Lori Gibbs

This presentation will conduct a close reading of Architect Liang Sicheng’s architectural documentation methods in the 1930s against the backdrop of comparable recording activities in a global context. After returning to China, with a professional degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, Sicheng produced architectural drawings to capture evidence of the built environment and codify modern knowledge about ancient Chinese buildings. His creation of the drawing plate distilled his eyewitness observations into a singular image. Not only do these plates interpret ancient Chinese design and construction for modern readers, they create a dialogue with other sources in China and the anglophone world. The ways in which Liang's recording methods generate historical facts and systematic knowledge about the past, and it’s interpretive qualities, will be analyzed. In China, Liang and his peers’ work remains influential, as they introduced modern architectural practice and initiated building conservation work at a time of rapid change.

Dr. Lori M. Gibbs is a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, where she teaches design studios and architectural history and theory classes. Her current work investigates the history of architects’ surveying drawing methods in a transnational context that includes China, European sites, and the U.S in the early twentieth century.

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