The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is one of the most significant cultural emblems of China in the 1960s-70s. Being regarded as both a political victory and a technological achievement, the so-called ‘Great Bridge’ became a popular icon that entered people’s everyday lives nationwide. This lecture will investigate into the history of the design process of this infrastructural architecture and unfold this extraordinary case that paved the way for a revolutionary style of architecture, a symbolism which inevitably transcribed technology into monumentality. 

Andong Lu completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge and was elected a Fellow of Wolfson College. He is now Professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Nanjing University, Deputy Chief-editor of the Architectural Journal (English edition), guest editor of Architectural Design (AD), and the founding partner of LanD Studio. He initiated the ‘Memory Project of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge’, a bottom-up urban project intending to revitalize the memories of the bridge and to create a contemporary public place.