Since 2016 Alberto Bologna has been monitoring the situation on a group of new buildings built in China in the last 20 years, through the two main social networks Instagram and Facebook. Starting from the fascination aroused by the images he finds online, the author constructs an organic, in-depth and original story in: "Chinese Brutalism today", published by ORO Editions in 2019.

 The text index immediately clarifies the approach adopted by Bologna. The author tone down the attention towards individual offices, "atelier" of architecture, and instead prefers to enhance the individual creations by highlighting the most original aspect of Chinese projects that is hardly grasped by surfing the net, namely the material aspect. The construction phase, the construction site, are the most interesting aspect of Chinese architecture for Bologna because the true innovation of the individual projects can be traced in the material execution. The skill of the Chinese workers was to adapt Béton Brut, the exposed concrete, a construction technique born and developed in the West, to the Eastern world. Alberto Bologna's text proposes a collection of drawings, renderings and photographs - often made in the field by the author himself - which serve to build an inventory of unique details and texture, which would be impossible to see, or in any case difficult to interpret from photographs on the net. 

Alberto Bologna's book shows all its readers that there is a positive way to use the web as a way of studying and analyzing architecture. Internet and related platforms, first of all nowadays Facebook and Instagram, represent one of the broadest forms of knowledge of things. Those who study and design architecture can continuously keep track of changes in a building, from design to construction site, from construction to wear, from inauguration to change of use. By way of example, it will be necessary to open the Instagram app on a smartphone, search for "Long Museum" of the Atelier Deshaus (building to which Bologna also dedicates a part in its text) in the "places" section, and "scroll" on the images to see how the building has changed over time, what events are taking place inside it, how the light changes over the seasons or how the material is wearing out. 

Bologna’s book leaves many paths open towards the knowledge of contemporary Chinese architecture, indeed it motivates us to observe, study, analyze individual projects also through the network.

Chinese brutalist architecture is a going on phenomenon, many construction sites have yet to start, and many new studios are adopting exposed reinforced concrete as a construction technology, and perhaps only by monitoring this phenomenon through the network will it be possible to see the results in time. real. The difference from the past is that today by opening a smartphone we can see how an architecture is born, grows and transforms in real time, and by extension how a phenomenon such as Chinese brutalist architecture is evolving.

However, online research remains a virtual, two-dimensional and abstract knowledge, and the same text by Alberto Bologna would be unthinkable and unachievable without long periods of comparison and observation from life.

 Alberto Bologna seems to suggest a new approach to research and study. The websites, the two most important social networks of the moment, Instagram, Facebook, and the Pinterest and Flickr platforms, today take on not only the function of an archive where design references can be traced, but they serve as new sources of knowledge and reflection complementary to the traditional ones.

Marco Marino

Author: Alberto Bologna
Title: Chinese Brutalism Today
Sottotitolo: Concrete and Avant-Garde Architecture
Language: English
Publisher: ORO Editions
Characteristic: format 21x30 cm, 298 pages, paperback in colour
ISBN: 978-1-943532-38-4
Year: 2019