The image-based discourse paradigm in China: a critique of transnational architectural practice

This study critiques the image-based discourse through which transnational architects in China translate architectural form into culturally legible metaphors for public circulation. Focusing on the Wuxi Grand Theatre by PES and the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art by BIG, this study examines how architectural discourses are constructed, mediated, and reinterpreted across professional, media, and public contexts. Drawing on a hermeneutic and semiotic framework, particularly Gadamer’s concept of play, the analysis acknowledges that such discourse can, when treated as the primary interpretive frame, reduce architecture to a prototype-copy logic in which symbolic explanation overrides spatial, material, and experiential dimensions, thereby weakening professional architectural values and limiting interpretive plurality. Ultimately, the study contributes to ongoing debates on architectural discourse, cultural translation, and criticism in contemporary China by advocating a more open and ontologically grounded mode of architectural interpretation.