Villa Architecture

The tree-lined streets of the French Concession house a delightful collection of magnificent residential early-20th-century villa architecture, much of which has been well preserved. Standout examples include the Mansion Hotel, the Moller House, the Ruijin Hotel, Ānting Villa Hotel and Fu 1039. See our French Concession walking tour for more (Click here).

Fairmont Peace Hotel (Click here)
NICK BONETTI / EYE UBIQUITOUS / CORBIS ©

Art Deco

The late 1920s saw the Shanghai arrival of art deco and its sophisticated, modish expressions of the machine age. It was one of Shanghai’s architectural high-water marks, with the city boasting more art-deco buildings than any other city in the world. For a comprehensive lowdown on the style, read Shanghai Art Deco by Deke Erh and Tess Johnston.

Art-deco buildings of note include the Fairmont Peace Hotel, the Woo Villa, the Paramount Ballroom, Broadway Mansions, the Cathay Theatre, the Liza Building at 99 East Nanjing Rd, the Savoy Apartments at 209 Changshu Rd, the Picardie Apartments (now the Hengshan Hotel) on the corner of Hengshan Rd and Wanping Rd, the Embankment Building and the Bank of China building, but there are dozens of others.

Strongly associated with art deco (although he also used earlier styles), Ladislaus Hudec (1893–1958) was a Hungarian who came to Shanghai in 1918 after escaping en route to a Russian prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia. The Park Hotel, Grand Theatre, China Baptist Publication Society, the Green House and other art-deco buildings all owe their creation to Hudec.

Paramount Ballroom (Click here)
VIEW PICTURES LTD / ALAMY ©

Longtang & Shikumen

Even though Shanghai is typified by its high-rise and uniform residential blocks, near ground level the city comes into its own with its low-rise longtang and shikumen architecture. Here, both Western and Asian architectural motifs were synthesised into harmonious, utilitarian styles that still house a large proportion of Shanghai’s residents.

Bar in Tianzifang (Click here)
LO MAK / REDLINK / CORBIS ©

Longtang

In the same way that Beijing’s most authentic features survive among its homely (but far older) hutong alleyways, so Shanghai’s longtang (or lilong) lanes are the historic city’s principal indigenous urban architectural feature. Longtang are the back alleys that form the building blocks of living, breathing communities, supplying a warm and charming counterpoint to the abstract and machinelike skyscrapers rising over the city. Sadly, these alleys and their signature buildings, the shikumen, have offered little more than a feeble resistance against developers who have toppled swathes of shikumen to make way for more glittering projects. But if you want to find Shanghai at its most local, community-spirited, neighbourly and also at its quietest, more than enough longtang survive off the main drag for you to savour their slow-moving tempo.

Alley cafe in Tianzifang (Click here)
LO MAK / REDLINK / CORBIS ©

Shikumen

Following the devastation of the Taiping Rebellion in 1853, some 20,000 Chinese fled into the International Settlements. Sensing a newly arrived cash cow, the British decided to scrap the law forbidding Chinese from renting property in the concessions, and foreigners from developing real estate. British and French speculators built hundreds of houses in what became Shanghai’s biggest real-estate boom. The result was shikumen – literally ‘stone gate’ – referring to the stone porticos that fronted these buildings and the alleys that led to them.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14