Glass Walls of China

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Peter Saenger, Glass Walls of China. Wall Street Journal, Sept 28, 2024, at page C4 (under the heading "Exhibit")

Note:
(a)
(i) The title is a wordplay on Great Wall.
(ii) The article does not appear in the WSJ ONLINE database. So I transcribe it (article) from the print.
(b) "common crape myrtle (L[agerstroemia]indica) [is] from China and Korea" en.wikipedia.org for (genus name) Lagerstroemia. In Chinese: 紫薇(花).
(c) Published in Spring, 2024, the atlas "Modern Chinese Architecture" has the subtitle "180 years." The publisher is ORO editions (founded in 2006 by Gordon Goff in Novato, California, just north of San Francisco Bay). The publisher is not found in en.wikipedia.org. In Spanish, the oro is noun masculine, derived from Latin noun neuter aurum, both meaning gold.
Dahua Movie Theater or Dahua Cinema  南京大华大戏院
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/南京大华大戏院
M whose architectural style is Art Deco.

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CHINESE ARCHITECTS SAY that the last two decades should be called Dangdangdai [当当代]: "right, right now," thanks to the dizzying modernness of the country's new buildings. Shanghai Tower [上海中心大厦], completed in 2015, is the tallest skyscraper in China and the third-tallest in the world; with its twisting, curving shape, it almost seems to be in motion. Beijing's National Center for Performing Arts [(NCPA) 国家大剧院] looks like an enormous metallic egg rising out of a lake, while a concert hall in Xuzhou [徐州音乐厅] imitates the shape of the crape myrtle plant, whose flower is the city's symbol.

In the new book "Modern Chinese Architecture" (Oro), art historian Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt shows that these ultra-new buildings are just the latest chapter in a story that began in the 19th century, when Shanghai saw an explosion of chic Western-style buildings. Chinese and Western styles blend dazzlingly in the 1935 Dahua Movie Theater in Nanjing, designed by Yang Tingbao [杨廷宝], one of 20th-century China's leading architects.

Beijing's Chaoyang Park Plaza [朝阳公园广场] (2017) is the work of MAD Architects [MAD建筑事务所], a firm in the capital founded by Ma Yansong [马岩松 plus 党群 (whose surname supplied the D in the firm name)]. The design for the 10-building project was inspired by traditional Chinese landscape paintings, and the two tall, dark office towers that dominate the complex have drawn comparisons to mountain peaks. They combine a rich, retro feel with high-tech amenities: "Vertical fins on their glass facades offer energy-efficient ventilation and filtration," Steinhardt writes, while "a pond at the base of the towers not only reflects the buildings but also cools the air inside them."