An Eiffel Tower rises above manicured lawns. Classical statues of marbled men look down from their stoops. A carriage stands at attention on a thoroughfare. Viewers of Francois Prost’s new photo series “Paris Syndrome†could be forgiven for mistaking Tianducheng, a city in eastern China, with France’s City of Light. Tianducheng is an example of “duplitecture,†in which Chinese cities are built to look like a greatest hits of architecture from around the world.
Those who see Tianducheng and other cities like it as a quirky Eastern desire to merely imitate the West may be missing the point. As Bianca Bosker, author of Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China told The Atlantic, “It’s a monument to China, which has become so rich and so mighty it can figuratively ‘own’ its own City of Lights—or Manhattan, or Venice, or the White House.â€
As the saying goes, good artists borrow, great artists steal. “Even in Paris you can see a lot of Egyptian influence integrated into French art of the last [few] centuries,†Prost said. However, “in this case, maybe it’s more extreme—it’s not tiny elements that are integrated in the city, but a complete copy.â€