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.

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of the author's on-going research on the topic of ‘Chinese Feminist Architecture: From 1920 to the Contemporary Era’ feeding into a larger collective inquiry around “Asian Feminist Architectural Possibilities”. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 111th College Art Associations (CAA) annual meeting on 17 February 2023 in New York City in a panel on ‘Asian Feminist Architecture’ organised and chaired by the author. An extended lecture based on this paper was presented by the author at seminars dedicated to the same subject while she was teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on 16 February 2023, as well as at Cornell Architecture Art and Planning on 28 March 2024. A Chinese version of the paper was given at the ‘Academic + Design’ symposium at Qiang Qian studio, hosted by Southeast University and co-hosted by United Design Group on 11 November 2023. The author thanks the editorial board, especially Prof. Deljana Iossifova, Dr Doreen Bernath, and the two anonymous reviewers from the Journal of Architecture, for their constructive feedbacks, which was taken into consideration in the development of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This article follows the English convention for Chinese names, placing first names before surnames.

2 United Combined Digital Reference Services (UCDRS) [全国图书馆参考咨询联盟] <http://www.ucdrs.superlib.net/ > [accessed 10 January 2023].

3 Song also notes that, by the early 1930s, Lin had established herself as a major literary figure, which was forgotten during the anti-rightist campaign in the late 1950s, and was rediscovered in the 1990s. See Weijie Song, ‘The Aesthetic versus the Political: Lin Huiyin and Modern Beijing’, Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 36 (December 2014), 61–94 (pp. 62, 91-2).

4 Google search engine <www.google.com> and Baidu search engine <www.baidu.com> [accessed 10 January 2023].

5 UPenn is planning to retrospectively award Lin an architectural degree in 2024, the 120th anniversary of her birth, and a century since she arrived to study at the school.

6 Emerged with her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Competition, which she won in 1981.

7 ‘Republican Fever’ [民国热]; see Song, ‘The Aesthetic versus the Political’, p. 93.

8 Huiyin Lin 林徽因, ‘You Are the April of This World’ [‘你是人间的四月天’], Xue Wen 学文, 1.1 (May 1934).

9 This is indeed a barrier for feminist discourse, as Francesca Hughes writes: ‘[women] struggled with the potential absurdity of autobiography, of writing about themselves’. See Francesca Hughnes, ‘An Introduction’, in The Architect: Reconstructing Her Practice, ed. by Francesca Hughnes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. x–xix (p. xvii).

10 Huiyin Lin, Collected Poems of Huiyin Lin [林徽因诗集], ed. by Zhongying Chen [陈钟英] and Yu Chen [陈宇] (Beijing: People's Press, 1985). This was the first published monograph of Lin's works, which was followed by Selected Works of Modern Chinese Authors: Huiyin Lin [中国现代作家选集·林徽因卷], ed. by Zhongying Chen [陈钟英] and Yu Chen [陈宇] (Beijing: People's Press, 1992).

11 Jun Lei, ‘New Men of Feelings: “Freedom of Love”, Modern Ethics, and Neo-Romantic Masculinity of the May Fourth Generation’, in Mastery of Words and Swords: Negotiating Intellectual Masculinities in Modern China, 1890s–1930s (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022), pp. 88–116.

12 David R. Shumway, Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy, and the Marriage Crisis (New York, NY, and London: New York University Press, 2003).

13 Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (New York, NY, and London: Verso, 2016), first publ. in 1986.

14 Song, ‘The Aesthetic versus the Political’, p. 83.

15 This is demonstrated by her letter to Zaibing Liang [梁再冰], July 1937; see Archived Texts of Huiyin Lin [林徽因文存], ed. by Xueyong Chen [陈学勇] (Chengdu: Sichuan Art and Literature Press, 2005), pp. 86–8.

16 This has been noted by Zaibing Liang in the documentary Sicheng Liang and Huiyin Lin [梁思成 林徽因], dir. by Jincao Hu 胡劲草 (China Central Television, 2010), episode 4, 25:00–27:00.

17 Huiyin Lin, Lin Huiyin Collection [林徽因集] ed. by Congjie Liang [梁从诫] (Beijing: People's Literature Press, 2014).

18 Of course, it is impossible to determine the starting point of such couple as there is no omnipotent perspective in history. Before Lin and Liang, there were also Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, who married in 1911, and Alvar and Aino Aalto, who met in the 1910s. It is worth noting that statements of significance with ‘first’, ‘earliest’, or ‘only’ are much seen in efforts gaining recognition and attention for previously marginalised figures and groups, that however risk repeating certain structural fallacies of claiming authority and heroism not only for the subject matters but also for the authors. This essay attempts to avoid the trap of claiming ownership, authenticity, and totalising judgments of such approach by revisiting Lin, instead of a heroic figure, as events of historical constructions, as well as being upfront with the author's own partial perspective and limitations engaging with such materialities with situated interpretations and reflections.

19 They met in 1940 and married in June 1941; their design office, ‘The Eames Office’, was active from 1943 to1988, Wikipedia entry, n.d. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_and_Ray_Eames> [accessed 8 February 2024].

20 They were married in 1949 and established their architectural partnership and practice in 1950, Wikipedia entry, n.d. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_and_Peter_Smithson> [accessed 8 February 2024].

21 The importance of their collaborative works has been noted, such as with the Silk and Velvet Café, from 1927; see Beatriz Colomina, ‘The Private Life of Modern Architecture’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 58.3 (September 1999), 462–71 (p. 462).

22 Ibid., p. 467.

23 Jane Rendell, ‘Introduction: “Gender, Space, Architecture”’, in Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, ed. by Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, and Iain Borden (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2000), pp. 225–39 (p. 228).

24 Wei Zeng [曾炜] and Yanyan Xie [解嬿嬿], Falling in Love with Love [爱上爱情] (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Press, 2002), p. 4.

25 Ibid., p. 110.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid., p. 217.

28 Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain? (2004), trans. by Sebastian Rand (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2008), first publ. in 2004.

29 Zeng and Xie, Falling in Love with Love, p. 223.

30 See Beatriz Colomina, ‘Coupling’, Oase, 51 (1999), 20–33 (pp. 32–3); and Henriette Steiner, ‘Between Passion and Possession: Women Architects and the Houses They Built for Family, Love and Work’, The Journal of Architecture, 28.3, (2023), 327–53 (p. 337), which unravelled the architect-couple Johannes and Inger Exner's home-office as ‘an exhibition space’, demonstrating ‘the perfect marriage of work and family life’.

31 Colomina, ‘Coupling’, p. 22.

32 Commenting on Xu's ‘being in love with love’, see Lynn Pan, ‘Exalting Love: Xu Zhimo’, in When True Love Came to China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015), pp. 207–28 (p. 221).

33 As recalled by Yuelin Jin, John Fairbanks, and Zaibing Liang, among others, in the documentary Sicheng Liang and Huiyin Lin, episode 3, 9:00–11:00.

34 Huiyin Lin's letter to Congwen Shen, spring 1938, in Archived Texts of Huiyin Lin, pp. 95–6.

35 Huiyin Lin's letter to Congwen Shen, October 1937, in ibid. p. 90. The role of a neo-domestic falls much in line with the social expectation and construct of male and female architects’ pairing, as testimonials in the case of Johannes and Inger Exner: ‘Johannes was the extrovert, charming, and enigmatic creative driver of the studio, and Inger was the practical-minded and empathetic administrator’. Or, as Steiner puts it, ‘their very worth as business partners is gendered’. They are also conforming to the expectation about their display in order to practice their business within the socio-economic system. See Steiner, ‘Between Passion and Possession’, pp. 351, 333, 336.

36 Such as commented by Song on Huiyin Lin's literary work; see Song, ‘The Aesthetic versus the Political’, p. 70.

37 Beautifully analysed by Shih Shu-mei, ‘Gendered Negotiations with the Local: Lin Huiyin and Ling Shuhua’, in The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 204–28 (pp. 211–5).

38 Huiyin Lin's letter to Congwen Shen, 27 February 1936, in Selected Texts of Huiyin Lin [林徽音文集], ed. by Congjie Liang (Taipei: Tianxia Yuanjian Press Co., Ltd., 2000), pp. 257–60 (p. 258).