Quinsan Ciao. Exploring the design and developing solutions for the site adjacent to Puhadin Garden of Yangzhou, China

Quinsan Ciao
Professor Quinsan Ciao has devoted her career to the international community of architectural design education. She currently holds the positions of Director of International Course Programs and University Distinguished Professor at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University, Shanghai. From 2003-2011, Dr Ciao was Associate Professor and Architecture Department Chair at Kuwait University. Previously she held faculty positions at Virginia Tech and Ball State University in the U.S.
Exploring the design and developing solutions for the site adjacent to Puhadin Garden of Yangzhou, China
Yangzhou in China’s Jiangsu province is home to a large community of Hui Muslims: one of China’s ethnic minorities. It is also the location of the tomb and gardens of Puhadin, a twelfth century imam and descendant of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) who settled in Yangzhou and built one of China’s oldest mosques. Puhadin’s tomb continues to be a Muslim pilgrimage ground and a politically loaded symbol of Islam in China, thus requiring a structure which fulfills the narrative of an Islamic cultural site, as well as being an accessible, commercially viable, non-controversial component of the modern Chinese city. This lecture explores the unique design process of several proposals for the site, and in doing so, tells an important story about religion in contemporary Chinese civil society.