From the Blue to the Red: Changing Technology in the Brick Industry of Modern Shanghai

Abstract

<p>Modern Shanghai was built mostly of bricks, embedded in an epoch-making shift from “blue brick” to “red brick” in the history of building material in modern China. The classification are customarily defined by the apparent colour. In Shanghai red brick was introduced through the architectural culture from Europe. By the mid-twentieth century red brick had prevailed over the traditional blue bricks in both production and use, a new system was developed locally. The shift took more than half a century with arguably crucial steps in 1866-1936 in the sense of architecture. The paper addresses the changing technology of brickmaking during the material shift, aiming at the durability of the two kinds of historical bricks, which is important in conservation practice. The problem is generated by the incompatibility between the architectural historians’ ideas and the engineers’ scientific results on the mechanical and physical properties of the two kinds of bricks. It highlights the incompatibility and ascribes it to the technological issues existed in the initial stage of the locally developed modern brickmaking industry, which built on the centuries-old system with western machinery. It presents a brief state-of-the-art on the manufacturing history out of any systematic studies on those delicate and heterogeneous historical bricks. Accordingly, it proposes two most important questions about the argil and the production process that are arguably crucial to the deterioration and the durability of those Chinese bricks, based on referable European studies. Multi-field sources are utilized. One principal source is the technical publications according to different professionals such as architects, engineers, technological historians, experiencebased or science-based, from ancient time to modern period. Another main source is the industrial records from the manufacturing sector. It also carefully considers the unpublished but prevailing knowledge from the local heritage specialists and architectural historians.<br></p>

The paper addresses the changing technology of brickmaking during the material shift from "blue brick" to "red brick" in the history of building material in modern China. The shift took more than half a century with arguably crucial steps in 1866-1936 from architectural perspective. This paper revisits the durability of the two kinds of historical bricks, starting from questioning the incompatibility between architectural historians' ideas and the engineers' scientific results on the mechanical and physical properties of the two kinds of bricks. It highlights the incompatibility and ascribes it to the technological issues existed in the initial stage of the locally developed modern brickmaking industry, which built on the centuries-old system with western machinery. It presents a brief state-of-the-art on the manufacturing history out of any systematic studies on those delicate and heterogeneous historical bricks. Accordingly, it proposes two key questions about the argil and the production process.