The architecturing of modern love and the architecturing of modern architecture: revisiting ‘Huiyin Lin’

Abstract

The ‘birth’ of Chinese modern architecture coincided with the beginning of the advocation of ‘modern’, ‘free’, and ‘true love’ as the country moved away from the feudal system in the early twentieth century and its population began rebelling against the conventional practice of arranged marriages. Huiyin Lin, allegedly the first Chinese female architect, became a nexus of this paradigm shift. Constructed as the ultimate lover — a reputation supported by the stories about her relations with the poet Zhimo Xu, the architect Sicheng Liang, and the philosopher Yuelin Jin — she was further romanticised and popularised in TV dramas, among other forms of storytelling. Meanwhile, as a member of the first generation of Chinese architects in the modern period, she contributed to the founding of the discipline and the pedagogy of modern architecture in the country. Instead of applying reductive labels and pinpointing a straightforward case of the objectification and fetishisation of women, or of the demeaning of their professional value through a focus on their personal romantic life, this paper presents both aspects of Lin's life as intricately entwined, drawing no dichotomy between private and public, romance and profession. By reflecting the interweaving of the construction of love and of architecture, and their intersection with gender constructs in the decolonising China in a global context from the 1920s on, through the material event of ‘Huiyin Lin’ — the life of a holistic person, the histories of a name — the reformation of both love and architecture becomes possible.