Abstract Cultural memes, which have the same heritability and variability as particulate biological genes, provide culture units that can be shared and transmitted across different periods, allowing cultural computing to be performed in a fine-grained manner. This paper extracts regional architectural cultural memes from the basic information of Harbin city’s modern architectural heritage and constructs an urban historical architectural cultural meme matrix. By using the social network calculation method, we analyse representative architectural memes, such as material memes, structural system memes, and architectural style memes, which represent the evolution of urban architectural culture, construct a network of urban architectural cultural memes, and explore their clustering characteristics and centrality characteristics. The research shows that Harbin’s urban architectural culture in the development and evolution of the process has a holistic cultural characterisation beyond architectural meme monoliths and architectural memeplexes and has formed a highly coupled and complex cultural system. The clustering coefficients of the architectural meme networks in the cultural pattern of urban architecture in different periods are all between 0.575 and 0.676 (more than 0.5), suggesting that the cultural similarities within the clusters of architectural heritages in the city have the characteristics of continuous heredity. The methodology and conclusions of this study can provide a methodological reference for the design of contemporary urban architecture cultural patterns and provide data supporting the development and improvement of urban historic district conservation planning.

The modern architecture culture of Harbin based on memes