20世纪80年代初改革开放以来至今,中国从未停止发展的脚步,其中,城市和建筑面貌的变迁最真实地记录着这一过程。中国当代建筑风格的多样、建筑高度的不断增长、巨大的建筑市场、不可思议的城市化进程,不仅吸引着中国的学者、建筑师,同样也吸引着国外学者和建筑师的关注和研究。随着中外交流活动的增多,既包括境外建筑师在国内从事实践,也包括国内外建筑院校之间的交流,我们发现,对于大到如何看待中国当代的城市与建筑、或者细如具体的城市与建筑的案例分析,中外学者和建筑师常常会有截然不同的观点。为此,经过1年多的筹划和准备,特别是经过与国际学界的深入沟通,我们开始了这期最具国际视野的“境外看中国”的专刊。为促进交流,我们特别邀请了朱剑飞教授担任本期客座主编与我们共同构思并组织了这次境外/西方学者论中国专刊。 Since the beginning of the reform and opening up in the early 1980s, China has never ceased the pace of development, in which the changes in the urban and architectural landscape most truly document this process. The diversity of Chinese contemporary architecture, the ever-increasing height of buildings, the huge construction market and incredible urbanization not only attract Chinese scholars and architects, but also attract the attention and study of foreign scholars and architects. With the increase of exchanges between China and foreign countries, both foreign architects practice in China as well as exchanges between domestic and foreign architecture colleges and universities, we find that for large to medium sized cities and buildings in China, or as concrete as concrete Case study of cities and buildings, Chinese and foreign scholars and architects often have very different perspectives. To this end, after more than one year of planning and preparation, especially through intensive communication with the international academic community, we started this special issue of “looking abroad China” with the most international perspective. In order to promote the exchange, we specially invited Professor Zhu Jianfei as the current guest editor of this issue to jointly construct and organize this special edition of the Chinese specialists on foreign / western scholarship.