With relations between the United States and China strained by trade and political competition, Covid-19, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now is a good moment to look back at some of the ties that bind the two countries together. In terms of architectural education, those ties began with a group of Chinese students coming to America in the 1920s, many of whom studied at the University of Pennsylvania on Boxer Indemnity Scholarships funded by excess payments China made to the U.S. after the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. From 1918 to 1941, 23 Chinese students matriculated at Penn, drawn in part by the school’s dean, Paul Philippe Cret, who built a reputation as a master of Beaux-Arts architecture and pedagogy.
At Penn, many of these students excelled, including Liang Sicheng, who earned the gold medal in 1927 for excellence in architectural design, beating out a fellow student named Louis Kahn, who had to settle for bronze. “These were the best and the brightest from China,” says William Whitaker, the curator and collections manager of the Architectural Archives at Penn. When they returned to China, they established important practices and schools of architecture that shaped the nation’s rapidly developing cities and towns for decades. As China explored a new path of modernism, these architects led the way—informed by their education in the U.S. and their understanding of Chinese design principles.
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