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Charles Chen (June 13, 1916 - March 12, 2001) Urban planner, architect.
Born in Shanghai, originally from Fenghua, Zhejiang. In 1935, he graduated from Shanghai Lai Shide College. In August 1938, he went to study at the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool. From 1944 to 1945, he was awarded a scholarship by the British Council. He is a Ph.D. student at University College London and his tutor is Sir Patrick Abercrombie. In 1946, he gave up his studies and returned to China. In Shanghai, with friends Lu Qiansui, Wang Dazhao, Zheng Guanlan, Huang Zuo?
In October 1949, he went to work in Beijing. In February 1950, together with Liang Sicheng, he completed the "Proposal on the Location of the Administrative Central District of the Central People's Government", proposed to protect the ancient city, and built a new center in the suburb of Xicheng, known as the "Liang Chen Plan."
In 1957, he was assigned to the right, and Chen was sent to the Shaling Greening Base in Beijing for labor reform. In 1960, back to the city, labor reform continued. In 1962, he was the theoretical group interpreter of the Institute of Information Science.
In 1979, he was rehabilitated with Hua Lan. He is the chief planner of the Urban Planning Research Institute of the State Administration of Urban Construction. Editor-in-Chief of Urban Planning (English Edition). In January 1988, he was invited to give lectures in the United States. He taught at Berkeley, Cornell and other schools in California. Returned to China in 1989. On March 12, 2001, he died in Beijing.
He devoted his life to improving the level of urban planning and urban design, and summed up domestic and foreign experience on the basis of diligent study and continuous practice. Studying the content and methods of urban planning that suits China's national conditions, has enabled China to make pioneering work in urban planning and the world, and enjoys a great reputation in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries.
Chen Zhanxiang’s father, Chen Chuanfa, was originally a tailor and later hired a worker and became the owner of a small workshop. Chen Chuanfa suffers from no culture and is determined to cultivate his next generation into a scholar. Chen Zhanxiang was the eldest of his children. Since he was a child, he invited a tutor to practice his calligraphy. After entering Shanghai Chengzhong Middle School, he also invited Portuguese teachers to tutor English. For four or five years, he laid a good foundation in English.
In the early 1930s, a new downtown Shanghai city was built at the Wujiaochang in Jiangwan, Shanghai. A splendid Chinese palace-style municipal building suddenly appeared in front of the Shanghai residents. In Shanghai, a semi-colonial area full of Western architecture, a new building with Chinese national form and Chinese style emerges, which is undoubtedly a major event that inspires the people. Juvenile Chen Zhanxiang was happy and proud, and the building designer Dong Dazhao became the hero and role model in Chen Zhanxiang's mind. This Chinese-style high-rise building actually decided Chen Zhanxiang's choice of lifelong career.
In 1935, Chen Zhanxiang was admitted to Shanghai Leishide Institute of Technology with excellent results. The college is named after the late British architect, with a focus on hands-on internships and engineering design for students, and encourages students to apply for an overseas degree at the University of London. In 1936, Chen Zhanxiang passed the entrance examination of the University of London and became the first student to qualify for admission to the University of London. According to regulations, he can choose to enroll in any university in the UK. In 1937, the Japanese army invaded Shanghai and the college was forced to stop. However, the college's Miller teacher continued to teach individually, teaching the general principles of architectural design and guiding curriculum design. At the suggestion of Miller, Chen Zhanxiang went to Shanghai from Shanghai in August 1938 to study at the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool.
However, Chen Zhanxiang has not forgotten the aggression of the motherland at all times. Due to his deep patriotic enthusiasm, he was invited by a civil society in Chester City at the first year of university to resolutely speak for the first time in English. The topic is China's war of resistance. It was warmly welcomed by the audience. Since then, he has been invited by the Liverpool Inter-community Group Roundtable, Rotary Club, and Mrs. Klipps Foundation to introduce the significance and heroic deeds of our country's war of resistance to British friends. Some of the material was selected from the newly published "Westbound Man" (Snow), which was given to him by the British Communists among his classmates. In the second year of college, he was routinely absorbed into the university's lecturer group and became a full member of the lecturer group. This lecturer group is composed of university professors and specializes in worker amateur workshops. In the next 4 years. He has conducted more than 500 lectures to British workers and all walks of life. The content has been from the Chinese war of resistance to the construction after the victory and the urban planning of the UK.
In 1943, he was elected president of the Student Union of the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool. This was the first time the Chinese had held this position. At the same time, he founded the China Seafarers' Club and served as the Secretary-General, organizing cultural and recreational activities for Chinese seafarers serving in the merchant ships and fleets of the Allied countries. Chen Zhanxiang completed his postgraduate thesis "Liverpool Chinatown" with the renovation of slums in the streets of Jietie Street and George Square with frequent Chinese seafarers activities. In July 1944, London's The Times published a detailed introduction and high evaluation of the design by the founder of the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool and the architectural educator Sir Ray Lai. The city of Liverpool was hailed as a gem inlaid in Liverpool. ! After the graduation thesis was passed, Hezhong Society also sent a telegram for this. In the summer of 1942, Chen Zhanxiang went to Cambridge University and met Professor Joseph Needham, an expert on ancient Chinese science and technology history who had just returned from the Chongqing to the UK. Under the guidance of the professor, he read the book "Integration of Ancient and Modern Books", and further studied the works of outstanding architects and founders of the ancient Chinese architectural history discipline, Professor Liang Sicheng's "Qing Style Construction", and established research on Chinese architecture. The basic point of view from the inherent culture of China. Under the guidance of the famous British architectural theorist Sir Nicholas Pevsner, in 1945, he wrote a paper analyzing Chinese architecture, "Chinese Architecture Theory", signed by Charlie Chen. The British "Architectural Review" magazine with international level, based on Chen Zhanxiang's thesis, organized some famous British scholars to write a manuscript. In July 1947, he published the "China Special Issue". With the deepening of study and research, Chen Zhanxiang discovered that one of the biggest features of Chinese architecture is that it is different from Western classical architecture. That is, Chinese architecture is actually composed of buildings; the pattern and architecture of the city in Chinese history. The combination of groups gives a high degree of attention and a wealth of practice. So he began to study the theory of urban planning in ancient China, and wrote the article "Discussion on the theory of ancient Chinese urban planning", published in the 1945 autumn of the University of Liverpool's "Urban Planning Review" magazine.
In 1943, when Chen Zhanxiang was a graduate student at the Department of Urban Design at the University of Liverpool, the head of the department, Herfu, told him that the implementation of the urban plan relied on the legislation and zoning regulations of the urban plan. Therefore, at the end of 1944, when he entered the University College of London University with a scholarship from the British Council, he studied with the famous British urban planning expert, the master of the Greater London Plan, Sir Aberkamp, to study the urban plan. Legislation, and deep understanding of the UK's urban planning for post-war reconstruction, studied the "Greater London Plan", and then regarded the urban plan not only as a plan confined within a certain city, but also in line with the city. The region conducts comprehensive analytical research and implements comprehensive planning, which is a new phase that combines urban and regional planning, namely the metropolitan area planning known internationally. As an assistant to Aberkamp, Chen Zhanxiang completed the regional planning of three cities in the south of England. Due to his outstanding achievements, he was absorbed as a member of the Royal Society of Urban Planning. After the end of the Second World, in 1945, the World Democratic Youth Congress was held in London. Chen Zhanxiang, 29, was elected as the vice chairman of the conference as the head of the Chinese Youth Delegation. In 1946, the Nanjing National Government invited Chen Zhanxiang to return to China to preside over the urban planning work of Beiping. Chen Zhanxiang resolutely gave up his doctoral studies and immediately rushed to the embrace of the motherland. The instructor, Professor Aberkamp, gave a grand fare to his students and expressed high hopes for the future planning of Beiping. Due to the beginning of the civil war, Chen Zhanxiang’s plan for the north could not be realized. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Nanjing Government appointed him as the engineer of the Department of Management and the Department of Architecture of the Central University, and lectured on urban planning. In this issue, he presided over the completion of the National Government Administrative Center program planned on the site of the Ming Palace. Later, Chen Zhanxiang was seconded to the Shanghai Construction Bureau as the head of the general plan group of the Shanghai Metropolitan Planning Commission. At the same time, he established the Wulian Architecture and Planning Institute with Lu Qianshen, Wang Dazhao, Zheng Guanxuan, and Huang Zuo?
In May 1949, Shanghai was liberated. Chen Zhanxiang saw the bright future of the motherland. At the invitation of Liang Sicheng, he went to Beijing in October of that year and served as the director of the Planning Department of the Beijing Urban Planning Committee. He also served as a professor of architecture at Tsinghua University and lectured on urban planning. In February 1950, he and Liang Sicheng proposed the planning plan for the new Beijing City. They jointly wrote the "Proposal on the Location of the Administrative Central District of the Central People's Government" and advocated the protection of valuable cultural relics left over from Beijing's centuries-old history. The Sanli River in the suburbs has an administrative center to evacuate the dense population of the old city and preserve the traditional ancient city pattern and style. The new program will protect both the historic city and the large-scale construction that is about to begin in the capital. In 1951, during the collection and discussion of the design plan of the Monument to the People's Heroes, he and Liang Sicheng worked together to advocate the use of traditional Chinese monuments and adhered to the design scheme based on the monument, which was finally implemented on the basis of this. In 1953, in the planning and design of a 300-meter-long street building complex, he worked hard to practice Liang Sicheng's claim to explore the national form.
In 1954, Chen Zhanxiang was transferred to the Beijing Architectural Design Institute as the deputy chief architect. In 1957, Chen Zhanxiang was misclassified as a rightist, and he was treated unfairly in the long years after 22 years. However, he still believes that the party and the people, as always in the hard work of decentralization or in the distribution of his skills in the study of technical intelligence, he, as always, conscientious. Since 1962, he has translated a large number of works, speeches, articles and works by modern architects Wright, Mies, Le Corbusier and Gropius, and introduced and translated many advanced foreign planning theories and examples. It has also translated many advanced foreign technologies and patents, providing important internal information for architectural design and urban planning. The ground practice of the indoor artificial ice hockey stadium of the Beijing Capital Gymnasium was found by Chen Zhanxiang in person at the Patent Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This advanced technology enables the stadium's playing field to fill the ice hockey ice hockey and restore the ice to restore the wood floor basketball. He is the first reader of the architect to access the information in the patent library. In the vast patent data, he looks for useful advanced technology from the very special English style.
In December 1979, Chen Zhanxiang was transferred to the Urban Planning Research Institute of the State Administration of Urban Construction (now the China Urban Planning and Design Institute) as the chief planner. After retirement, he still served as the chief planner of the consultant and also served as the Urban Planning (English version). ) Editor-in-Chief. Since the 1980s, he has attended the annual meeting of the International Institute of Architects in the Philippines and was elected as the vice chairman of the conference; attended the annual meeting of the International Institute of Architects in Canada; and visited countries and regions such as the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. Introduce China's urban planning and urban construction experience. In 1988, he was invited to give lectures in the United States, and further introduced China's urban planning and construction to teachers and students from all walks of life and universities in the United States, and learned from foreign countries.
Chen Zhanxiang is rigorous in his studies and practical in his work. He is good at combining his life studies with China's urban planning practice, and has made positive contributions to the development of China's urban planning. He attaches importance to the research and construction of the basic theory of urban planning.
In September 1949, Liang Sicheng mentioned in a letter to the Mayor of Beijing, Nie Rongzhen: Mr. Chen Zhanxiang studied urban planning in the UK with a famous teacher, which is rare in China. Chen Zhanxiang is an early expert in systematically studying the theory and practice of western urban planning in China. He has conducted in-depth research on the history and current situation, theory and practice of western urban planning. Before the reform and opening up of China, many domestic professionals engaged in urban planning were not familiar with the development of foreign urban planning. For many new professional terms, there was no way to go, even Zhang Guan Li Dai, blind application. In response to this situation, Chen Zhanxiang believes that special attention should be paid to the study of the basic theory of urban planning, to understand the basic concepts, and to strengthen theoretical construction. To this end, he made great efforts. In his work in "Urban Planning" (English version), he did his best to constantly modify the translation for the author word by word; in 1984, the Chinese Architectural Society held an international conference on earth building, he was responsible for reviewing the translation of the paper. Before the meeting, he spent half a year and re-translated more than 30 papers for the conference. In addition to the textual modifications, it was more important to clarify many misunderstandings and confusions in the basic theoretical concepts.
Emphasizing the regional concept of urban planning
Chen Zhanxiang believes that the development of cities in the world to this day is no longer a city of industrial revolution, nor a city after the First World War, but a new stage in the development of cities to metropolitan areas. Regional planning of metropolitan areas has emerged. New concepts and new theories. This has gained widespread consensus in the international urban planning community after the Second World War. In 1947, when Chen Zhanxiang was appointed as the chief of the Shanghai Urban Planning Committee, he proposed the development of the Pudong New Area. In 1950, he and Liang Sicheng jointly proposed to build the Central People’s Government Administrative Area outside Beijing’s Fuxingmen. From the perspective of the metropolitan area, evacuate the population, protect the ancient city, avoid overloading the old city, and make the city healthy and effective.
Chen Zhanxiang emphasized the regional perspective in urban planning and believed that it is impossible to talk about cities in cities. Because cities in modern society always have inextricably linked with the surrounding areas and neighboring cities and villages. This is an objective reality. Planners must respect the objective, grasp the objective, and subjectively arrange on an objective basis to make a plan that is practical and promotes regional economic development. In the evaluation, review, guidance or consultation of many urban planning schemes, Chen Zhanxiang always takes the theory of regional planning as a guide. For planning in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, he believes that from a geographical perspective, Shenzhen is an important part of the Greater Hong Kong metropolitan area. In 1997, after Hong Kong returned to the motherland, it will surely have greater development and prosperity. If it is based on Hong Kong's own realm, its further prosperity will be difficult to achieve. As planned for Hangzhou, he advocates extending the tourism industry in Hangzhou to the entire Qiantang River basin to enrich tourism resources in and around Hangzhou. He is consistent with the famous domestic urban planning experts Zhou Ganyu, Ren Zhenying and Zheng Xiaoyu. It is clear that the nature of Hangzhou is a historical and cultural city. It is not appropriate to arrange industrial construction too much. It is necessary to focus on the area of Hangzhou, from Ningbo to the east and Qiandao to the west. The lake, then to Huangshan, developed into a beautiful tourism system along the Qiantang River, so that the towns along the line have gained economic benefits. After the development of these areas, the region began to achieve better social and economic benefits.
Advocating the harmonization of architectural design and urban planning
Chen Zhanxiang believes that in the urban planning work, it should not only fully and fully reflect the superiority of the socialist system. Capitalism is a private system. Although there are various kinds of urban laws and regulations, it can't solve the blind development of cities, the chaos of cities, the disorder, the buildings, and the series of defects. These problems are in the public ownership society. It can be better controlled and solved. As architects and planners of socialist China, we should give full play to the advantages of the system and create more and better space environments with Chinese characteristics.
When studying for a master's degree in urban planning in the UK, Chen Zhanxiang's plan for the Liverpool City China City was not only compatible with the planning and environment of Liverpool, but also with the Chinese national style. The spatial layout of the three-in-one courtyard, the rock formation in the local position, fully absorbed the traditional Chinese techniques. The unity of planning and architecture is reflected in the guiding ideology of design. In 1953, Chen Zhanxiang completed the planning and design of the office buildings and dormitories along the street of Yuetan South Street in Beijing, reflecting the superiority of unified planning and unified design. In the architectural style, it absorbs the Western classical architecture and combines many details of Chinese architecture, which also highlights the rhythm of the building group, giving the whole design a fresh, uplifting and vibrant feeling. Local residents proudly call it "social road."
The unification of planning and design is not only reflected in the urban style and space environment, but also in the use value of developing urban land. Chen Zhanxiang has consistently advocated that urban development aims to develop the value of land use. This was a critical paradox in 1957, but today it has become the consensus of planning and design workers. He believes that the use of land for development must first have a viable urban plan, followed by appropriate architectural design, so a new profession: Architect/Planner will emerge. Due to their high sense of responsibility to the society, they conduct serious feasibility studies on the land to be developed in the city to give full play to the potential of land use and create huge and immeasurable benefits.
[Work Catalog]
Mainly on:
1. Chen Zhanxiang, Discussion on the Theory of Urban Planning in Ancient China, TOWN PLANNING REVIEW (1945 AUTUMN, UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL PRESS) 1945 (Autumn).
2. Chen Zhanxiang, Chinese Architecture Theory, Architectural Theory (ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW), 1947.
3. Liang Sicheng, Chen Zhanxiang, Proposal on the Location of the Administrative Central District of the Central People's Government, Liang Sicheng's Anthology (IV), 1986.
4, Chen Zhanxiang translation, precast concrete wall panels, Beijing: China Building Industry Press, 1979.
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