Ken- Thanks, best book tip ever. Tess Johnson is still living in Shanghai and writing about life there and the demise of "Western" architecture. Our experience there has been the restoration of the exterior and portions of the interior of the Guilin Building, on the Waitan, or Bund, the area adjacent to the Huangpu River which accommodated the headquarters for most of the major financial institutions during the Consession period of Shanghai's history. The Guiling Building was designed by Lester, Johnson, Morriss Architects, and completed in 1923. It housed the North China Daily News until 1951. It also housed the first Asian offices of AIA, the Asian subsidiary of AIG, the American insurance company which has taken out a lease on the building and funded the restoration and rehab effort. The building is 8 stories tall and constructed (exterior) of Japanese granite and Carrara marble on the lower floors, and what's known locally as "Shanghai Plaster", a cementitious coating containing stone and slag aggregate intended to mimic the granite, on the upper floors. One of the great features of the building, brought back to daylight during this work, is a series of caryatid figures 1 1/2 times life size on modillion bases which support the major cornice. These figures are of carved granite, and unfortunately had been somewhat hacked up and enclosed in Shanghai Plaster boxes in 1953. They are the only architectural representation of the human figure on any of the Waitan buildings. The ground floor entry vestibules feature some fine Italian marbles, including Portoro, as well as some very fine gold, green and black mosaic work. Bronze abounds. All of the interior wood trim, as well as doors is of mahogany. The original wood floors were teak. There is a good amount of decorative plaster in the main banking hall on the ground floor and in other principle rooms on this level. Interestingly, the reinforcement of linear decoration is bamboo shoots rather than muslin, nice local touch Not to bore you with the intricacies of how we got the project, what is most interesting to know about that phase of the project is that we were hired after the GC and the major subs were on board! More about that later, if you are interested. Our greatest challenge as you can imagine was to meet the needs of the building, and client, without knowing up front the skills of the contractors who were going to do the work, or what technology might be available for a tightly scheduled project. We also had a limitation of three site visits for the duration of the work. During the first site visit we assessed and measured the building and compiled a list of no fewer than 30 test samples for the contractor to perform to determine the level of craftsmanship that we could expect. We had some PROSOCO samples which we used for cleaning. PROSOCO also arranged for their rep in Japan, Mr. Aoki, to come over and consult with us - he was great. Four months later we returned to review the samples. As could be anticipated, some were very well done, some competent, some poorly done, some not done at all. We stayed on site until unsuccessful samples were redone and uncompleted samples finished. With a good set of on-site samples completed, we then wrote out a methodology for completion of the work, had it translated into Chinese, discussed it ad nauseum, left the site and crossed our fingers. There was much telephonic communication in the next ten months. We returned last month to review the completed work, which was for the most part satisfactory. Some departures from the methodology took place in our absence and when this occurred the work was less successful. The client is pleased, the government is pleased, and the building's longevity is assured. What would I do over? Without a doubt I would insist next time that we be allowed more fee for on-site review. The subs were great and well skilled on this project. I believe that departures from the specified methods took place only at the urging of the GC, and a few more trips would have allowed us to have more influence- the owner's on site rep had no experience with historic buildings. Sorry I have gabbed on for so long, I've actually left out a great deal (the politics of the job, Chinese business practices, etc.). I certainly owe you for the book tip. I am considering returning, perhaps in the Spring, to do some large format documentation of Western churches in Shanghai, there are some incredible 19th C. ecclesiastical buildings there. Regards, MD