The architectural elite may love the wacky buildings emerging from China’s rise, but senior leaders cannot get their heads around them.
Under a new directive issued by China's cabinet, the State Council, and the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party, there should be a move away from buildings that are "oversized, xenocentric and weird".
Instead, Chinese architects have been urged to focus on edifices that are “suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye”.
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Presumably this means a move away from "weird" skyscrapers like Rem Koolhaas' spectacular CCTV HQ in downtown Beijing, which Beijingers believe resembles a giant pair of underpants, and other outlandish constructions.
China is no stranger to wacky architecture. While the CCTV building, the Olympic Bird's Nest Stadium, the Water Cube and the National Theatre are more avant-garde than weird, there are plenty of Eifel Towers, Hogwarts, British and Austrian country village rip-offs and giant teapots that definitely fall into the category of strange.
In late 2014, President Xi Jinping took aim at what he described as “weird architecture”, a message that chimes with his back-to-basics approach to Chinese society.
"Ultimately it is about openness and accountability in the choice of design and expenditure. That said, China does have internationally recognised architecture, such as the Bird's Nest former Olympic stadium, the opera house and even the CCTV building, despite its nickname of 'big underpants'," ran an editorial in the South China Morning Post.
The new rules will also seek to open up the city’s gated residential compounds to the public, and all new residential developments will have to follow the public street grid system.
Beijing has many residential compounds with security guards and private parking, which are operated by the residents.
While some of them are swanky villa complexes on the city outskirts, the majority are downtown communities.
Home owners are fighting the ruling in the Supreme Court, saying it is in violation of the 2007 Property Law guaranteeing joint ownership to property owners of roads within a residential area, except for public thoroughfares.
In China, all land in urban areas is state-owned, and anyone buying a flat only purchases the right to use the land for a maximum of 70 years, a fact that has driven a boom in Chinese investors buying property in the US and Europe.
