Lü Yanzhi took an architecture degree at Cornell in 1918, worked for Murphy & Dana on Ginling College and Yenching University, and in 1921 opened what is generally described as the first Chinese-owned architectural practice. In 1924 he co-founded China's first professional architectural association. He then won, in succession, the two competitions that defined republican commemorative architecture: the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing in September 1925 and the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Guangzhou the following year. Both graft Chinese roofs, glazed tile and axial ceremonial sequence onto Beaux-Arts planning, a synthesis he described in writing as a way of asserting Chinese nationhood against foreign imperialism. Liang Sicheng later faulted him for borrowing only the surface of Chinese building. He died of cancer in March 1929, months before Sun was interred.
