Over the past fifteen years Beijing has experienced unprecedented change–a change more dramatic and profound than ever before. Contemporary skyscrapers and architectural forms are gradually enclosing the historic city centre. Steel and glass structures, constructions reminiscent of distant metropolises, highways, viaducts, and sports facilities have given Beijing a new face. Speed, combined with ever-changing rules and regulations, are the main characteristics of contemporary Beijing’s transformation. Understanding this process means arranging intermediate and transitional phases into a logical sequence, in a historical and urban context of reference. The speed at which the city is changing means that the work site phase and the actual moment of transformation have become an integral part of project elaboration, thereby influencing and modifying its development. This state of sudden and seemingly chaotic evolution is nonetheless supported by an urban structure dating back thousands of years and by a well-defined past. It is essential to understand this in order to identify the continuity in the midst of change, which in itself seems to be the real essence of the city’s evolution.

Claudio Greco (1955) is Professor of Architecture and Architectural Composition at the Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata.” He works as an engineer and architect in the studio he founded in Rome in 1981 and in Beijing in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has conducted research and in-depth studies in Italy and China (the latter since 1994) on various topics, concentrating especially on the relationship between form and construction in architecture and between contemporary architecture and historical contexts as well as on the “masters” of the Italian modern architecture movement. His monograph Pier Luigi Nervi, dai primi brevetti al Palazzo delle Esposizioni di Torino, 1917-1948 (Lucerne: Quart Verlag, 2008) has recently been published. His Le case di terra del Fujian (Rome: Meltemi, 2003) deals with traditional Chinese architecture. He has won a number of competitions and has elaborated numerous architecture projects and commissions for public and private clients.Carlo Santoro (1976) received his Doctorate in “Architecture and Construction” from the Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata.” In 2001 he began working as an architectural designer and collaborating with Claudio Greco in Rome. Since 2003 he has been an architect and researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, where he is involved in various design and research programs on urban development.