Remapping Ambiguous Sino-Modernism: Research from Occident to Shanghai Part 2 Dissertation 2025 Zeyu Chen Newcastle University | UK Like many, I initially accepted the absence of China from early histories of the Modern Movement. Shanghai's ostentatious Art Deco legacy and limited examples of 'genuine' modernist architecture seemed to confirm this orthodox narrative, which is itself a fundamentally Western-centric framework. Yet these same historiographies decrying the lack of a social agenda in China nonetheless celebrated villas in Poissy and California.They overstated the influence of the Chinese-renaissance style, while acquiescing to the global dominance of neoclassicism and eclecticism during the interwar period. The supposed 'sins' of Chinese modernism – limited regional development, commodification, and recurring revival of traditional features – were forgiven in Western examples enshrined in the modernist canon.Moreover, I found that architectural journals and popular media from the 1920s to the 1930s in China revealed an astonishing collective enthusiasm for architecture, modernity, and progress.Ordinary Chinese citizens, contractors, developers, and professional designers embraced and debated new forms and theories, grounding them in Chinese conditions.In this dissertation, I argue that modernism in Shanghai was neither a rootless transplant nor an isolated exception. Its influence spread across China and endures to this day. I term this phenomenon Sino- modernism, in recognition of its distinctive but overlooked ambitions and achievements. Tutor(s) Will Thomson