China: Lin Huiyin
Born in 1904 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, Lin Huiyin was the first woman architect in modern China. She earned a bachelor’s of fine arts from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1927). She initially intended to study architecture, but she was not admitted into the program because she was a woman; she still completed almost all of the required coursework for the bachelor’s of architecture, and in 2024 the university posthumously awarded her the degree. After graduating, she studied stage design at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut before relocating to Beijing, China, where she studied ancient Chinese architecture (c. 1928).
Lin Huiyin participated in the establishment of an architecture programs at both Northeastern University in Shenyang, China and at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She worked as a professor in the Department of Architecture at Northeastern University in Shenyang, China (1928–); she was also a professor in the Department of Architecture at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China (c. 1949). She participated on a team of architects from Tsinghua University who submitted a proposal for the redesign for the national emblem of the People’s Republic of China (1949). A modified version of their design was selected and approved by Chairman Mao Zedong (1950), and it was adopted at the Second Session of the First National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC, 1950). Lin Huiyin was appointed an engineer of the Beijing City Planning Commission (1950).
Lin Huiyin served as a member of the Beijing Urban Planning Committee (1950). She was also a member of the Architectural Committee of the Monument to the People’s Heroes (1952), and was elected to the First Council of the Architectural Society of China (1953). She contributed to the books A History of Chinese Architecture (1944) and A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture (1984) with her husband, Liang Sicheng. Lin Huiyin died in 1955 in Beijing, China.
References
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