Rethinking Social Housing: China to the World

Over the past century, China's housing design and market have shifted dramatically, moving from soviet-union style housing complexes to highly commercialized and massive developed residential areas. Amid soaring prices, a shortage of housing resources, and the commodification of housing, social housing has provided a way to rethink the possibilities of ideal living.In this book, Ma Yansong, an architect active in China and internationally whose work spans architectural practice and academic inquiry, and the founder and principal partner of MAD Architects, collaborates with Professor Jiang Jun's team from the China Academy of Art to offer an unprecedented in-depth study of the history, present-day conditions, and future design strategies of social housing in China. Divided into five chapters, the book features contributions from scholars, architects, policy makers, and other stakeholders. It provides a wealth of case studies, including MAD's Baiziwan social housing in Beijing, Atelier GOM's Longnan Garden Social Housing Estate in Shanghai, and URBANUS's Tulou Collective Housing in Guangzhou. It also includes a comparison between China and other countries in terms of policies and architectural design. Beautifully illustrated in full colour with a range of dynamic photographs, drawings, and diagrams, Rethinking Social Housing imagines that a house is not merely a machine for living.The book is essential reading for architects, urban planners and policy makers, and it not only illustrates and educates about housing history and design in China, but also aspires to push forward China's reform of design and policy.

About the Author

Ma Yansong , Hon.FAIA, is recognized as an important voice in the new generation of architects. He is the first Chinese to win an overseas landmark-building project and to design an overseas cultural landmark. With a vision for the city of the future based in the spiritual and emotional needs of residents, Ma endeavors to create a balance between humanity, the city, and the environment, committed to developing futuristic, organic, and technologically-advanced designs that embody a contemporary interpretation of the Eastern affinity for nature. Ma holds a Master's Degree in Architecture from Yale University and a Bachelor's degree from the Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture. He has been an adjunct professor at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Tsinghua University, and the University of Southern California. He joined Yale University's School of Architecture as the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design 2024 fall.

Jiang Jun , research-based designer, curator, documentation editor, and contributor. Former founding chief editor of Urban China magazine (2005-2010), curator of the touring exhibition Spontaneous China in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago (2009-2010), course tutor at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in Moscow (2010-2011), visiting scholar at the ESRC Centres, University of Oxford (2011-2012), chief curator of the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2014), and chief planner of Inter-World-View 2020 and Inter-World-View 2023: Mutual Learning of Civilizations. He is currently a professor, doctoral supervisor, and Dean of the School of Communication & Design at China Academy of Art.