Banning knockoff buildings might bring a renaissance in Chinese architecture

After decades of allowing ersatz imitations, the government is finally returning to the country’s culture for inspiration

In bad news for postmodern ironists, the People’s Republic of China has announced a ban on “plagiarising, imitating and copycatting” foreign architecture. For a good quarter of a century, Chinese developers have been entertaining the world’s urban theorists and architectural pontificators (as well as good number of the country’s own people) with imitations of western buildings. It wasn’t just a case of make-believe English villages and multiple Eiffel Towers but also new-minted icons, fresh from the pages of architecture magazines. Norman Foster’s Century Tower in Tokyo, for example, popped up in Shenzhen, with somewhat less crisp detailing. Sometimes Las Vegas hotels, themselves knockoffs of historic monuments, would in turn be knocked off.

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