Chinese Brutalism Today: Concrete and Avant-Garde Architecture

by Alberto Bologna

Overview

China is the largest consumer of cement and concrete in the world, the use of which has peaked in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Used for the construction of extensive infrastructure and buildings, over the last twenty years renowned Chinese architects have been working in and studying the constructive limits and spatial and superficial effects of exposed concrete. In the process, they have created a wave of avant-garde architecture in China. Chinese Brutalism Today investigates the compositional, formal, and ornamental reasons for this architecture and its different surface finishes, from rough to smooth. This new wave of Chinese Brutalism is, in large part, a regional evolution and development closely linked to local construction processes and the available labor force. The finished tectonics represent not only a way to read the architecture, but also reveals the complex decision-making processes and planning that led from the conception to construction of these buildings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781943532384
Publisher:	ORO Editions
Publication date:	11/26/2019
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 11.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Alberto Bologna (Turin, 1982) is an architect, Ph.D., currently assistant professor of architecture and urban design at DAD-Department of Architecture and Design at Politecnico di Torino, in Italy. From 2011 to 2015 he has been a post-doc scientist at the Ecole Politechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland. He worked as an adjunct professor in the field of architectural design and theory of architecture at Politecnico di Torino, Politecnico di Milano, University of Ferrara and University of Genoa. In 2018 and 2019 he has been visiting scholar at Tsinghua Universityin Beijing, teaching design studios on use of exposed concrete in architectural design.