The peculiarity of China’s development up to the middle of the 19th century was a commitment to tradition and an evolutionary approach to development, which was reflected in the isolationist policy of the country.

Under such conditions, the opening of China’s borders after the Opium Wars (1840-1842; 1856-1860) led to a process of radical transformations in various spheres of Chinese society. Their basis was the integration and subsequent adaptation of the achievements of the countries of Europe and the United States, which led to the acceleration of China’s development. One of the manifestations of this process was the organic synthesis of advanced achievements of Western architecture and centuries-old developments of traditional architecture. All this laid the foundation for cross-cultural interaction, which was largely reflected in the further rapid development of the PRC at the end of the 20th–21st centuries and it has allowed it to become one of the world’s leading economies over the past 40 years.

In this regard, this Special Issue focuses on filling in the gaps in the history of architecture in China concerning the processes of development and transformation of architecture in the process of intercultural interaction in the second half of the 19th – first half of the 20th century and its manifestations in various types of buildings and approaches to architectural design.