force. The Treaty of Nanking was one of the first unequal treaties between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Qing Dynasty of China. Unequal simply because one part had no obligations while the counterpart lost some rights after the treaty. Similarly, the main European powers implied a series of military and naval operations which were followed by a series of treaties which shuffled the sphere of influences, ownerships of territories, port, trade rights, and political control in Asia.
[ix] Foreign helps were also involved in these internal struggles, but the main goal for them was to try to avoid a reformation and modernization of the state as much as possible.
[x] Benewick, Robert and Hemelryk Donald, Stephanie, The State of China Atlas: Mapping the World’s Fastest Growing Economy, University of California Press, Hong Kong 2005, p.13
[xi] Source: http://www.chinca.org
[xii] Cf. Chovanec, Patrick, “China’s Real Estate Riddle”, in Far East Economic Review, June 2009. Also available on http://chovanec.wordpress.com/
[xiii] Sun, Jian, Economic history of China, Vol 2 (1840–1949), China People’s University Press, 2000, p.613
[xiv] Mars, Neville, Hornsby, Adrian, The Chinese Dream, A Society Under Construction, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam 2008
[xv] ibidem
[xvi] Bracken, Gregory, Thinking Shanghai, A Foucauldian Interrogation of the Postsocialist Metropolis, cit.
[xvii] Amongst others, the argument is comprehensively explained by Charles Jencks in his book The Iconic Building – The Power of Enigma, published by Frances Lincoln in London 2005.
[xviii] Moreover, an iconic building works with the indirect references for the observers. Jencks extensively explained this concept while speaking about enigmatic signifiers, buildings that suggest but do not mean.
[xix] Bracken, Gregory, Thinking Shanghai, A Foucauldian Interrogation of the Postsocialist Metropolis, cit. p.3, p.64
[xx] All the quotes about the Zhaoqing masterplan are token from the official presentation of the project held in Zhaoqing in November 2009.
[xxi] Bracken, Gregory, Thinking Shanghai, A Foucauldian Interrogation of the Postsocialist Metropolis, cit. p.204
[xxii] Ibidem, p.205
Beyond Icons 3.0 