Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories, volume 2

Proceedings of the 6th International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH 2018), July 9-13, 2018, Brussels, Belgium

Ine Wouters, Stephanie van de Voorde, Inge Bertels, Bernard Espion, Krista de Jonge, Denis Zastavni, Ine Wouters, Stephanie Voorde, Inge Bertels, Bernard Espion, Krista Jonge, Denis Zastavni

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429822520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Civil Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories brings together the papers presented at the Sixth International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH, Brussels, Belgium, 9-13 July 2018). The contributions present the latest research in the field of construction history, covering themes such as:
- Building actors
- Building materials
- The process of building
- Structural theory and analysis
- Building services and techniques
- Socio-cultural aspects
- Knowledge transfer
- The discipline of Construction History

The papers cover various types of buildings and structures, from ancient times to the 21st century, from all over the world. In addition, thematic papers address specific themes and highlight new directions in construction history research, fostering transnational and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Building Knowledge, Constructing Histories is a must-have for academics, scientists, building conservators, architects, historians, engineers, designers, contractors and other professionals involved or interested in the field of construction history.

This is volume 2 of the book set.

Fire brick in China: From mining to architecture

Chang-Xue Shu

University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgiu
Research Foundation Flanders, Brussels, Belgium

Ying-Bing Fang

Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China

ABSTARCT: Focusing on fire brick, an industry-based approach is adopted to address the development of refractory material in China. Fire brick was introduced into China in the mid-nineteenth century and stimulated wide application in modern structures afterwards, but it has received very little attention from historians. The study largely depends on different archival materials, rare books, and fieldwork. It reveals, for the first time, that fire brick was locally produced in China starting from the turn of the twentieth century, and that the development pioneered the path to modern ceramics in China thanks to coal mines and industrial constructions. The research opens a broad historical picture of knowledge circulation between Asia, Europe, and the USA, and exposes the scientific value in the historical materials today. It draws further conclusions regarding China’s modern shift from traditional to western brickmaking system, as discussed in 5ICCH.

Keywords: Fire brick, China, Mining, Architecture, Industry

1 INTRODUCTION

Fire bricks, made from fire clay, had been seemingly never used in ancient China. The annually published statistics in the maritime customs archival collection “Returns of Trade at the Treaty Ports in China”, for the years 1859–82, show that both fire brick and fire clay were imported into China from foreign countries from the year 1864 at latest (Table 1). The applications of those imported firebrick/fireclay are unknown. The same archives also show, in contrast, that China largely exported all kinds of traditional ceramic materials including native bricks, pottery, china ware, and earthen ware to foreign countries. The contrast rises big questions: how was the novel technology—the production and use of fire bricks—circulated into China? Why had the country to rely on foreign fire bricks despite its high ability in producing other ceramics? What has been the legacy of the new material? Very little has been said about fire bricks in terms of these questions, either in the field of construction or ceramics.

Table 1. Fire brick resources imported into China (via Shanghai Port) from foreign countries in 1864–81.*

Year	Total quantity		Imports from/re-exports to
	Fire brick (pieces)	Fire clay (piculs **)
1864	17,036	–	Imports from Great Britain
1864	10,000	–	Imports from USA
1864	2540	–	Imports from Australia
1864	10,000	–	Re-exports to Japan
1866	6493	–	Imports from Great Britain
1867	–	15	Imports from Great Britain
1868	–	16.80	Imports from foreign countries
1871	–	420	Imports from foreign countries
1879	–	344.4	Imports from foreign countries
1881	–	1929.42	Imports from foreign countries

*Table 1 is drawn on the statistics from the below mentioned archival collection. All imports/exports were via Shanghai.

**The picul is a traditional unite of weight used in imperial China and later, equal to about 60 kg.

To study the issue, the authors have conducted a survey in related archives, rare science books, periodicals, and other published or unpublished technical materials throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For the early-time situation of producing fire bricks in China one should turn to western sources; the Chinese materials about fire bricks exhibit a growth only from the 1910s and especially a sharp rise after 1930. An archival source discloses unknown details on the leading brand KMA fire bricks made in China. It is a collection of the communication between the Kailan Mining Administration

(KMA) and the Public Works Service (Service des travaux publics of the French Municipal Council of Shanghai in 1926–33, conserved in Shanghai Municipal Archives. Freshly revealed are the factory history, international sale agencies, technical parameters of fire brick and fire clay products, as well as the technical limitation discussed with the French client. This new source was contextualised with other little-known historical facts based on the authors’ field work, archival research and literature review.

Figure 1. Transformation of Kailan mining administration.

The KMA was a British-led company involved in engineering and mining in China with multiple resource-based services. The origin should be traced back to the Chinese-led mercantile stock company The Kaiping Mines

, which was under official control of the then Chinese government and relied on European expertise for mining. The Kaiping was established in 1878 in a top-down context of developing modern industries in late-Qing imperial China (Self-Strengthening Movement c.1861–95). In 1900, Kaiping was transferred to Chinese Engineering and Mining Co., Ltd. (CEMCL) that was newly registered in London, manipulated mainly by a few European financiers as well as Hebert C. Hoover who would become the 31st President of the USA. In 1912 CEMCL incorporated the Chinese-owned Lanchow Mining Company

at the fall of the Chinese Qing Empire, finally forming the KMA (Fig. 1). The marked histories of these companies have formed a large corpus of literature, either in English or Chinese language, epitomising the epoch-making period of modern China in the powers of empires, nations, and capitals. These histories are often addressed from political and economic points of view, and they provide another base for this specific study of fire brick.

2 NEW CONSTRUCTION, NEW DEMAND

In Europe, a wide range of specific constructions had to be erected in fire bricks and fire clays (used as mortar), because of their refractory resistance to high temperature. In China, the traditional blue brick was not especially made for this refractory character and was used as a seco...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Pier Luigi Nervi and Fiat. The expansion of Officine Mirafiori in Turin
• The vaulted roof of San Vittore in Milan: An unusual sixteenth-century construction
• The evolution of the cast node of the Pompidou Centre: From the ‘friction collar’ to the ‘gerberette’
• German stonemasons and the fort architecture of the Texas frontier
• The Chinese teahouse at the 1873 Vienna world exposition
• Documenting depression-era construction: The University of Virginia’s PWA buildings
• King’s College Chapel: The geometry of the fan vault
• Late Antique vaults in the cisterns of Resafa with ‘bricks set in squares’
• Evolutionary traces in European nail-making tools
• Arch bridge design in eighteenth-century France: The rule of Perronet
• ‘Recommended minimum requirements for small dwelling construction’. A forgotten ancestor of the modern USA building code
• Earthen buildings in Ireland
• Iron on top. The use of wrought iron armatures in the construction of late Gothic openwork spires
• The Munich state opera house. Constructing between tradition and progress at the beginning of the nineteenth century
• The roof of the Marble Palace in Saint-Petersburg: A structural iron ensemble from the 1770s
• Modernity and locality in the use of brick in Spanish architecture (1870s–1930s)
• Study of traditional gypsum in Spain: Methodology and initial results
• Interdisciplinary research on the heritage of housing complexes in France (1945–75)
• Earthen mortar walls in Cremona: The complexity and logic behind a construction technique
• Geometry and proportions of the medieval castles of Latvia
• New typology for Old & Middle Kingdom stone tools: Studies in the Hatnub quarries in Egypt
• Luigi Moretti and the program of the case albergo in Milan (1947–50)
• Hydrotechnical models of the ‘Modellkammer’ (chamber of models) in Augsburg, Germany
• Abandonment of sexpartite vaults: Construction difficulties and evolution
• Late Gothic constructions in Müstair and Meran
• Built-in, exposed or concealed comfort services. Attempts to industrialise collective housing after 1945
• The Portland cement industry and reinforced concrete in Portugal (1860–1945)
• Origins of the modern cable-stayed bridge: The Dischinger story
• Frederick Lanchester and the invention of the air-supported roof
• Catetinho: The first presidential house in Brasília, Brazil
• Some aspects of steel building construction of the industrial architecture in the United States (1890–1930)
• Iron bridges for Rome, the capital of the Kingdom of Italy
• The hyperbolic paraboloids of the Tor di Valle racetrack in Rome
• The secret of zoomorphic imposts: A new reading of the Achaemenids’ roofing system
• The dome of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis in Paris, a historical and structural analysis
• Braided rope with vegetable fibers for the construction of the Inca bridge of Q’eswachaka (Peru)
• Church of Mission San José, San Antonio: Using construction history to inform preservation approaches
• Knowledge transfer in vaulting. The Assier church and Valencian stonecutting
• Nineteenth-century stone protection: The invention and early research on fluosilicates and their dispersion into Europe
• The Boyne Viaduct: Early indeterminate lattice girder analysis and design
• Sixteenth-century development from common rafter roofs to ridge purlins in Leiden (NL)
• European iron bridges in Puerto Rico: The example of the Guamaní bridge
• Accouplement: Vicissitudes of an architectural motif in classical France
• Fabrication and erection of large steel bridges in the twentieth century: From structural analysis to optimisation of fabrication
• Production of major public works in Brazil: From the scenes in documentaries from 1950–70 to an interrogation about the contemporary specificities of state-company relations
• Early Greek stone construction and the invention of the crane
• Experimental school constructions by Jean Prouvé. The benefit of closed prefabrication
• Sheltered. Parked. Respirated. Three underground spaces by Gottfried Schindler
• Dutch natural stone: Interpretation of a vernacular building material in modern architecture
• Late Gothic system in the church of Saint-Séverin (Paris)
• Recent geopolitics of construction – origins and consequences
• Pier Luigi Nervi’s idea of “vertità delle strutture”
• ‘Theory’ and systematic testings – Emil Mörsch, Carl bach and the culture of experimentation into reinforced concrete construction at the turn of the twentieth century
• A timber bridge constructed in seventeenth-century Japan: Study of innovation in the construction of Kintai Bridge and its maintenance techniques
• François Coignet (1814–88) and the industrial development of the first modern concretes in France
• Assessing geometrically the structural safety of masonry arches
• A masterpiece in the use of light, Johnson Wax headquarters. Racine, Wisconsin, USA
• The Church of Peace in Jawor: A few remarks on the organization of its construction in the years 1654–56 in the light of written and iconographic sources
• Nubia vernacular: The villages of Bigge
• Beyond Grubenmann: Swiss carpentry (1750–1850)
• Transfer of knowledge through books and prints: Jesuit design for the Western buildings and fountains in the Yuanmingyuan in Beijing
• Earthquake-resistant foundations systems in Italy in the first decade of the twentieth century
• Specifications and the standardisation of Ireland’s local harbours
• Fire brick in China: From mining to architecture
• New experiences with reinforced tile for Eladio Dieste when building the Cristo Obrero Church
• Competing visions of community, commerce and construction in the first Ohio River railroad bridge
• Knowledge transfer in the early medieval art of vaulting in Dalmatia
• Onsite precast concrete: A critical approach to concrete at the Faculty of Engineering, Prince of Songkha University, Thailand
• Adobe constructions in Yún-lín county, Taiwan
• The vaulted system of the Basilica of S. Ambrogio in Milan: A cross-feature in the Basilica’s life. Restoration and interpretation
• At the intersection of foreign building know-how: Plovdiv in the early twentieth century
• The influence of Howe’s structural typology on Galician wooden bridges
• The mushroom column: Origins, concepts and differences
• The thirties summer holiday camps in the Abruzzo region: From design to building
• The first Luanda’s skyscraper: Comfort through natural and artificial control methods
• Victor Horta and building site photography
• Business-card buildings: Corporate architecture and promotional strategies in buildings and projects for Eternit in Belgium (1955–75)
• The foundations of the Nieuwe Kerk Tower in Amsterdam (1645–52)
• Joining techniques in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Belgian timber roofs
• Education on the production chain: Lelé’s transitory schools in Brazil
• Innovations in the structural systems in tall buildings in Bogotá in the 1960s. Case study: Bavaria building
• William Arrol and Peter Lind: Demolition, construction and workmanship on London’s Waterloo Bridges (1934–46)
• Reverse engineering marvelous machines: The design of Late Gothic vaults from concept to stone planning and the prehistory of stereotomy
• Emergence of heavy contracting in the United States in the nineteenth century
• Hidden modernity: Reinforced concrete trusses in Brussels parish churches (1935–40)
• Built to stock. Versatility of Hennebique’s urban warehouses in Belgium (1892–1914)
• Author index