Navigating the Nexus of Global Design Practices and Local Construction Realities. An Exploration into the Collaborative Architectural Endeavors Within the Framework of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)

The field of architectural design is currently undergoing a profound transformation in response to the dynamic changes in global landscapes and new transnational movements of practices shaping the built environments. In contemporary political and economic studies, a new concept of “globality” has been acknowledged, signifying competitive interactions on a global scale among nations and entities [1]. Today's complex circumstances, transnational relations and the movements of diverse forms of architectural expertise have become considerably more intricate. All these global changes are being propelled at an unprecedented pace by the development of global infrastructure networks. Amid this dynamic shift, China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) stands as a paramount geoeconomic force catalyzing these transformations [2]. Launched in 2013, the BRI aims to promote trade, exchange, and economic development through the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative. Nowadays, it includes more than 100 countries from China to Africa, Europe, and Oceania. However, the BRI did not appear spontaneously; the gigantic governmental program was based on China’s international engagement over the previous 60 years [3]. China's foreign aid programs are implemented through a multitude of construction projects, technical cooperation, and human resources development. These endeavors are paradigmatic of the complexity of contemporary construction projects, marked by scale, complexity and challenges in terms of skills and technologies transmission, especially in environments with limited resources. An emerging body of literature on China’s foreign aid project has mainly highlighted the diplomatic and political dimension of these projects, focusing on topics such as the symbolic expression of projects, the tension between local identities and modernist aesthetics, and the historical backgrounds driving their development [4, 5]. The collaborative efforts between design teams from different countries and cultural backgrounds, and the ways in which those teams negotiate design developments with local norms, standards, financial regimes, and technological systems, have been less explored.

This paper explores these complex interplays by adopting an in-depth investigation of three case studies of construction projects overtaken by Chinese firms along the Belt and Road Initiative. As part of a broader research investigating the architectural and urban dimension of the BRI, case studies have been selected from a survey of 50 projects undertaken by Chinese firms within the frame of the BRI from 2014 to the present for their relevance in terms of design and technological exchanges. Selected case studies have been then analyzed through documentary sources and in-depth interview with project managers involved in the construction process. In this manner, the paper aims firstly to reveal what are some of the collaborative practices and strategies undertaken by Chinese companies to deal with local and global construction contingencies. Second, the paper asks whether and how the global circulation of technologies, expertise and standards on the one hand and the assessment of available technologies, construction techniques, materials and manufacturing skills within a given context on the other, are able to influence design choices throughout the entire development process of collaborative practices between Chinese architectural and construction firms and their local counterparts in foreign countries. In this manner, this contribution provides an opportunity to challenge contemporary discussions about technological universalism and plurality of modernization processes, opening up possibilities for redirecting how design firms negotiate the construction of the built environment dealing with more sustainable technological and construction practices “in the making of” [6] complex transnational projects.

Even if not completely new, the scale and scope of transnational movements in the architectural practice has reached, nowadays, an unprecedented level due to an increasing widespread global logistic infrastructure. In this new form of a globalized world various forces contribute to building construction beyond national boundaries, including the circulation of investment capital, mobility of built-environment professionals, and diffusion of new design technologies and construction practices [7]. In this sense, the globalized production of architecture is no longer just based on “nomadic expertise” and “global experts” [8] but on a broader multidimensionality of the urban production [9]. The negotiated transformation of urban spaces is constructed through networks or assemblages of a multitude of agents, both human and nonhuman [10], which contribute to build up images of the urban with complex descriptions marked by strong substantive particularity [11]. The emergence of a global construction industry makes this network even more complex and poses the dilemma of finding design and constructive solutions that have the inherent ability to articulate local specificities within global processes. While digital technologies have drastically changed architectural workflows, the construction industry, rooted in material contingencies tied to specific contingencies, has been slower to adapt [12]. This issue is particularly pronounced in foreign aid projects, where local supply chains are often based on materials, technologies, construction techniques and workforce expertise often narrated as absent because they do not adhere to modernist and/or global standards derived from positivist design approaches linked to ontologically colonial ideals [13]. This is a reason why within an ever-evolving international market, large architectural and development firms, involved in global strategic projects, such as the ones along the BRI, mobilize entire construction companies with the aim of retaining a control over the quality, financing, timing and costs of the project. However, many times this is not sufficient nor feasible since mobilities must also comply with local building and cultural norms, specification standards, financial regimes, technological systems, and construction-management procedures that evidently require collaborative efforts. In this context the space exists to explore how multidisciplinary and transcultural collaborative teams manage these contingencies in specific locations, what technologies, strategies and practices are involved, whether and how these have an impact on the conception and development of the final architectural object. The following sections explore these aspects through the analysis of three case studies.

Previous cases studies of architectural projects within the BRI reveal the intricate network of those “hidden agents”, to use the words of Tom Avarmate [15] – such as managers, IT developers, contractors and local architects – that are part of the process not only of construction but also design conception and development of complex transnational endeavors. While similar forms of cooperation and work organization can be surely expanded to many other design contexts, in the cases of the BRI, the institution of both material and digital collaborative platforms finds a renewed emphasis given some of the features that generally characterized this governmental program.

Firstly, the BRI has been rhetorically framed as a political and economic strategy rooted in collaboration and cooperation between countries. Consequently, the sharing of information, design strategies, technological advancements and materials means becomes a fundamental strategy of political legitimization. Secondly, the financial framework of BRI projects often necessitates mutually beneficial investments and returns from all parties involved. Finally, most of the BRI projects take place in several territories where different paths of modernization have led to technological solutions and markets mostly unknown by those design firm operating on a global scale.

In this context, previous case studies show how the collaboration among design teams results in intense, transdisciplinary cross-cultural collaboration and negotiation, addressing every aspect of a project's complexity, including its material realization. Within these exchanges, management practices, primarily concerned with establishing supply chains, transcend mere practical activities to become real sources of meaning. While transnational projects entail increased information management and complexity, they also demonstrate the potential for merging management practices with design issues and local construction constraints, fostering spaces for creative expression. In this manner, local attitudes toward architecture, such as in the case of Uganda and Niger, are not part of a critical understanding of the context, nor the result of a regional approach to architecture, while they are the fruit of pragmatic instances that try to merge the needs of construction with the complexity of designing in unknown territories. Differently from those Chinese architects who struggle to position their architectural practice in relation to globalization and localization and aim to make an interpretation of “locality” in a contemporary manner [16], the BRI reveals another aspect of local adaptation in which pragmatic instances drive to conceive architectural projects based on the possibility to establish both global and local supply chains. Architecture becomes in this context a logistical stance in which, according to the notion of new materialism [17], the human agency is de-privileged and the conception and focus of design activities relies instead upon how assemblages of animate and inanimate agents work together to shape the built environment.

This analysis of selected projects within the frame of the BRI revealed the complex organization of human and non-human agents involved in collaborative design practices, highlighting their pivotal role in driving design innovations and technological advancements in transnational construction endeavors. Unlike approaches focusing solely on the political or symbolic dimensions of transnational architectural exchanges, this essay highlighted that design choices, in a given context, may vary based on the availability of local material sources, technological developments and management tools adopted by collaborative design groups seeking to a gain better control on the quality, costs and timing of a project. This suggests that it is important to put more emphasis on the strategies and behaviors of these organizations, how they interact within a certain transnational framework, and how they negotiate the construction of the built environment within local and global contingencies. More research is needed, however, to understand this complex phenomenon more in depth. Indeed, a huge number of design and construction projects have been completed, and are under development, within the framework of the BRI, and this paper has explored only a few of them in specific places, so it would be desirable to explore the phenomenon on a much broader scale. Further investigations could also lead to practice-relevant findings to deal with the design of complex transnational endeavors in the future. In this regard, a need exists to build a more pragmatic understanding of the theme of technology transmission in global design industry and the concept of architecture as a logistical stance, as well as to determine specifically how they can be adopted to inform practitioners in the field—including not only architects, but also real estate developers, urban planners, contractors, decision makers and all the multitude of agents that nowadays have a prominent role in shaping the nuanced forms of our built environment.