Chen Zhi

Architect, China
Chinese architect Chen Zhi was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, in southeastern
China. He had received a college edu-cation from Tsinghua School in Beijing before he
was sent to the United States in 1923 to study architecture. He completed his Master of
Architecture in 1928 at the University of Pennsylvania. During his student years, he won
the Cope Prize Architectural Competition in 1926. In the summer of 1928, he went to
New York to work for Ely J.Kahn for one year and then returned to China.
Chen joined the architecture faculty at Northeastern University in 1929. The school
was founded by another University of Pennsylvania graduate, Liang Sicheng, with whom
Chen also cooperated for design practice. Their projects included the campus buildings of
Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 452
Jilin University, Changchun City, China. However, Chen did not stay long; in late 1930
he departed for Shanghai.
In Shanghai, Chen established his lifelong career in architecture. In 1933 he was a
partner of Huagai Architectural Office, a leading architectural firm in Shanghai for the
following two decades. Among their major projects are the office building for the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nanjing, the Shanghai Grand Theater, and the Zhejiang
Xinye Bank in Shanghai. These designs have reflected the influence of the American
Beaux-Arts tradition that Chen and some of his partners studied and assimilated into their
own work while in the United States.
In 1952 Chen left private practice to take positions in government-supported design
institutions. He was one of the leading technical designers in Shanghai, where he was the
chief architect for the East China Architectural Design Company and the president and
chief architect of Shanghai Civil Building Design Institute.
Among the major projects that Chen designed or directed are the memorial tomb of Lu
Xun, the Shanghai International Seamen’s Club in Shanghai, and Friendship Hall in
Sudan. Chen also participated in the design of the Memorial Building of Chairman Mao.
Chen’s design philosophy emphasized nationalism in architecture. He believed that the
new designs in China should reflect traditional and national architectural features and
highlight the local characteristics in style. When he designed the Lu Xun Memorial
Museum in Shanghai, he treated the gable walls with three steps—a typical feature from
the vernacular architecture in Lu Xun’s hometown, Shaoxing.
However, Chen does not favor an architectural conservatism. When he designed a
commercial street in Minghang, he tried to express a new spirit with well-balanced
volumes that, in the language of modernism, marry form with functionalism.