Mitchell’s Building Construction goes to China: the impact of British Polytechnics, construction teaching and construction textbooks in Shanghai (1870-1937)

Abstract

Taking the localization of Mitchell’s Building Construction in Shanghai as a case study and a starting point and discussing British polytechnics, construction teaching and construction textbooks, this paper examines the transmission of technical knowledge to Chinese builders in Modern Shanghai. The paper provides the first systematic examination of Mitchell’s professional biography and the first review of the editions of his Building Construction textbooks. The paper shows that Mitchell’s textbooks built on rapidly evolving scientific knowledge in building technology in Britain, and how their success was attributed to the time, his construction pedagogy, their constant updates and their remarkable contribution to the building industry. A comparative analysis between Mitchell’s books and Du’s technical Dictionary and Yingzao Xue from an educational perspective, reveals Du’s insights into Mitchell’s powerful pedagogical tools of construction textbook writing, bridging different construction cultures – terminology learning, visual learning, and adaptive knowledge learning. Drawing from one of the most successful models of construction textbooks, Du’s contribution was to create a wholly new work – a distinct mixture that filled in the gaps and created a new discourse of Chinese Building Construction for the new global-local building industry in Shanghai

Keywords

• building construction
• technical education
• construction teaching
• textbook writing
• early 20th century
• evening classes
• mitchell