has led to a common misunderstanding of Asia today, often characterised by its perceived chaos and disorder, with architecture and urbanism serving as significant representations of this historical-materialistic complexity. Drawing on extensive research, which leverages the semiotics of contemporary built Asia to decipher the subtle dynamics of power and knowledge, the built environment emerges as a field where Asia's architectural postcoloniality is discernible. In this talk, I will share insights gleaned from studying Taiwan as a focal point. Through a dialogue between semiotic observations of empirical built cases and theoretical frameworks, I aim to illuminate the architectural postcoloniality of Asia. By reframing architecture and urbanism as reflexion of the postcolonial condition of contemporary Asia, they cease to be mere symbols of rational and neutral material development. Instead, they serve to locate the subject positions that validate their belonging and evolution within an ‘Asian’ context. Francis

Chia-Hui Lin is Associate Professor at National Taiwan University, an architectural theoretician. He holds a PhD in architectural history and theory from the University of Melbourne in Australia. In 2019, Francis was awarded the Ta-You Wu Memorial Award – the outstanding research award for young researchers in Taiwan. His areas of expertise lie in the critical discourse on architecture and urbanism within a wider framework of history and theory. Amongst his interests, a particular focus is examining the immediate historicity of postcoloniality in the Asia Pacific region that is resulted from the inescapable marriage with the prevailing Western epistemology. He publishes and reviews academic works in cross-national and transdisciplinary communities. His books include Heteroglossic Asia (2015), Architectural Theorisations and Phenomena in Asia (2017) and The Postcolonial Condition of Architecture in Asia (2022). In addition, his new book tentatively named after Contemporary Asian Architecture in a Postcolonial Context: Dehors Architectural Theory is forthcoming in 2026.

DATE: Thursday, June 20, 2024
TIME: 17:00 - 18:30
LOCATION: SIN 1, at the Department for East Asian Studies/Chinese Studies, Altes AKH, Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Yard 2, Entrance 2.3