China Is Undergoing An Architectural Revolution

"Architecture in China has become like a kung fu film, with all of these giants trying to vanquish each other," says Wang Lu, editor of Beijing-based World Architecture magazine. In China, "you're seeing things that no one in their right mind would build elsewhere," according to Anthony Fieldman, an American architect recently posted to the Hong Kong office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The lively urban street life of China's cities might become a casualty of the melee. "You can have the best architecture in the world, but if you have bad planning rules, you've wasted your time," says Richard Burdett, dean of the school of urban planning at the London School of Economics.