Architecture in Shanghai

Shang-high

Jaw-dropping panoramas of glittering skyscrapers are its trump card, but Shanghai is no one-trick pony: the city boasts a diversity of architectural styles that will astound most first-time visitors.

Charm and panache indeed ooze from every crevice of its concession-era villas, shikumen buildings, lilong lanes and art-deco marvels – perfect for sipping lattes and musing on yester-century Shanghai – but for the wow factor, look to the city’s vertical skyline.

Like Hong Kong before it, Shanghai has filled its horizons with forests of soaring towers that define a brash and sophisticated zeitgeist. The grandiose Bund may forever recall the indignity of foreign encroachment, but Pudong – and more specifically Lujiazui – concerns itself with the future.

Pudong only dates to the early 1990s, so don’t expect the sheer variety of New York skyscraper architecture. But some of the world’s very tallest buildings erupt from Shanghai’s notoriously boggy terrain, including the breathtaking Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC) in Lujiazui, the world’s fourth-tallest building (at the time of writing). Metallic, glass, uncompromising and audaciously designed, the tower is an awe-inspiring testament to money and ambition. The original design incorporated a circle at its top, where the ‘bottle-opener’ trapezoid aperture is (reducing the wind pressure), but this design was shouted down by local fears that it would recall the Japanese flag.

The SWFC replaced the Jinmao Tower as the tallest building in Shanghai. Replete with Chinese symbolism, the pagoda-like 421m-high Jinmao Tower has 88 floors (eight is the lucky number), while its 13 stepped bands allude to Buddhist imagery.

With a completion date of 2014, the dominant edifice in Lujiazui will be the twisting form of the Shanghai Tower, all 632m of it. When finished, it will be China’s tallest building and the second tallest in the world (but not for long, no doubt).

Don’t overlook Puxi on the far side of the river, where there’s a vigorous collection of modern architecture, including claw-like Tomorrow Square, rocketing nefariously over People’s Square.

Jinmao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Center (Click here)
SIEGFRIED LAYDA / GETTY IMAGES © JINMAO TOWER ARCHITECT ADRIAN SMITH

With such a meteoric construction agenda and an anything-goes attitude, designs can sometimes misfire: Shanghai is littered with cheesy disappointments such as the naff Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the curious crown atop the Bund Center (88 Middle Henan Rd) and the Radisson Blu Hotel Shanghai New World (88 West Nanjing Rd; another ‘88’!).

Oriental Pearl TV Tower (Click here)
GREG ELMS / GETTY IMAGES © ARCHITECTS SHANGHAI MODERN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN CO LTD

Shang-low

Shanghai’s tall towers are lavished with media attention, but many of the city’s most iconic contemporary buildings are low-rise.

In the Pudong-side World Expo site, the staggering flying-saucer shaped Mercedes-Benz Arena looks like it’s refuelling after a warp-speed voyage from Alpha Centauri. The nearby upturned red pyramid design of the China Art Palace (the former China Pavilion) is another distinctive architectural icon of the site. In 2012 the pavilion was reinvented as a modern-art museum, guaranteeing it a second wind. Unfortunately, most of the other World Expo pavilions – including the staggeringly inventive UK Pavilion – were dismantled after the event, but a few are still standing.

China Art Palace (Click here)
LU / VIEWSTOCK / CORBIS © ARCHITECT HE JINGTANG

Also in Pudong, the Arata Isozaki–designed Himalayas Center – attached to the Jumeirah Himalayas Hotel – is a highly complicated, organic-looking and challenging form in an otherwise uniform neighbourhood of Shanghai.

A stroll around People’s Square in Puxi introduces you to three of the city’s most eye-catching designs. The Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall is capped with a distinctive roof with four ‘florets’. The nearby Shanghai Grand Theatre combines Chinese sweeping eaves with a futuristic employment of plastic and glass. Opposite this pair is the wonderfully designed Shanghai Museum, resembling an ancient Chinese vessel known as a ding.

Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station (Click here)
MIGUEL SAYAGO / ALAMY ©

Other low-rise modern Shanghai structures with spectacular interiors or exteriors include Pudong International Airport Terminal 1 and Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station. Elsewhere, conversions of industrial buildings have breathed new life into disused structures: in 2012, the Nanshi Power Plant was repurposed as the Power Station of Art, a huge contemporary art museum.

Don’t overlook Shanghai’s vast bridges, including the enormous Lupu Bridge, which combine length and height in equal measure.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14