How the New Policies of the Late Qing Accelerated the Transition to Modern Architecture in Shenyang

Due to the special geographical location and complex historical background, the transformation of modern architecture in Shenyang is a complex process taking multiple paths. This transformation is an important means to explore the correlation between historical events and architecture and understand the reasons and factors that shaped it. In the late Qing dynasty, the so-called New Policies brought great changes to the northeast. For Shenyang, back then the center of the northeast, the late Qing reforms accelerated the process of urban modernization. The Qing government promoted modernization with regard to functionality, developing a new form of decoration through combination of Western and Chinese styles, while adapting Western technologies to traditional local materials. A driving force was the concept of “style as the guide, structure as the support, and function as the foundation” that theorized architecture as a microcosm to explain the localization process and justify the introduction of cultural heterogeneity