Shanghai 2009
Monday, 13 July 2009 03:07
Written by Anna Greenspan
Nowhere is Shanghai’s cultural renaissance more evident than in its neomodern architectural redevelopment. Following the city’s High Modernist zenith of the 1920s-30s, emblematically recorded in the masterpieces of Laszlo Hudec, the spirit of breakneck urbanization and cosmopolitan experiment sank into deep eclipse. Today it is being spectacularly re-animated, although often in a subtler and more reflective style.
Laszlo Hudec
In her latest work on the city, Shanghai historian Lynne Pan documents the intimate connection between Chinese modernism and Haipai or the Shanghai Style. Haipai, which encompassed all the arts, from literature and opera to fashion and design is defined by a number of essential elements: cultural crossings, a love of the new, an affinity with commercial culture and openness to the outside. “Foreignness,” writes Pan, “is integral to Haipai, and it is because the city was given its character by people from a dozen countries, planners and architects included, that the style evolved.”
In the realm of architecture, Shanghai’s modernist heritage owes much to Laszlo Hudec, a Hungarian who lived in the city from 1918 to 1947. In this period of just under 30 years Hudec designed well over 60 buildings, including hotels, apartment blocks, personal villas, a hospital and churches as well as other large-scale projects, many of which still stand. Amongst his various designs, Hudec left a number of the city's finest modern buildings, which in the early years of the 20th century, helped put the city on the architectural map. To tour his buildings is to witness the birth of modernism in Shanghai.
Even today, Hudec's legacy remains essential to the look and feel of the city. From the Park Hotel, the Grand Theatre and the Moore Memorial Church in People's Square, to the Ambrosia restaurant, the Arts and Crafts Museum, and the Normandie apartments in the former French Concession, Wu's House on Tongren Lu and the Union Building (now known as Pier One) beside Suzhou Creek, Hudec's buildings dominate and give shape to many of Shanghai’s most prominent areas.
For those familiar with his work, Hudec is famous for his lack of singular style. Hudec was a remarkably egoless architect and even experts are hard pressed to find a coherent signature in his various constructions. It has taken detective-level research to determine which buildings are in fact his designs.
Hudec's architectural taste was profoundly eclectic. He artfully embraced a wide range of styles, from the beaux-arts in which he was trained and the Georgian revival of the American Club 美国总会 to the brick expressionism of the Park Hotel 国际饭店. His own house on Panyu Lu is a Tudor-style cottage that would seem more at home in a British village than on the streets of Shanghai.
Detractors claim that this lack of uniqueness diminishes his imprint on the city. Hudec, however, perhaps more than any one else, was the quintessential Shanghai architect. He was, as architectural historian Anne Warr puts it “able to change as his city changed." In his eclecticism, intrinsic cosmopolitanism, alliance with the forces of progressive modernity and enthusiastic embrace of the new, Hudec was both a product and a producer of Haipai, the singular style of Shanghai.
Nowhere is Shanghai’s cultural renaissance more evident than in its neomodern architectural redevelopment. Following the city’s High Modernist zenith of the 1920s-30s, emblematically recorded in the masterpieces of Laszlo Hudec, the spirit of breakneck urbanization and cosmopolitan experiment sank into deep eclipse. Today it is being spectacularly re-animated, although often in a subtler and more reflective style.
Laszlo Hudec
In her latest work on the city, Shanghai historian Lynne Pan documents the intimate connection between Chinese modernism and Haipai or the Shanghai Style. Haipai, which encompassed all the arts, from literature and opera to fashion and design is defined by a number of essential elements: cultural crossings, a love of the new, an affinity with commercial culture and openness to the outside. “Foreignness,” writes Pan, “is integral to Haipai, and it is because the city was given its character by people from a dozen countries, planners and architects included, that the style evolved.”
In the realm of architecture, Shanghai’s modernist heritage owes much to Laszlo Hudec, a Hungarian who lived in the city from 1918 to 1947. In this period of just under 30 years Hudec designed well over 60 buildings, including hotels, apartment blocks, personal villas, a hospital and churches as well as other large-scale projects, many of which still stand. Amongst his various designs, Hudec left a number of the city's finest modern buildings, which in the early years of the 20th century, helped put the city on the architectural map. To tour his buildings is to witness the birth of modernism in Shanghai.
Even today, Hudec's legacy remains essential to the look and feel of the city. From the Park Hotel, the Grand Theatre and the Moore Memorial Church in People's Square, to the Ambrosia restaurant, the Arts and Crafts Museum, and the Normandie apartments in the former French Concession, Wu's House on Tongren Lu and the Union Building (now known as Pier One) beside Suzhou Creek, Hudec's buildings dominate and give shape to many of Shanghai’s most prominent areas.
For those familiar with his work, Hudec is famous for his lack of singular style. Hudec was a remarkably egoless architect and even experts are hard pressed to find a coherent signature in his various constructions. It has taken detective-level research to determine which buildings are in fact his designs.
Hudec's architectural taste was profoundly eclectic. He artfully embraced a wide range of styles, from the beaux-arts in which he was trained and the Georgian revival of the American Club 美国总会 to the brick expressionism of the Park Hotel 国际饭店. His own house on Panyu Lu is a Tudor-style cottage that would seem more at home in a British village than on the streets of Shanghai.
Detractors claim that this lack of uniqueness diminishes his imprint on the city. Hudec, however, perhaps more than any one else, was the quintessential Shanghai architect. He was, as architectural historian Anne Warr puts it “able to change as his city changed." In his eclecticism, intrinsic cosmopolitanism, alliance with the forces of progressive modernity and enthusiastic embrace of the new, Hudec was both a product and a producer of Haipai, the singular style of Shanghai.
Born in a small town of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hudec trained as an architect in the Royal University of Budapest. Upon graduation he joined the Imperial army and was soon captured on the Russian front. He was sent to a POW camp in Siberia, from which he escaped, crossing the border into China and eventually making his way to Shanghai. He entered the city on a fake Russian passport and -- after the Empire into which he was born dissolved -- lived in Shanghai as a stateless refugee. He thus made his home in the only city in the world where one could live and do business without a visa. In modern Shanghai this exilic identity proved more of an asset than a hindrance. His statelessness resonated productively with the freebooting nature of the colonial-era city, with its distinctive culture of rootless adventurers.
Because Hudec was not strongly affiliated with any particular group, he was able to attune himself to the city's intense cultural hybridity without reservation. While capable of working comfortably with Americans and Europeans, he also forged intimate links with the newly emerging class of Chinese who were intent on modernizing both the economy and culture of the city. (It was no doubt helpful that – due to his loss of national identity -- any disputes had to be settled in Chinese courts.)
Hudec’s alliance with the local forces of modernity is most apparent in the Joint Savings Society联合大楼 (or JSS, a beaux-arts style bank near the Bund) and the Park Hotel (Hudec's most famous building). For both these projects, Hudec worked with a group of Zhejiang businessmen who had been educated abroad and determinedly sought to integrate China into the global economy. The JSS functioned as a Western-style bank, with a real estate agent on-site, while the vision behind the Park Hotel was to prove that China could have a modern grand hotel, operating in accordance with the same standards as equivalent top hotels elsewhere in the world. This overt internationalism was echoed in the interior functionality of many of Hudec's buildings, from churches and Christian societies to a brewery and wine stores.
Hudec’s embrace of the modern went beyond mere aesthetics. An engineer by training, he worked with his father in Budapest on the first underground railway in Europe and as an architect he consistently made use of the latest materials and building techniques. Indeed it was through his buildings that much of the world's cutting-edge science and technology first arrived in Shanghai. Each of the 2,000 seats in his Grand Theatre (completed in 1933) was equipped with built-in headphones for simultaneous translation. Country Hospital (now Huadong Hospital 华东医院) was the first air conditioned building not only in Shanghai but in the whole of Asia (and it predated the first air conditioned building in America by at least two years).
To design the Park Hotel, Hudec traveled to America to study the most recent developments in high-rise construction. Once complete, the Park Hotel was the highest building in Asia, a status it retained until the 1980s. It also marked the geographical zero point of the city. Widely considered to be the pinnacle of Hudec’s achievement, the hotel was an enduring homage to modernism, both in its expressionist façade and in its high-tech interior. The Park Hotel was originally designed with a retractable roof and when the hotel opened it boasted the city's fastest elevators and most advanced dish-washing machines.
Interview with Architect Deng Kunyan 邓琨艳
At the former site of General Electric, at 2200 Yangshupu Lu 杨树浦路, one of Shanghai’s most astonishing architectural achievements can be found. Deng Kunyan, an architect best known for his conversion of an abandoned 1930s warehouse that is credited with sparking an artistic renewal along the banks of Suzhou creek, has transformed this disused factory into an urban Zen oasis. Inside the gates a remarkable mutation of industrial waste and pillaged recycled materials has taken place: floors are made of old roof tiles, walls are constructed of pottery molds, gutted buildings reveal the raw beauty of exposed brick and wooden beams. Throughout a garden grows. Giant vines climb through rusted metal frames, lotus flowers bloom in ponds made from molded concrete, masses of wild flowers struggle through the tiles. Light touches of design guide the scene; glass structures, an angled mirror, an oversized door, a curving wall, an innovative staircase, transforming this overgrown historical debris into a showcase complex of design studios, galleries and coffee shops.
Throughout the city abandoned factories and warehouses are being converted into ‘creative clusters’ that house a mixture of design and architectural studios, innovative boutiques, cafés, hotels and restaurants. The temporal juxtapositions embodied in these sites are a vital part of the city’s ‘neomodernist’ revival in which looking back and looking forward become indistinguishable and a nostalgia for the past plugs directly into the desire to take hold of the future. Taken together, then, these ultramodern refurbishments of the city’s industrial core provide a crucial key to the aesthetics, economics and culture of contemporary Shanghai.
Deng Kunyan is a pioneer of this new cultural trend. Urbanatomy was able to talk to him at his office at the creative complex at 2200 Yangshupu.
Urbanatomy: Can you explain a little bit about the history of this project?
Deng Kunyan: Since I came to Shanghai in 1990, the city has been through a lot of changes. Lots of old architecture was torn down to make room for rapid urbanization. I understand that destruction is sometimes irresistible and even necessary for the city‘s development. But it’s nevertheless a pity to see the valuable historical fabric destroyed. I wanted to show the government and decision makers that there could be other ways of development, that there isn’t always just conflict between the old and the new. As you know damage to historical buildings is irreversible -- what’s gone is gone.
So I wanted to quickly choose a place that would act as an example of a different type. In 1998, I started working on the Suzhou Creek warehouse and then, in 2004, at this area on Yangshupu Road. I hope these projects will serve as successful examples for a new concept of “development” and push forward the protection of our urban industrial architecture.
When I first started doing this in Oct 2004, people didn’t know what this place was about. At that time, China didn’t have the phrasing or concept of “creative industry”. I imported this name.
I held some conferences to raise awareness, inviting experts from all over the world to discuss how to protect and make better use of our industrial heritage. I wanted to tell the government that this is a great and an important thing to do, and there were already many different types of experiments like this occurring in other countries.
Urbanatomy: Why did you choose this place?
Deng Kunyan: I didn’t particularly want this place. I tried really hard to make deals with some other old government-owned factories, but these all failed. This is the only place that was willing to cooperate.
Urbanatomy: What do you see as the basic principal or philosophy behind these creative zones?
Deng Kunyan: At one level the idea is really simple. For a long time China has acted as a manufacturing base for foreign companies who want to produce labor-intensive export-oriented products. By the 21st century, however, this phase of industrial development was reaching a bottleneck and China was in urgent need of its own brands. I’m hoping to create a space that hosts many small design and creative studios, as well as architecture companies – to produce a place that encourages originality and creativity and helps these qualities grow in China.
At a deeper level I wanted to take the chance to promote traditional Chinese culture and philosophy -- Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism. If China wants to build its own brands and make them internationally successful, local artists, designers and architects have to seek inspiration from our own culture, which is the most abundant source of creativity. As an artist, it is useless to compare your work with other people’s work, or to mimic what has been done by others. There is only one thing you should do – go into yourself, discover your own feelings about what you’ve seen and been told. Everything you do and feel comes from your inner self. To keep yourself growing you have to keep learning – to steep yourself in a wide range of knowledge, philosophy, and culture that differentiates you from others. As you do this, your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and you will become aware of a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by far in the distance. That is why I have made this place so full of the atmosphere of traditional culture, so that the above purpose could be achieved at some level.
Urbanatomy: How do you give these modern industrial spaces the atmosphere of ancient Chinese traditions? What methods do you use to fuse the old and the new?
Deng Kunyan: I would say this is a reflection of my own personality. In Confucianism and Daoism, we always say “Xiang you xin sheng” (相由心生) which means what you see and hear is a reflection of your inner self. And in my heart, I see the harmony and the connection of modernism and traditional culture. And I applied it to my work.
I have been studying Daoism for a long time. And a theory in Daoism is that the person who is free of discrimination can see no difference between life and death, old and new, good and bad. This is the highest spiritual level that one can ever reach, as well as the highest harmony among all things in the world. I don’t see much difference or conflict between the modern and the traditional.
Urbanatomy: Can I ask about the method of renovating this space? It seems to me that a lot of this work is about subtracting, taking things away and leaving only the buildings’ shells?
Deng Kunyan: In Daoism, we often say “Qu qi zao po; qu qi jing hua” (去其糟粕，取其精华), which means to take away the chaff and preserve the essence. This is basically what I did. But to make this place more suitable for contemporary usage, we also added some modern facilities.
Urbanatomy: You also took abandoned materials from other places and reused them here?
Deng Kunyan: Yes, like the floors and pillars. Firstly, as you know, in Daoism, there is no good and bad, old and new. Things are equal in essence and everything has its value. I just took whatever I could find that was suitable for the traditional atmosphere that I was aiming to create. Secondly, recycling is good for the environment.
Urbanatomy: Now China has more and more creative zones housed in old industrial buildings. It seems to me that you helped pave the way for these other creative zones. Did you expect that to happen?
Deng Kunyan: I have never been recognized as the vanguard in any official documents or articles. But it’s still good for me and I am not disturbed too much by the outside world. And I don’t care about being duplicated. On the contrary, I am happy to see that people, including the government, are now paying more and more attention to the protection of historical buildings.
Urbanatomy: You’ve been talking a lot about the importance of Chinese traditional culture to the creative process. If you were to give advice to people here who want to create something new, what is the one element of traditional culture that you think people should understand?
Deng Kunyan: I would say it’s “Dao fa zi ran” (道法自然), which means that everything in the universe is generated from nothing and has to return to nothing. Before the universe began, the Cosmos was a complete void in mass, and an absolute nothingness in form, with yin and yang utterly united into one. When wuchi (无极, ‘pole-less’) develops into taichi (太极, ‘supreme pole’), Dao becomes apparent and is ready to run the universe. Then taichi further splits into the duality of yin-yang with the active part being yang and passive part being yin, with the two parts balancing each other in motion ever since.
But when you create something, you have to go back to the original form, to see the ‘Nothing’, so you know there is no difference between new and old, good and bad, the alive and the dead, and you will naturally follow the rules of seasons, and of nature, and feel the harmony between you and the world.
Interview with Wu Meisen 吴梅森: The man behind Tianzifang
Urbanatomy: Can you tell us about the development of Tianzifang 田子坊?
Wu Meisen: This place used to be occupied by some state-owned factories dating from the 1940s and residential shikumen built in the 1920s. After 1999 the factories were gradually pushed out by the market economy and some small businesses, such as a barber shop, a scissors shop, a noodle shop and a bath house set up in the lane. These caused a big mess both to the historical buildings and to the nearby residences.
I was working for the Luwan government worker’s club at that time. They asked me to devise a plan to make better use of the 4,500 square meters of historic industrial space. When I first came to this place, it immediately reminded me of what I’d seen on Granville Island in Canada. I decided this place could be a ‘Granville Island’ in Shanghai, containing some of old Shanghai’s unique flavor.
As my first step, I invited some American friends to take a tour of Lane 210 Taikang Lu 泰康路. They then helped me hold a big party with hundreds of artists from different countries as guests. At the end of the night the whole 4,500 square meters of factory workshops had been rented out.
The first batch of tenants included the world-renowned painter Chen Yifei and several other artists and fashion designers. Around 100 shops and cafés moved in after the early buzz proclaimed the area to be ‘Shanghai's Soho’. Since then, the booming demand for artists’ space has raised the rent from 1 RMB/ sqm per day to today’s 3 RMB/ sqm. At the same time, the development has played a crucial role in preserving the urban heritage of Taikang Lu. During the same period, many other similar lanes were torn down to make way for high-rises and malls
Urbanatomy: How would you compare Taikang Lu to Xintiandi 新天地?
Wu Meisen: As a Shanghai native who has been living in shikumen for decades, I really dislike the model of Xintiandi, which is purely commercial and fake. Xintiandi was developed by a Hong Kong-based real estate company that doesn’t understand local culture and residential history. I consider it to be the biggest fake product in China. Of course, maybe after a century, when it has 100 years of history behind it, it will become ‘true’. But Taikang Lu has already had over 200 years’ of history. There is a culture and history inside and around these shikumen and lilongs that no one can copy. When I was put in charge of the renovation of Taikang Lu, my basic concept was to try as far as possible to preserve the old historical buildings, the walls, and the lanes. To ensure this, I insisted that we not allow a land developer to get involved since they rarely know the local culture.
Today in Taikang Lu, the shop owners are from 21 different countries, but they have all come to this place in order to make use of old Shanghai-style buildings – they bring their own culture here and, at the same time, they are also influenced by one another and by the Shanghai style embedded in the surroundings. This mixture has made Taikang Lu into a multi-cultural art zone. In Xintiandi, on the other hand, the HK developer just simply made everything into a sample of Hong Kong culture. This is the other reason that I don’t want land developers to get involved.
Urbanatomy: Can you explain the name ‘Tianzifang’?
Wu Meisen: In 2003, renowned painter and designer Huang Yongyu came to Taikang Lu and named it Tianzifang, which is homophonous with the name of an ancient Chinese artist, the first painter in China’s written history. The name means that this is a creative cluster for all artists to come and showcase their works. Believe it or not, every brand created by Huang Yongyu has proven to be famous and successful, both aesthetically and commercially. He has some kind of mysterious Fengshui power!
Urbanatomy: How do you convince residents to move out to make room for the creative zone to develop?
Wu Meisen: Since 2004, my main worry has been how to satisfy the growing demand from artists. There were 114 studios and boutiques in the area, and Lane 210 was almost fully occupied. Still my company was constantly receiving calls from artists asking for space. It was thus inevitable that the creative zone would expand into neighboring lanes.
The government had been trying to relocate the residents for a long time but, due to the high costs involved, the plan had failed. At the end of 2004, a resident named Zhou Xinliang became the first tenant convinced to rent his 33-square-meter room to a fashion designer specializing in leather. Since then, there have been 262 personal landlords who decided themselves to rent out their homes to artists. Since the rent has increased so much, they are quite happy to rent their old shikumen houses and take the money to find another better place to live.
Today Tianzifang is home to around 200 shops, cafés and galleries, run by people from 21 countries. In 2006, it was named the country's best creative park by the China Guanghua Sciences and Technology Foundation and China Youth Daily, it was also named the best in Shanghai in 2007 by the Shanghai Creative Industry Center. On weekends, as many as 6,000 people walk around Taikang Lu's crowded lanes.
Urbanatomy: So an artist who wants to rent a space here just negotiates with the resident personally?
Wu Meisen: You can get help from my company. We have an office at Lane 320, acting as the agent between artists and residents. The office is run by some local residents who volunteer their time.
Urbanatomy: Does the government currently have any role in Tianzifang?
Wu Meisen: I’ve been working independently on planning and renting the space with indirect support from the district government. My company implements all the leasing and planning, and we own the Tianzifang brand. The government’s duty is mainly to manage the space, by taking care of all the legal issues involved in renting/leasing, licensing, as well as investing in further development, and maintaining public facilities.
Urbanatomy: How do you see the future development of Tianzifang?
Wu Meisen: It takes time for a culture to fully grow. In Tianzifang, I’m looking forward to having new types of art studios and for a greater diversity of businesses, a boutique hotel, for example. But my hope is that some residents will remain to retain the interesting combinations that currently exist. All this will take about 10 years, maybe more.
Urbanatomy: Do you think this model of development can work elsewhere in Shanghai?
Wu Meisen: Yes, definitely. We are trying some similar experiments at Jiangyin Lu and maybe some other places in the future. In these cases local residents could choose either to rent out their homes and get money for a better living environment or to act as stockholders of the development companies, or to sell their houses totally. All are very rewarding. Decisions will be based on mutually beneficial negotiations.
Urbanatomy: A few years ago most people that visited Taikang Lu were foreigners. Now there seems to be more of a mix of locals, tourists and expats. How do you view this change?
Wu Meisen: Since foreigners are more familiar with the idea of a creative cluster so they respond to it more quickly. When we were seeking tenants, however, we sought a mix of people – both locals and those from overseas. We basically rent the spaces to three groups of people: foreign artists – since they are most familiar with the concept of a creative zone -- artists who have overseas experience, as they have a good understanding of both local and foreign culture, and beautiful female artists who are supported by rich people, as they themselves act as the carrier of fashion. The way they present their art is more subtle and feminine and that has added to the unique charm of this place. This mix of Chinese and foreigners is exactly what ‘Haipai Culture’ refers to – a combination of the characteristics of different cultures from home and abroad.
Art Deco
Shanghai is second only to Miami in its Art Deco architectural heritage and photographer Deke Erh spent most of his youth admiring and capturing these buildings. For the past 20 years his pictures have chronicled the fate of these beautiful buildings, some of which are falling victim to the city’s renewed modernization. He and his associates are actively working to preserve this unique architecture style that so defines Shanghai.
Art Deco is a style of design that greatly influenced much of the applied arts between the two World Wars, from 1920 to 1939. It is defined by clean lines, geometric patterns and curved surfaces, influencing furniture, sculpture, jewelry and clothing. The form became popular in Shanghai at the beginning of the 20th century, when the city was wealthy, prosperous and influenced greatly by Western ideas. Art Deco buildings were lavish and ornate, representing a new wave in design and a novel way of thinking.
The construction boom of the 1920s and 30s led to the building of many of the city’s famous Art Deco structures. Palmer & Turner, popular architects of the time, built the city’s quintessential Art Deco Peace Hotel in 1932, its outer facade being just as grand as its Lalique-filled interiors. They are also credited with the design of the Metropole Hotel and the Broadway Mansions (which still operates as a popular hotel today). Austrian architect CH Gonda received accolades for his design of the Capitol Theatre, the first significant movie house in Shanghai. He also built the beautiful Cathay Theatre in 1931 which sits at the corner of Huaihai Zhong Lu and Maoming Lu and is still used as a cinema. French firm Leonard, Veysseyre, Kruze dominated the French Concession’s construction and built the handsome French Club which is now part of the Garden Okura Hotel (also on Maoming Lu). While many of the city’s building were designed by foreign firms, Benjamin Chih Chen, Shen Chao and Chuin Tung (all University of Pennsylvania Graduates) founded the city’s most highly respected Chinese Architecture firm, Allied Architects. They built the Chekiang Commercial Bank building in 1948.
But the man credited for changing the façade of Shanghai most profoundly is Hungarian-Czech architect Ladislaus (Laszlo) Hudec. He was a prisoner of war who escaped from Russia and arrived in Shanghai to become one of its most famous Art Deco proponents. His design for the dark brick Park Hotel on People’s Square (built in 1934) made it the tallest building in Shanghai well into the 1980s. He is also credited with the grand Bible Building on Yuenmingyuen Lu and the beautiful Union Brewery buildi
ng beside Suzhou Creek (now the Pier One restaurant complex).
In addition, the city has numerous cinemas, hotels, private villas and residential buildings that reveal wonderful Art Deco detailing in their carved plaster works, iron grills, doorways, chiseled balconies and geometric window designs. Among the most prominent buildings are the airplane-shaped China Aviation Association in Yangpu District (designed by Chinese Architect Dong Day) which is now a Military Hospital, the Longhua Airfield and the Rujin Hotel’s Villa No. 3 in the French Concession. The Woo Villa, also a Hudec design, is an example of how wealthy Chinese adopted this Western style of architecture to display their rising social status.
The Art Deco style permeated not just elite constructions, but also middle-class Shanghainese iron-gate shikumen. Those built during the 1930s began to show distinct Art Deco influences, such as geometric patterning and stylized motifs. These features can still be found in Shikumen clusters throughout the city.
The Art Deco influence on Shanghai architecture was so great that 50 years later, architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed China’s tallest building -- the Jin Mao Tower -- with a definite Art Deco touch.
Remembering Hudec
2008 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Laszlo Hudec. In order to celebrate the occasion the Consulate General of Hungary along with the Shanghai Urban Planning Administration Bureau, Tongji University and Explore Shanghai Heritage organized a number of events – walking tours, seminars and an exhibitio 
n held in the Hudec designed American Club -- to commemorate the architect’s life and work. For more on the year of Hudec as well as details of events and the addresses of Hudec buildings see www.hudec.sh
Walking Hudec
In conjunction with the year of Hudec, Explore Shanghai Heritage has published a detailed map of Hudec’s buildings. To obtain a copy contact
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Some Hudec Highlights
American Club. (1925), 209 Fuzhou Lu
Avenue Apartments. (1930), 1383 Beijing Lu.
Beudin House (now Ambrosia restaurant) (1920), 50 Fenyang Lu
China Baptist Publication Society Building (1930 and 1932), 128 Huqiu Lu and 209 Yuanmingyuan Lu
Country Hospital (1926, now Huadong Hospital), Yan’an Lu, near Wulumuqi Lu
Grand Theatre (1933), 216 Nanjing Lu
Hudec House. (1933), 127 Panyu Lu
Joint Saving and Loan Society Building (1927), 261 Sichuan Lu
Madier House (1922, now Arts and Crafts museum), 79 Fenyang Lu
Moore Memorial Church (1931), 316 Xizang Lu
The Normandie (1924), 1858 Huaihai Lu
Park Hotel (1934), 170 Nanjing Lu
Wu’s House (1938), 33 Tongren Lu
Union Brewery (1934), 82-130 Yichang Lu
Poncellini’s Hudec
Italian architect Luca Poncellini has undertaken the most comprehensive research on Hudec and in a talk given in Shanghai in 2008, entitled “Pursuit of Chinese Modernity”, he outlined his own thesis on the controversial issue of Hudec’s style.
Hudec’s work, he argued, differed according to whether his clients were Western or Chinese. For the former, Hudec acted more as engineer than architect, following the decisions of his clients. He was, said Poncellini, like a tailor, designing buildings specifically to meet client’s tastes and need. A prime example is Columbia Circle, a residential complex built for Asia Realty Company in the 1920s (Lane 329 Xinhua Lu) that offered a variety of standard homes deliberately designed in different styles (English Tudor, Spanish Villa, Hollywood Style, and others).
His work for Chinese clients was totally different. Then (as now) Chinese clients tended to demand only modernity and distinction. This allowed Hudec the freedom to experiment and enabled him to discover his own personal style. This style, according to Poncellini, was that of German expressionism, or more specifically the brick expressionism practiced by such architects as Fritz Schumacher and Fritz Hoger. Indeed a quick glance at the work of these expressionist architects reveals a stunning similarity with Hudec’s own work on the Park Hotel and the twin buildings of the Baptist Publishing House where a brown brick expressionist style gives a modern interpretation to gothic themes.
Poncellini was intent on stressing that Hudec did not copy this style but was instead a complete contemporary, participating in the invention of the style. He was thus able to immediately transfer (and even anticipate) the modes of German expressionism to China.
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