PUBLIC MARKS with tags architecture & chine

A couple's home in Zaozhuang, northern China's Shandong Province has been left on its own isolated 'island' after real estate developers dug out the ground around it. Niu Chuangen and his wife Zhang Zhongyun, both in their 60s, have been living on this island without water and electricity since 2009 when a local developer started to build high-rise residential buildings in the area. Niu said he didn't sign the compensation contract as the offered amount was too little. So Niu and his wife stayed and not only was the earth around their home removed but they say they have been intimated by gangsters and have had to fend off various attempts to illegally demolish their house.Picture: Quirky China News / Rex Features

These houses, thus, had to serve dual roles: to project an image of luxury, with newfound wealth and culture represented by ostentatious ornament with a distinct western influence, and to protect that wealth from marauding bandits (apparently a big problem at the time).

An imbalance in the opposite direction characterizes the contemporary marriage market in China. The Chinese government’s one-child policy, combined with a cultural preference for sons and technologies that permit selective abortion, have helped to create a large sex-ratio imbalance among young Chinese. For every 100 women in that group, there are now more than 120 men.

"It is the first time for the country to set up a new district themed with the oceanic economy at the state level," said Fan Hengshan, director of the National Development and Reform Commission's regional economy division.

Mass demolition of old districts is something of a “normal” thing in China, but to people who imagine that the large-scale destruction of historic city centres is a thing of the relatively distant past, the fate of Tianjin’s old chinese city serves as a sobering case.

Dai Haifei, 24, a newly graduated architect, decided to make his own egg-style home after being unable to afford Beijing's sky-high rental prices. The two-meter high house with two wheels underneath is made from sack bags on the outside wall, bamboo splints on the inside and wood chippings and grass seeds in between. "The seeds will grow in the natural environment and it's cold-proof," Dai explained. - ChinaDaily

yeah, amazing change in only 20 years!!

The transformation of Shanghai is unique in its speed, scale, and politics. Shanghai Transforming Blog is an on-going project to continue to develop a picture of the changing city. Shanghai Transforming is a research project, a publication edited by Iker Gil of MAS Studio and was exhibited at the Chicago Architecture Foundation and at the School of Architecture Design at Virginia Tech.

This unique piano house was built recently in An Hui Province, China. Inside of the violin is the escalator to the building. The building displays various city plans and development prospects in an effort to draw interest into the recently developed area.

In this series of pictures, the two photographers - father and son - present Shanghai between fiction and reality as the ‘city of tomorrow’. The focal point of their photographic work is the architecture of the city’s streets, a critical investigation and analysis encompassing the subject of urban landscape. In a long-term project begun in November 2002, they have been documenting the metropolis Shanghai as an urban composition, a man-made architectural living space and enviroment of unprecedented and unimaginably gigantic dimensions. The resulting images are of immense visual beauty.

the Ningbo Historic Museum designed by Wang Shu, Amateur Architecture Studio.