Decoding Urban Memory and Affect: Utopian and Anti-Utopian Narratives in Jiakun Liu’s Novel and Architectural Works

Jiakun Liu is a renowned architect in contemporary China whose architectural works reflect a critical reflection on how the built environment should recollect the modern past. This chapter uses his novel “The Bright Moon Project” to explore the utopian and anti-utopian thinking underlying both his text and architecture. The urban memory in modern China has been rendered into two types of utopias and ideologies in which space and urban landscapes were produced and reproduced as everyday landscapes. This chapter explores how affective reactions were aroused in experiencing Liu's architecture between different types of urban utopias and whether they are agents for anti-utopian thinking and complex emotions, which were echoed in his novel. Liu's writing critiques utopia and its absurdity, while his reflection in architectural works is more ambivalent. His architectural design influences the body's perception of everyday space, restoring human perception and emotion in this once-dehumanised idealistic or commercially idealistic space. His works show that architecture can be designed to address affective ambivalence and multiplicity in the memories of Chinese people, offering new ideas for how architecture enables an attunement to the urban memory and an embodiment that is pivotal when understanding urban memory in China.