Judson University promoting new relationships with China

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Dr. Linan Liu of the Beijing University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture gave a lecture during Judson University's inaugural Architecture Symposium in the Herrick Chapel on Friday, September 9, 2011. (Kevin D. Sherman~For Sun-Times Media)

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Updated: November 9, 2011 4:25PM

ELGIN — The wall no longer circles the “Forbidden City,” the imperial palace at the center of China’s capital city, Beijing. The city itself once also was walled.

Linan Liu, dean of the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, pointed to photos of those walls taken in the 1950s and in the past decade. In the footprints of the walls now are roads.

Liu’s presentation on “The Changing Cityscape of Beijing in the Recent 200 Years” was part of Judson University’s first architecture symposium earlier this month at the school’s Herrick Chapel. And that symposium, called “Global Practices: Architecture & Urbanism in China,” planned to do the same thing: Build roads where there have been walls in the past.

“One of the centers of the developing world right now is in China — the place where buildings are being built, whole cities are being built as their culture is in the middle of a transformation,” said Keelan Kaiser, chair of the department of architecture at Judson.

“This is just a place where a lot of buildings going on, so suddenly you have a lot of firms in Chicago building in China.”

That transformation and Judson’s relationship with Beijing University led the architecture department to choose the country as the focus of its first symposium, Kaiser said.

The two-day symposium is something the department has wanted to do both to increase the co-curricular options for its students and to reach out to the community, he said. It brought together Liu, who currently is visiting Judson; several Chicago architects; and a “celebratory exhibition” of work by students at both Judson and Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture.

China’s growth is not just a trend, Kaiser noted in his remarks at the symposium. It has continued over the past 15 years, as the Beijing Summer Olympics and “global economic boom” have turned the world’s attention to China and the country’s economy has positioned itself to surpass the United States’ in the next 50 years, he said.

Liu pegged that interest as far back as the 1300s, when, he said, Venetian traveler Marco Polo “clearly described the beauty of Beijing.”

Judson began building those roads and relationships with several Chinese universities more than two years ago at the encouragement of the school’s president and board of trustees, Kaiser said.

The university has plans for a China center on campus, which will introduce Chinese language and culture to non-Chinese-speaking people and the Judson community, it has said. It also has an official agreement to explore academic offerings for students at the Teachers University of the People’s Republic in Yancheng to study at Judson and Judson students at Yancheng.

And in 2010, Kaiser visited the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture to develop international academic exchange relationships with the school.

“The best jobs in the 21st century will require international literacy,” he said. “That can’t be learned in the classroom. That has to be experienced.”

Last week, Liu visited Judson in return.

“There are a lot of chances for young people in architecture in Beijing today,” he encouraged students at the symposium.

“I hope if you have the chance … I hope you can have the time to visit China.”