Mediating production, teaching, and research: the role of university-run design institutes in Chinese architectural practice

Almost every architecture school in China has its own university-run design institute, which functions as a platform for academics and students to engage with architectural practice.¹Design institutes play an active role in advancing, producing, and sharing architectural knowledge.² Academic-architects, in the context of design institutes, tend to embed themselves within a complex academic-professional network, simultaneously engaging with scholarly inquiry, training young professionals and transforming cultural assets into capital in the market.³ It is the unique position of such educator-practitioners that has distinguished the work of university-run design institutes from that of numerous other state-backed design institutes.