About Architectural Society of China

Architectural Society of China

The Architectural Society of China, abbreviated ASC, is the national academic society for architecture in China. Founded in Beijing on 23 October 1953, it is a nationwide academic organisation constituted by professionals in architectural science and technology, registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs as a non-profit social organisation. The society is a member institute of the China Association for Science and Technology and is closely related by profession to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. It is headquartered at 9 Sanlihe Road, Beijing, and its official website is chinaasc.org. With more than 70,000 individual members and 22 specialist branches, it convenes, in its own description, the most outstanding experts, scholars and engineering technicians of the architectural field in China, acting as a think tank and assistant to the government in promoting urban and rural development.

The society's early leaders included Liang Sicheng and Yang Tingbao, two of the most important figures in modern Chinese architecture, and many members of its first council came from the pre-war Society for Research in Chinese Architecture. It publishes the Architectural Journal, China's flagship architecture periodical, administers the Liang Sicheng Architecture Prize, the country's highest architectural honour, and runs architectural education accreditation through the national board whose secretariat it manages. It joined the International Union of Architects as China's national section in 1955 and the Architects Regional Council Asia in 1989.

Founding in 1953 and the founding generation

The Architectural Society of China was founded on 23 October 1953. Liang Sicheng, Yang Tingbao and other famous Chinese architects assumed its leadership in the following years, and many members present at its first council meeting were drawn from the Society for the Study of Chinese Architecture — the pre-war research society through which Liang and his colleagues had surveyed and documented China's historic buildings. The new society thus inherited both the personnel and the scholarly mission of China's pioneering architectural research organisation, re-founded for the conditions of the People's Republic.

Liang Sicheng's role was foundational. A distinguished architect, architectural historian and educator, he was a pioneer of historical research in Chinese architecture and the founder of China's modern system of architectural education. With Lin Huiyin and others he had spent more than ten years from the late 1920s travelling through more than 200 counties in fifteen provinces, surveying and photographing more than 2,000 ancient architectural relics of the Tang, Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Liang took part in the formation of the Architectural Society of China and served as vice president of its first council, and in his speech at the society's first congress in 1953 he argued that whatever other nations could build in their national form, there was nothing another nation could not build in its own form — a statement of the cultural confidence that shaped the society's early debates about national style.

Aims, status and government role

The society defines its objective as promoting the development and prosperity of Chinese architectural culture, implementing the state strategy of invigorating the country through science, technology and education together with the strategy of sustainable development, and uniting and organising the professionals of the architectural field across China. Its own strategy statements emphasise pursuit of academic research, pioneering in the building industry, service as a think tank to government, and a home for the profession's members.

That think-tank role is structural. Registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs and operating under the professional guidance of the housing and urban-rural development authorities, the ASC advises government on urban and rural development while organising the profession's academic life. The president named in the Architects Regional Council Asia's current country profile is Xiu Long, and the society's leadership has, since the founding generation, been drawn from the senior ranks of Chinese architectural practice, education and research.

Membership and specialist branches

The society reports more than 70,000 individual members, organised nationally and through 22 specialist branches covering the discipline's sub-fields — among them architectural history, building structures, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and architectural physics. These branches are the working units of the society's academic programme, organising conferences, research and technical exchange in their fields. The society's annual conference is its largest national gathering; the 2020 annual conference, held under the theme "Building a Sustainable Future", is among the editions documented in its international reporting.

Through its branches and its provincial-level counterparts, the ASC links the architects of China's design institutes, universities and research bodies into a single national academic community. Its country reports to ARCASIA record a dense programme of activity — in 2023–2024, for example, the society reported organising 72 events in the period covered by its council reporting, alongside the accreditation site visits and award ceremonies described below.

Publications: the Architectural Journal and sister periodicals

The society's periodicals are the Architectural Journal (Jianzhu Xuebao), the Journal of Building Structures and Architectural Practice. The Architectural Journal is China's flagship architecture periodical, the principal national forum for architectural design, history and theory in Chinese. The Journal of Building Structures serves the structural engineering side of the discipline, reflecting the society's character as a body for architectural science and technology as much as for design.

Internationally, the ASC also co-publishes the Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering (JAABE) with the Architectural Institute of Japan and the Architectural Institute of Korea, giving Chinese architectural scholarship a shared East Asian platform in English. Together, the journals embody the society's twin functions: sustaining a national scholarly conversation in Chinese, and connecting that conversation to the regional and world literature of architecture.

The Liang Sicheng Architecture Prize

The society's best-known honour is the Liang Sicheng Architecture Prize, which it organises with the support of the International Union of Architects and which is described by the society as the highest honour awarded to architects and architecture scholars. Established in 2000 by the Ministry of Construction and the Architectural Society of China, the prize honours architects, architectural theorists and educators who have made significant achievements and outstanding contributions in the architectural field, rewarding lifetime achievement in architectural creation. The original award carried a prize of 100,000 yuan for the honoured architect's lifetime achievements and contributions.

The prize's administration has evolved. From 2014 the Architectural Society of China became its sole sponsor. Since 2016 the prize has been open to the whole world, given biennially to two architects, whose winners receive a certificate and a medal from the society together with a prize of 100,000 yuan from the Liang Sicheng Fund; selection is a two-stage process beginning with nomination. Recent editions illustrate the prize's international reach: Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and Chinese architect Li Xinggang were chosen as winners of the 10th Liang Sicheng Architecture Prize, and Chinese architects Zhang Li and Hu Yue won the 11th prize, with the awarding ceremony for the 10th and 11th prizes held in October 2024 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, alongside the society's annual conference.

Other awards and competitions

Beyond its flagship prize, the society administers a family of honours. Its published awards are three in number at national level: the Liang Sicheng Architecture Prize, the Architectural Design Award and the ASC Science and Technology Progress Award, commending architectural engineering professionals from China and around the world. Earlier ARCASIA country reporting describes the same structure in period form: ASC Awards for Architectural Creation, issued every three years to members for built works of excellent design, and ASC Awards for Young Architects, issued every two years to young architects under the age of 35.

Competitions and awards are central to the society's professional mission, because they define exemplars for a rapidly building country. By honouring lifetime achievement through the Liang Sicheng Prize, built work through its design and creation awards, younger practitioners through its young architect awards, and research through its science and technology progress award, the ASC sets standards across the whole career span of the Chinese architect.

Architectural education accreditation

The society plays a formal role in architectural education. It manages the daily operations of the secretariat of the national board for architectural accreditation (NBAA), and its reporting records teams of Beijing experts conducting site visits to institutions seeking accreditation — 18 institutions in the 2023–2024 reporting period. Accreditation links the society to the universities where Chinese architects are trained, extending its influence from practice into the curriculum and standards of professional education.

That educational role has deep roots. Liang Sicheng founded China's modern system of architectural education, and the society he helped to found now administers the accreditation machinery of that system. Internationally, the ASC is also a member of the central committee of the APEC Architect Project and of the Canberra Accord on architectural education, and it has co-hosted Canberra Accord general meetings with the accreditation board and Tongji University, aligning Chinese architectural education with international agreements on the recognition of accredited degrees.

International engagement: UIA, ARCASIA and the 2029 congress

The ASC joined the International Union of Architects (UIA) as China's national section in 1955, only two years after its founding, and joined the Architects Regional Council Asia (ARCASIA) as a national member institute in 1989. Through the UIA it is China's country member in the world organisation of architects; through ARCASIA it participates in the regional council of Asian institutes, hosting and attending its council meetings and contributing the country reports from which much of the society's English-language record is drawn.

The high points of that engagement include the 1999 UIA congress era in Beijing and, most recently, Beijing's successful bid to host the 2029 UIA World Congress, recorded in the society's 2023–2024 reporting. Hosting the world congress returns the UIA's global gathering to the Chinese capital thirty years after the landmark 1999 congress, and positions the Architectural Society of China — the UIA's Chinese national section — at the centre of the event. The society's international work, from JAABE co-publication to the APEC Architect Project and the Canberra Accord, forms a consistent pattern: representing Chinese architecture abroad while bringing international architectural exchange to China.

The society today

More than seventy years after its founding, the Architectural Society of China remains the national home of the Chinese architectural profession: a non-profit academic society of more than 70,000 members and 22 specialist branches, headquartered at 9 Sanlihe Road in Beijing, publishing the country's flagship architectural journals, awarding its highest architectural prize, accrediting its architecture schools and representing it in the UIA and ARCASIA. Its development strategy, as stated to its regional partners, adheres to the pursuit of academic excellence and the leadership of architectural development.

The continuity with 1953 is deliberate. The society was founded by the generation of Liang Sicheng and Yang Tingbao, heirs of the pre-war Society for Research in Chinese Architecture, and it still organises its highest honour under Liang's name, now open to architects worldwide. In a country that has undergone the largest building boom in human history during the society's lifetime, the ASC's role as academic society, professional think tank and guardian of architectural culture gives it a place in Chinese public life that its founders, surveying the wooden temples of Shanxi and Hebei in the 1930s, could scarcely have imagined — and that its own publications, prizes and congresses continue to define.