Alan Gilbert and Sarah Lo in Reform Era China and Hong Kong: A NSW Architect in Asia

Abstract

This paper is based on archival research done for a larger project looking at the impact of emergent transnational networks in Asia on the work of New South Wales architects. During the period of the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976), the neighbouring territories of Macau and Hong Kong served as centres of resistance, where an expatriate population interested in traditional Asian arts and culture would find growing support and patronage amongst the elite intellectual class. This brought influential international actors in the fields of journalism, filmmaking, art and architecture to the region, including a number of Australian architects. This paper traces the history of one such Australian émigré, Alan Gilbert, who arrived in Macau in 1963 just before the Cultural Revolution and continued to work as a professional filmmaker and photojournalist documenting the revolution. In 1967 he joined the influential design practice of Dale and Patricia Keller (DKA) in Hong Kong, where he met his future wife Sarah Lo. By the mid 1970s both Alan Gilbert and Sarah Lo had left to start their own design practice under Alan Gilbert and Associates (AGA) and Innerspace Design. The paper particularly explores their engagement with ‘reform-era’ China in the late 1970s and early 1980s when they secured one of the first and largest commissions awarded to a foreign design firm by the Chinese government to redesign a series of nine state- run hotels, two of which, the Minzu and Xiyuan Hotels in Beijing, are discussed here.