Wang Dahong: Home

Born in Beijing and raised in Shanghai, Wang left China at the age of 13 to study in Europe and the United States. He received architectural training at Cambridge University and later at Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he was taught by Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus school. Wang was classmates with important architects of his generation like I. M. Pei and Philip Johnson. 

In 1952, Wang relocated to Taiwan and started his career in Taipei. Despite an education based on the ideology of modernism, he sought to integrate Chinese traditions with what he learned in the West. For Wang, architecture is closely linked with the environment, and each building is a reflection of national history and past civilizations. 

Wang first returned to China in 1947, before finally settling in Taiwan in 1952, due to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. There, he began his search for an ‘architecture of new China’. His works—which include more than 100 buildings in Taiwan—were known for their strong sense of proportion, clarity, and simplicity of form. His key works show Wang’s profound understanding, reinterpretation, and integration of both Euro-American modernism and traditional Chinese architecture.

Wang Dahong was a fiction writer, one of his publications "Phantasmagoria" is housed at the M+ Reference Library, his draft introduction for the book is part of the M+ Wang Dahong Archive.