Review: The 1933 building
Shanghai sits on the banks of the Huangpu River and was a small fishing village at the turn of the eleventh century, it now has 23 million people, making it China’s largest city. Foreign trade turned it into a boom town for much of the 19th century and by 1930 was the biggest and certainly the most prosperous city in the Far East. The outcome architecturally of such wealth during this period resulted in Shanghai having one of the worlds largest collections of Art Deco buildings. You only have to walk along The Bund (Shanghai’s version of the Embankment in London) to see well preserved examples and I’ll just pick a couple, they both happen to be hotels; Laszlo Hudec’s Park Hotel which would fit in well with anything that 20′s and 30′s Manhattan built, also Parker and Palmer’s Peace hotel with it’s dazzling entrance halls, cafes, shops and cocktail bars (where The Old Jazz Band play nightly, which is ambitious with their average age of 75).
The present day Shanghai with its very twenty first century skyline has been mainly due to economic reforms encouraged in the mid 1970′s by the then leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping (leading the country towards a market economy). Between 1978 and 2011 the annual growth of GDP was roughly ten percent, year on year, subsequently there’s been an enthusiastic construction roll-call which almost seems unstoppable, including the Shanghai World Financial Center, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Jin Mao Tower, the Bocom Financial Towers and a personal favourite the Huamin Imperial Tower.
However, alongside the enterprise of all these super structures I’ve mentioned, there is The 1933 Building in the historic HongKou district that also deserves discussion. Although commissioned by the Municipal Council of Shanghai and designed by the British architects Balfours, it’s the extra strong Portland cement that has outlasted them both. The density of the walls was essential to control temperatures during hot summers, combined with the concrete lattice windows which helped the flow of fresh air, both of which assisted this building’s original purpose as an abattoir.
The heart of the structure sweeps around a central atrium of interconnecting walkways, cattle ramps and staircases over four floors, the ramps are uneven to keep the livestock from slipping but also encouraging them to be constantly on the move. The cattle-paths are accessible at various points by one-person wide staircases, allowing control of the animals and providing easy escape should they become unmanageable. The beamless interiors rely on a grove of organic shaped pillars as main supports on each level. Due to the practical usage of the building there is a hypnotic repetition of form and shape, after wandering around a while you can forget where you are due to this industrial maze.
If The 1933 Building happened to be in Berlin, Milan or Edinburgh it would have acquired architectural heritage status and a queue of believers (there were duplicates of this building in England and India, sadly there is little record of their existence). But the Chinese are very hard workers and therefore this building has to pay its way, resulting in a multiple of usages from retail outlets to niche business enterprises occupying the different parts of the Building. So if you’re ever in Shanghai and there’s plenty of good reasons to be, try and make time to visit an old slaughter house.
Posted by: Stuart Simpson
No comments yet