Shanghai is a fascinating conglomeration of different architectural styles accumulated during the past 200 years, with the most exciting contrasts between aged and hyper-modern, modestly poor and glamorously wealthy, spaces both intimate and vast.
Walk through the Lilong neighborhood’s of the French Concession and you will find a distinctive architecture and lifestyle. Built in the first half of the twentieth century, these houses were a mixture of English terraced houses and the traditional Chinese house with a courtyard. Through the two to three-floor houses were originally built for a single family, by the time the Communists took power in 1949, the population density of the city was such that three or more families were assigned to each house, which is generally the situation to this day. In the same neighborhoods, you will come across remains of Shanghai’s colonial past, grand buildings that can tell stories of their European origin, Japanese occupation, Communist liberation, and various changes of uses over the past decades.
The ever changing skyline of Shanghai is the most prominent feature and new symbol for this city. Take a picture of Pudong or even the new development areas in the western urban centers, and it will be out of date in no time. No architectural guide book will manage to keep track with all the new construction sprouting all over the city, rendering Shanghai into one of the world’s most thrilling architectural playgrounds, with ever improving quality.
Fanny Hoffmann-Loss , working in Shanghai as architect and project manager for the German architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partner (gmp International) since 2006, will take you deep into various Lilong neighborhoods of different periods, explaining their history and typology in detail with architectural plans and paying a visit to a private family museum to let you experience life in these old structures.
For the full impression of the “conglomeration” that is today’s Shanghai, you can experience old and new on the same tour – or you may choose to pay a concentrated visit to the New World of Skyscrapers in Pudong’s Lujiazui and get some insider information from the world of architecture and design, with insights in the challenges and chances of international design firms in China.