Sino German relations: Germany's largest practice is making its mark on China's changing landscape.

It all began inauspiciously enough in 1998, with the design of the German School and an attached apartment house in Beijing. Seven years later Germany's largest architectural practice has completed 13 projects in China with another 28 on the drawing board or under construction. This staggering amount of work, including prestigious briefs such as the National Museum of China in Beijing and Lingang New City near Shanghai, has turned von Gerkan, Marg and Partner (gmp) into the most prolific European architectural firm currently operating in China.

A recent exhibition held at the RIBA summarised this achievement. Curated by Bernd Pastuschka, who had originally conceived the show on a much larger scale for the Munich Pinakothek der Moderne, the RIBA managed to accommodate 28 projects plus a theoretical-historical delineation of Lingang New City rooted in the history of European city planning. Metaphorically, Meinhard von Gerkan's circular plan of the new city originates from the ripples of a single drop in the ocean. This apparently simple act is underscored by centuries of philosophical and architectural visions, from the biblical descriptions of the Holy Citadel, Vitruvius' circular ideal city, Ebenezer Howard's Garden City, to the Modernist secularisation of contemporary urban utopia by the rigour of the grid and the excesses of motorisation (Chandigarh, Brasilia, Canberra).

Appropriately, a huge model of Lingang, made out of clear perspex blocks, dominated the centre of the exhibition space. A massive backdrop also revealed the breathtaking speed at which the land for Lingang has been reclaimed from the open sea. Satellite pictures documented the birth of a city for almost a million inhabitants, a process not entirely unlike the formation of a star in the universe based on the principles of radial geometry. The exhibition was a powerful manifestion of the sea of change that has gripped China culturally, economically, politically and architecturally. Lofty banners hanging from the walls displayed texts and photographs all bearing the message and promise of a new Asian age delivered by architecture.

Ideal Cities--Real Projects, The Work of von Gerkan, Marg and Partners in China, RIBA, London, until 22 September.

www.gmp-architekten.de