Research Interest 

I work insocial theory and architecture history with a focus on China and East Asia. With an interest in politics and aesthetics, I am keen to explore relations between geopolitics and design culture in the realm of architectural knowledge, as developed in East Asia through the Cold War.  

Associated Activities 

I run a dissertation seminar group ‘War, Geopolitics and Architecture’ for Stage 3 architectural students at Newcastle University since 2020. I am supervising a few PhD students working in geopolitics and spatial planning in the context of East Asia. I teach trans-national modules at China Academy of Art and Southeast University for MA students on ‘Culture and Politics’, which include topics on war and architecture.  

Publications 

My Chinese Spatial Strategies: Imperial Beijing 1420-1911 (Routledge, 2004) is a study on spatial structures in relation to power relations using Space Syntax and Michel Foucault. My Architecture of Modern China: A Historical Critique (Routledge, 2009) is a study of ideology in relation to design culture in architecture. My current edited work, Routledge Handbook of Chinese Architecture: Social Production of Buildings and Spaces in History (Routledge, forthcoming, 2022), with 47 chapters, aims to provide a social framework to a historical topic. My recent interest into geopolitics can be found in this paper: 

Zhu, Jianfei, ‘Architecture of the Cold War: Geopolitics and Cultural Knowledge in Socialist China’, The Socio-spatial Design of Community and Governance: Interdisciplinary Urban Design in China, eds. Sam Jacoby and Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Singapore: Springer, 2020, pp. 105-117.