Writing a review of the monograph on the work of Gong Dong and Vector Architects has been something of a throwback to a time during my undergraduate studies when Juhani Pallasmaa, who has written an essay for the book, and the search for a haptic poetics of architecture were very much the discussion of the day. If not a rejection of more conventional programmes of form and function, then perhaps a new way of engaging architecture at a human, sensory level. It is perhaps unsurprising that these themes are important for Dong, given he is the same generation as I am, and it is possible, if not likely, that we share some of the same influences. Reading through this book, however, it is almost as if the world has not changed.

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