Living Shanghai
nostalgia
1930 / 2015
Dissertation by Maëlle Cabio’ch In the framework of a Master in Transcultural Design L’Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantiques & China Studio
content
01
Abstract
p.8
摘要
02
Foreword
p.12
前言
03
Introduction
p.18
引言
04
30’s Architecture
p.32
建筑学
05
Appropriation 拨用
p.72
06
Shanghai nostalgia
p.106
上海怀旧
07
Parallel
p.152
比照
08
Conclusion
p.180
结语
09
References
p.186
目录学
10
Acknowledgment 称谢
p.194
Drying langery on Dianchi Rd.
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Abstract 摘要 [ Abstract ] An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject or discipline, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper’s purpose.
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This paper examines the place of 30’s architecture in the context of Shanghai modernization and urbanization via a transcultural approach. Through the case study of the Fuzhou building, formerly Hamilton House, the study tends to define the place of Nostalogic Architecture in the modern Shanghai. By demonstrating the relationships between human and housing, to understand the link between Shanghainese and their residential architectural heritage; by introducing the notion of spatial appropriation related to the behaviours and the evolution of Chinese society; by dealing with the transcultural consequences of Shanghai Nostalgia in architecture, caused by collective memory, retro-marketing and Shanghai history; and finally by making a parallel between the past and the present (1930-2015) to demonstrate the similarities and the comparisons between both periods.
30’s architecture Transculturality Nostalgia Appropriation Housing in Shanghai Heritage Residential heritage Neighborhood Retro-marketing Private & public
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Former british Consulate, 33-53 Zhonghan N°1 Rd
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Foreword �言 [ Foreword ] A foreword is a short piece of writing sometimes placed at the beginning of a book. When written by the author, the foreword may cover the story of how the book came into being or how the idea for the book was developed.
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02 - Foreword - 前言
Contrast of two Shanghai ... It all began during my first internship in Shanghai. The company was quite young, just created two years ago, and firstly located along the fashionable Avenue in the former French concession, Huaihai Lu. Lost between the new shopping malls where the most famous international brands such as Dior, Louis Vuitton and Chanel fighted, there was a place which seemed disconnected of modern world. As if time has stopped. Detached of all the dynamic and modern life, which seemed to be the hallmarks of Shanghai in the past several years, the house was shared between many companies, mostly foreign agencies. The Design company which I worked for, rented one entire floor. Two rooms and toilets, it means less than 30 square meter, on the second floor. Our dailylife at the n°90 was surrounded by the screams and the shouts of the kids playing their games in the street and the voices of the hawkers beyond our windows. All those little things have created a home atmosphere. We were not in the hideous and impersonal megalopolis anymore. It was my first experience in a Shanghainese old building.
The Fuzhou building, formerly Hamilton House. The neighborhood, even if it was friendly, didn’t have enough space for all the employees. It was time to find another place... Consequently, we passed from the former French concession to another district, equally famous, the Bund. Or more precisely, the Hamilton House. Built in the last Thirties, the complex was a former office and residential area which, still today, preserves the same activities. Even though the building was not different to the one on Huaihai Lu that we just left. In fact, there was the same quaint charm, a familial and relaxed atmosphere.
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前言- Foreword - 02
Dominos players whom are gathering in the corridors, kids are running on the old-fashioned parquet, the smell of fried fish coming to us at midday ... More or less pleasant, those memories are a very important part of my internship dailylife. Moreover, another fact increased my interest for the architecture from the Thirties in Shanghai. It was my involvement to the rehabilitation project for the company new office, in the Fuzhou building. During almost two weeks, I visited the former site, reworked on the floor plan, became aware of the poor conditions in which was the global structure of the building – mushrooms in the walls, mouldy parquet, windows which didn’t isolate anymore ... From then on, to my mind, 30’s architecture became synonymous with testimony of the Shanghainese life and memory of the city. A curious object that I wanted to know much better and to open my mind on the future conditions of this kind of architecture.
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The Fuzhou Building, 170 Jiangxi Rd 16
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Introduction 埕言 [ Introduction ] The introduction is the opening of an essay or speech, which typically identifies the topic, arouses interest, and prepares the audience for the development of the thesis.
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Shanghai’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, 243 Jiangxi Rd
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Bund, Shanghai by night 21
03 - Introduction - 引言
Waitan, 外灘, foreigner’s embankment.{1} Bund, muddy riverside. And rightly so.
{1} Warr Anne, Shanghai Architecture, China 2007, p.9-10
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引言- Introduction - 03
Discovering one of the most famous place of Shanghai Let’s play to the tourist just one evening, to observe Shanghai, the modern and historical city that every traveler knows. You are now on the artery Zhongshan Rd. Showcase of colonial Western architecture in Shanghai and also, the most famous district in the megalopolis, boulevard of mysterious puzzles and a thousand faces which attract visitors from all over the world. Located on the West bank of the river Huangpu and facing to the new financial and business district Lujiazui on Pudong, the Bund is the architectural testimony of the past and the colonial history of Shanghai. Race your way between two extremely large buildings which date back to the golden age of Shanghai. Two buildings which are reminiscent of the New-York Neoclassical style from XIX° century. Expression of power and stability{2}, this style is particulary appreciated by banks and government buildings. Now, you can find inside the city most elegant stores, restaurants and hotels. You continue to walk on the artery and wait before cross the street. The circulation is dangerous and policemen still keep an eye on the traffic. In front of you, the enlighten skyscrapers on Pudong. You recognize the Financial Tower (known as bottle-opener) and the Oriental Pearl Tower. You already know them : you saw their shape before on advertising publicities in the Shanghai subway. Those buildings are the new window display of the city. By the way, when you type «S.H.A.N.G.H.A.I» in your search engine, those skyscrapers appears on the first pictures that you will see. The place is quite familiar. The signal light shows green. You cross the street. You are now in a pedestrian precinct where jostle a great majority of tourists, Chinese and Foreigners. The promenade, located 10m above water level, follow the historical edifices{3}. The show of both parts of Shanghai is fascinating. To the East, Pudong. A constantly varying landscape, the disctrict never {2} Green B., Johnston T., Lear R., Robertson C., Snoodijk J., Patterns stop to progress, at the mercy of the news of the Past : six more Shanghai skyscrapers that come to be implanted. walks, Hong Kong 2008, p. 13 To the West, Puxi and its historical {3} Kurtenbach Elaine, Rising identity which is preserved – and maybe Seas Threaten Shanghai, 2009 even exeed – its former greatness. http://bit.ly/1yeOMsl 23
03 - Introduction - 引言
As you can see when you turn the head, there is not any traditional Chinese architecture as we can expected. Surprising ! After all, we are in China. From the 52 buildings which composed the Bund{4}, not any strictely came from Chinese inspiration. All of them were created between 1860’s and 1930’s, from international architects and ingeneers inspired by different cultures and architectural styles. However, it is interesting to stop on this last point. After all, is it certain that China didn’t influence the shape or the interior organization in those buildings? In fact - and this dissertation will develop the subject in the next pages, Chinese behaviours, philosophy, and all the thinking process that had the architects or creators at those times, inspired this typical architecture. Those buildings are neither Chinese, nor Western style. I would say that, in this present case, 30’s architecture is typically Shanghainese architecture. A specific product created by a mix of different cultures, Eastern and Western. Thus, the architecture of the Thirties is distinctly a Transcultural construction, a combination of styles and organizations which came from different origins. Moreover, Shanghai is equidistant to Europe and United-States{5}. As if it’s geographical position had influenced the rest of its history. Maybe, after all, it was unavoidable. Shanghai, because of its advantages, had to be the meeting point of all the world’s cultural diversity...
What is the aim of this essay ? In this context of contrast and reconstruction of Shanghai, the main goal of this dissertation will be to answer to some questionning :
s What is the actual identity of 30’s architecture ? s How residents and Shanghai citizens interact with these heritage architectures? s Why these spaces are a topical subject? s What could be their hypothetical future?
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{4} National Geographic, Shanghai, France 2011, p.67 {5} Gandelsonas Mario, Shanghai reflections. Architecture, urbanism, and the Search for an Alternative Modernity, China 2002, p.22
引言- Introduction - 03
To summary, the problematical question of this dissertation will be : What is the place of Thirties Architecture in the modern Shanghai ? In order to provide an answer to the previous question, the essay will follow Maria Gravari-Barbas’s words{6} : «vivre les lieux et s’approprier le temps» (Live the space and appropriate the time). Indeed, the dissertation will be divided in two main topics : the space and the time. In the first part of the essay name based on spatial arguments, the very first chapter is focus on the relationship between Human and Housing, the body and his environment in a first time. The next chapter is an introduction to the notion of spatial appropriation apply in heritage architecture and how residents can be themselves with their own identity inside a preserved building. In the second part of the essay developed around Time question, the first chapter is a description of Shanghai Nostalgia, the reasons of this return to the past and the limits of its reprensentation in the modern world. And finally, the last chapter is a comparaison between the two eras (1930s 2010s) about their similarities in order to propose an hypothetical idea to Thirties architecture future in Shanghai.
1930’s architecture definition Obviously, there is the fact that 30’s architecture designate all the buildings created in the late 1930’s in Shanghai. I kept this first definition in mind, and expand my definition to the late 20’s. The reason is quite simple : most of the building constructed in 30’s had been already drawing and thinking five or six years before. {6} Gravari-Barbas Maria, Habiter However, there are other possibilites le patrimoine. Enjeux, approches, to define 30’s Architecture. In order to vécu (Live the Heritage, Issue, bring a general idea of my subject, I Approach, Experiences), France chose two different ways to define it. 2005 25
03 - Introduction - 引言
Definition through the Architectural style. British colonial, Victorian period, Gothic, Neoclassicism, Art Deco, Spanish colonial ... the most important styles of 30’s architecture had a Western influence. Those styles already exist outside China. They were just rebuilt and re-think some years later in Shanghai, brought by Western and Chinese architects. This kind of style concern a large majority of architecture in the 30’s. On the contrary, one style of the same period is quite different. It’s called Shikumen Lilong. («Shi Ku Men» means «stone frame door».) A style created by foreigners for chinese citizens. A combination of a Chinese courtyard-style dwelling and British terraced housing.{7}
19th
Neoclassical
HSBC Building
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20th
Shikumen Lilong Hengfeng Lu
1840
Victorian style Astor House
1920
Art Deco
Former slaughterhouse 1933
27
Residential Shipping Banks & Offices Industries Commercial, small trades
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Plan of Shanghai, Regional Development, 1945
引言- Introduction - 03
Definition through the activities of 30’s Buildings when they were built. 30’s architecture can also be define by comparing their activities. According to an old map from Shanghai Archives dating 1945 {8}, about the Regional Development of the city, several types of activities are highlighted: Shipping, industrial, small trades, commercial, residential, bank [7] Green B., Johnston T., Lear R., Robertson C., Snoodijk J., Patterns and offices. The number that stands out of the Past : six more Shanghai is around 60%, corresponding to the walks, Hong Kong 2008 residential activity. [8] According to the map: Shanghai Regional Development, 1945
20%
5%
Industries
Banks & Offices
9%
Shipping
25%
Commercial & small trades
60%
Residential
The proportion of activities in Shanghai
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Gibb Livingston & Co. 100 Dianchi Rd
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30’s Architecture 建筑学 [...]House is not a question of stones, but love. A cave could be wonderful. La folle aventure, Christian Bobin.
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A first glimpse on 30’s Architecture
the Fuzhou Builidng
fuzhou lu
C
D
jiangxi lu A
B
Municipal Square schematic floorplan
All created between 1922 and 1936, the completed square seems like a reflection of the architectural dynamism of the period. From a Baroque influenced clacissim to Art Deco and - for the last one - Modernism style.
Fuzhou Building (A), Metropole Hotel (B), Shanghai Health Department Buidling (C) and the Commercial Bank of China (D).
The place seems like to be an urban dialogue between four buildings :
Even today, the Fuzhou building is still located in a strategic place. Near East Nanjing subway station and the famous commercial road Nanjing Lu, it is easy to find your way to what Anne Warr named the Municipal Square, a carrefour crossed by the roads Jiangxi Rd and Fuzhou Rd.
Actually, imagine you on this carrefour. Forget the traffic and the city sounds to just focus your attention on the Fuzhou Building entrance. Amazingly, it seems to be the first transcultural vision of the exploration. Stuck on the Art Deco doors, basically 30’s creation, there are two fantaisist illustrations
which reprensent pink horses. Why horses ? And why pink ? Because it is 2014, the Horse Year according to Chinese calendar. For the color, it is clearly a question of taste. Thus, the main entrance is an equal composition of Western architecture and Chinese decoration.
If you continue your exploration and decide to enter inside the building, you can observe Art Deco details on the ceiling and the black lines on the tiles while people are greeting each other. The elevator doors opened. In this shady and scary small space, you choose a button at random. The machine stopped on the sixth floor. The corridor seems like a labyrinth where you could get lost. Sometimes narrow
and gloomy or on the contrary spacious and bright, the corridors are empty of people. You did not meet anybody, but don’t be surprised : there are residents behind the doors. Actually, you can heard sounds from the appartments. Children playing piano with a teacher, the discussions between individuals, the changement of TV sounds when you walked - from a war film to romantic series ...
In the next corner, there is an other unfamiliar fact. An open door with a curtain hung from a wire stretched horizontally to prevents your curious eyes to visit the appartment. In China, according to Feng Shui principles, it is important to have a natural ventilation accross the living space. In this way, doors and windows stay open to bring a sufficient air renewal. The curtain is the only visual barrier which divides private space from collective area.
An interesting fact that leads us to ask a few questions regarding the relationship between residents, a community and their living space: - What is the link between individual and his appartment, but also which relation had a community with the entire building ? - In addition, what is the notion of private and collective space that caracterises Chinese housing ?
The Metropole hotel (Left) & The Fuzhou Building (right)
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建筑学- 30’s Architecture - 04
What does «inhabit a space» mean ? In the broadest terms, it is possible to define the notion of inhabit by : a set of physical features, in which live individuals, a population, specific species or a group of different species.{10} To go one step further, with a philosophical point of view, Georg Simmel, German philosopher and sociologist of the 19th century{11}, wrote on the subject that the first man who erect a hut expressed the capability for Human being to be confront to Nature : he broke the space continuity, cut a plot and made a specific unit which is fitted with a sense. A piece of space was unified and separated from the rest of the World. In this way, in broad philosophical terms, «inhabit a space» (or to have a place to live) means that there is a separation between the inside (private) and the outside (public).
Inside, Outside and Protection Nowadays, a large majority of modern societies had already integrate the notion of private and public. Link to the concept of protection, there is a limit between «what is mine» and «what is yours». In fact, if we go back a long time ago in the history (for example to the prehistoric period), the cave can be representative of a protective environment, vital to the survival. A protection against all the hypothetical enemy from outside. To have an at home, a place of your own, where we are safe physically and psychologically, is like to have an inside protected of all can come from the outside. Outside can be linked to the climatic and global dangerous environment, but also represents the others. In most of the case, the doorstep or the entrance is the frame of this foundamental fonction which consits to enter and to go out of a home place. It gives rise to different uses, {10} Larousse definition, rituals and codes. When people comes http://bit.ly/1IGNcSw inside their space, the mask falls away, {11} Le Scouarnec René-Pierre, like a theatre representation in which the Habiter, Demeurer, Appartenir, stage can be compared to the outside and France 2007, pages. 79 à 114
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04 - 30’s Architecture - 建筑学
the backstage, the inside. It is precisely at this moment that appears the notion of appropriation (notion that will be further developed in the next chapter ). Just one thing about the notion of appropriation, linked with the relationships that have a Human with his living space : the appropriation of their own space give to people a comforting and reassuring atmosphere. I would say an atmosphere closed to the feeling of the cosy family cocoon in which grew up a child. In that way, private space is synonymous of soothing like an isolated island. During my interviews, when I asked this question{12}, I was expecting answers about keys put on the furniture at the entrance or even about the Do you have any main door, locked to have a safe environment from particular ritual the outside. when you enter Amazingly, most of the people interviewed spoke in your home? {12} about their habit to change their clothes when they came into their personnal space. As if, when people take off their suits or work clothes and by wearing confortable and less luxurious clothes, they cut from their working day. By doing this ritual, they have recognized their environment to be a safe one, like a part of themselves.
Heritage and «Museification» There are many different ways to understand and interpret the housing and it is therefore an illusion to think that it can exist an universal unit. One of the characteristics of inhabit a place - as it is in the present case – is to inhabit the Heritage. W the case of the Fuzhou building. Abroad, particularly in Europe, inhabit the heritage is not a neutral behaviour. The population who actually {12} Interviews made in Shanghai is living in these kind of architecture have between June and October 2014. to face up to the double burden of memory 46
建筑学- 30’s Architecture - 04
and confines, link to the living environnement{13}. The preservation of the heritage is always considered with a lot of attention. Architects, urbanists, government ... buildings and architectures most of the time stayed remains unchanged. This is known as museification of the heritage. In China, this notion of museification can also be applied in specific cases. Indeed, the term can be found when people talk about the rehabilitation of the Peace Hotel or Xintiandi area. These places have reasons to be restored and preserved by the Government. There are economic stakes with the tourism industry, but also : marketing challenge with all those luxurious brands which implants their retails in those places; and the importance according to the historical value (for example, Xintiandi - 新天地 - is the location of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China). In fact, as Ren Xueifei said, historical architectures are actively preserved not for their values as cultural heritage, but for their symbolic capital that can be used to project a global future by referencing Shanghai’s cosmopolitan colonial past{14}. Those buildings, typically 30’s architecture, are one of the only case in which there is a notion closed to European vision of museification.
s What happened to the rest of what we could consider to be 30’s architecture in Shanghai ? s Which buildings could be demolished ? s Which one could be transformed by inhabitants ? s What is the place of the Government in this case ?
This is a complex issue and the essay will just take a quick look at those aspects to explain the complicated relationships between Shanghai citizens and their living environment.
Gravari-Barbas Maria, Habiter le patrimoine. Enjeux, approches, vécu, France 2005
{13}
Ren Xueifei, Forward to the Past : Historical Preservation in globalizing Shanghai, Department of Sociology University of Chicago, 2006
{14}
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The fragile equilibrium of the heritage issue Acually, there is a remarkable modernization of the city which must be taken into account when people talk about inhabit the heritage in Shanghai. The main consequence of the new Shanghai politic since almost 30 years, is that the house status is in fragile equilibrium. Shanghai adopted a double politic of preservation and redevelopment. A challenge for the political authorities whom have to deal with the urbanization, the density of the city center and the Chinese housing crisis. The priority is not given to the preservation of the heritage, but to fast response to this urbanism crisis. To illustrate this situation, Huangpu district – the district in which is located the Fuzhou building – is the most densely populated central city area with 126,000 people per square kilometer, corresponding to less than 8 meters square for each person{15}. New units are created by opposition to colonial architecture. The municipality decided to promote vertical expansion of the city by creating modern coumpounds with a western standardisation style and some satellite cities around Shanghai to evacuate population from city center. In that way, buildings which are not equivalent to the wishes of the government guideline are carefully erase. Between 1991 and 2000, 26 million square meters of old houses have been destroyed throughout Shanghai and 660 000 households relocated.{16} According to Raymond W. M. Wong, the edifices which can be regarded as having high heritage value are the one with the following features : {16}
Architectural style If the construction method or architectural design of the place was unique.
Regional concern
If there is a reflection about the regional characteristic or culture of Shanghai.
Architects
The architects who built those buildings were famous. 48
Milestone effect
If the architecture formes a milestone effect in the historical development of the city.
建筑学- 30’s Architecture - 04
The Fuzhou Building had at least one of these criterias. Even if the place is not in its original state, the building still exists.
The consequences on living conditions inside heritage building The first one, is that all resources are given to enlarge the city. The government is making every efforts to create new units, not to give subsidies to the rehabilitation of heritage. Usually, houses are not properly maintained, but threatened by wear over time. Creaked floors, broken windows and flaky walls are usual in those kind of places. However, with the poor maintenance conditions, some troubles linked to the global edifice could appear. Rats for example, but also humidity. In the interview conducted by H. Vasquez {16}, there is clearly this misunderstanding and lack of interest regarding old houses by Government.
«Our homes are destroyed, roofs are collapsing, thereare leaks, mold and rats. These buildings were built in the 1970s and now they should be renovated.» Zhong Yiqun, factory worker, 2009
Residents have to be organized and also resourcefulness to improve their dailylife conditions. It can be really simple facts : from the adding of extra heating or buying anti-cockroach spray.
The second consequence concern the changements developed over time. With the housing crisis since 1949, the appartments are progressively divided into smaller units. Originally, a house built for one family (approximatively five or six people), became a place where lived around four or five families from different origins and cultures.
Gustin Nicolas, From urban village to density, 2014, http://bit.ly/1za9qwC
{15}
Vazquez Howard, Les dynamiques urbaines de Shanghai : trois artères péri-centrales en mutation, 2010
{16}
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04 - 30’s Architecture - 建筑学
The notions of private and public, but also protection face up to outside feature had completely changed. New habits, new ways to rethink the house, new delimitations of private space and collective areas. The Fuzhou building is a great example of these transformations. On the 7th floor, there is the rooftop, divided in two parts. An usual outside space with vegetation and view on Pudong, but also an inside part where people built - some years after the original construction of the building - extras units with concrete blocks and sheet piece of metal. The only clues which stay to remind the old organization are the red tiles on the floors which create a global set on all the 7th floor.
Home meaning and sensitive approach. The fragile balance between preservation and reconstruction about heritage in Shanghai leads the thinking development to an other aspect of the house, focus this time on the poetry and the feelings that shared a human being with his private living environment. As the German philosopher Heidegger said in this conference in 1951 by retaking the words of the German poet, Hölderlin : Poetically, man dwells.{17} Heidegger makes a profound distinction between what he is named the calculative and the meditative. These are two modes of being in truth - the scientific and the poetic. Heidegger suggests that man dwells poetically meaning that man’s relationship to the world is one that is constantly in flux, never capable of being grasped in its totality.{18} In fact, to come back on the global definition of housing, this time with a linguistical point of view, when we think about private space we can consider the notion place of your own. This notion have a link to the intimacy and the privacy of the resident, while the term «home» mention this warm and cheering image of the family meeting{19}. Those 50
Vial Stéphane, Habiter la terre, la maison, l’appartement.Une lecture de Heidegger et Bachelard, 2009, http://bit.ly/1CiUZ7p
{17}
{18} Dr. Watson, Poetically Man Dwells 2011, http://bit.ly/1ubr5mm
Les abattoirs, L’habitat vu par l’art contemporain, 2009, http://bit.ly/1AOS7z6
{19}
In lieblicher Blaue – In lovely blue « (…) Might a person, when life is full of trouble, look up and say: I, too, want to be like this? Yes. As long as friendliness and purity dwell in our hearts, we may measure ourselves not unfavorably with the divine. Is God unknown? Is he manifest as the sky? This I tend to believe. It is the measure of the human. Deserving, yet poetically, we dwell on this earth. The shadow of night with its stars, if I may say so, is no purer than we who exist in the image of the divine. Is there measure on earth? There is none. (…) »
Extract from In lieblicher Blaue – In lovely blue, by Friedrich Holderlin (1823) 51
04 - 30’s Architecture - 建筑学
two words reveal one unique sensitive aspect by excluding all market value. The price of these places is linked to the happiness or even sadness. In short, the history that share a resident with his personnal space. That’s why, the house, even modest, simple room or mobil-home can be called place of your own or even home.
Notion of «house slaves» developed in Shanghai. In 2009, a TV show named Dwelling Narrowness[20] also know as Snail house or Humble Abode used 30’s architecture as a location set for the show. Based on a 2007 novel by Liuliu Wojiu 蜗居 the plot takes places in the fictional city of Jiangzhou 江州 which seems quite similar to Shanghai. The drama deals with the urban social problems such as the housing prices, the difficulties to buy an affordable home, the political corruption and the gap between rich and poor[21]. On the blog ShanghaiStreetStories[22], Sue Anne Tay described the show with those words : «Dwelling Narrowness» hit a chord with many viewers, especially in Shanghai, who saw themselves ball-chained for decades to burdensome mortgages like “house slaves” (房奴). Moreover, the global history of Shanghai had created a difficult sharing between residents and their living environment. A place that people can loose as it’s already happened during the Cultural Revolution when Red Guard expeled people from their houses. Thus, by retaking the notion of House Slaves, Shanghainese people can feel limited in their movements considering the heritage that they have to protect. The idea of House Slaves is really interesting : s How a house, considered as a safe environment, can have this upper hand on human being ? s Is it possible to provide to the house a personnification like humanization?
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{20} Dwelling Narrowness, Teng Hua-Tao, 2009 {21} Tong Scott, Chinese soap highlights housing issue, 2010, http://bit.ly/1501hhd {22} Tay Sue-Anne, The history of a Shanghai Villa, 2012, http://bit.ly/17GBfRu
建筑学- 30’s Architecture - 04
Personnification of the living environment. There is a very beautiful metaphor according to Chams [23] (Ethnic group located in Cambodgia and in the center of Vietnam), that explain the idea of a house described through Human body features. In Chams’s proverb, there is indeed a personnification of the living environment. More than just a physical place where we sleep and eat, the house become a person with its own individuality. The reason is quite simple: we live in this space. It means that we shared a part of our lifes with our environment. By humanizing this architectural space, we give it all the feelings and memories that we have during our cohabitation. Those The first room, the head, is the places contained one part of our life, one collective space for the receptions, part of soul. rites. The one in the center is the chest, the wedding room that will be next the young couple bedroom. Mr. Jiang and the Last Home The last room, the stomach, is Standing. used to store the rice reserves. The side door is the nose and The documentary «Last standing the one oriented to the kitchen is home»[24] actually highlights the the mouth. In the same way, the importance that had a living environment ridgepole is the spinal column, the in our own history, our feeling and rafters are the ribbings, the batten our life experience. The investigative are the phalanx and the grass on report presents Mr. Jiang, a man that the roof is compared to the hair. [23] the journalist described as an eccentric who actually lived in a 30’s architecture house. However, in few months, the old Mr. Jiang’s house (around 400-500m²), located in Shanghai city center, must be demolished to create modern buildings. The man refused to leave. The Chinese {23} Quotation from the Vietnam writer and journalist, Chao Gan, settled Museum of Ethnology, 2014 in the house and tried to understand {24} Last Standing House, Gan the reasons of this opposition. Through Chao, 2007 the interviews with Mr. Jiang and the 53
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comments made by the journalist, the documentary paints a portrait of a house which is a mixed of families stories and emotions, drag into the Chinese transformations[25]. To have a quick portrait of the main character, it is possible to describe Mr. Jiang as the owner of his house. He had never married and out of work. According to Chao Gan, Mr. Jiang - as his house - looked like the sky of Shanghai. A morose sky. The global impression in the report is the place of the house in the sentimental life of Mr. Jiang. In fact, he humanized this individual space by the feelings and the memories linked to the place. This poetry of the housing is created by a I was very angry when I part of the resident, bad or happiest moments and learned that they are gonna gave to the global environment an identity. leave me alone in this big In fact, the global impression that stands out house. I had a feeling that through this part of Mr. Jiang’s life, it is as if the my family abandonned me. man was forced to marry the house. Or conversely. This is how at 18 years He didn’t have any choice. This metaphoric old, I became the only «matched mariage» presents the house under a watchman of the house. different aspect : a wife that Mr. Jiang was forced to take care, to repair, to embelish and to support. Sometimes bad surprises can happened like in every couple relationship. The comparaison could go further. According to Mr. Jiang’s opinion, a woman is variable. She can leave, one day, without a word or - that is worse than everything else – stay with him just for the house. An interesting short dialogue with Chao Gan illustrates this comparaison between a wife (human being) to his house (material place) and the place that the house takes in his life. [A]
In few words To sum up briefly, when there is the question of private space in Shanghai, and especially private place link to the heritage, there are the notions of 54
{25} French National Broadcasting Institute, La maison de Monsieur Jiang, 2009 http://bit.ly/1sx618L
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Mr. Jiang
We can’t have everything. I own a house, but I don’t know the warmth atmosphere of a home.
Chao Gan
If you had the choice, what would you choose ?
Mr. Jiang
[...]
Chao Gan
Imagine that you are in a tiny room, with a lot of people, and you have a wife and children ...
Mr. Jiang
We can’t answer to this question in one sentence.
Chao Gan
Answer with all the sentences that you need.
Mr. Jiang
There are too much aspects to consider... Do you think that is forever, the home’s warmth ? And if it’s short-lived, just married and the woman wants to divorce [...]. It has to consider the global context. Futhermore, this is not sure that my son will be devoted.
Chao Gan
You are such a pessimist !
Mr. Jiang
Don’t look further. Anyway, there is no point to think about it...
A Conversation between the Chinese
journalist Chao Gan and Mr. Jiang, from the movie Last Standing House, by Gan Chao, 2007
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humanization (as if the house had a consciousness), the sharing between both actors (the home and the human), the precarity status of heritage in the city and the different consequences that history had on the space and the limits between private and collective areas.
To live in collective heritage means also live with the others Claude Lévi-Strauss, French ethonologist, was convinced that the domestic unit is inseparable from its homestead, and the house, is a physical place and also a social unit. [26] The place at your own, vital to everyone, is more than just the simple private space of an appartment or a house. Inhabit means also to have neighbours, it’s to located yourself between others in a building or a district. The aim of live a space is that everybody can have this place, and keep his relationships with the others[27]. But be carreful, this is not because we live near to people that we are close. It is quite important to consider that these relations are essentials to the individuals development. The definition of the term collective[28] is to share or done by a group of people : involving all members of a group. Collectivity can not exist without individuals. Actually, some artists worked on these relationships between space, collectivity and individuals. This is the case of the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, {26} Lamaison Pierre, interview who created in 1998 an artistic project with Claude Lévi-Strauss, La named Dom-ino . This installation is a notion de maison, France 1987, space open to the public where people first paragraph. can have different activities like intertain, {27} Cassaigne Bertrand, Habiter, relax or even cook. The aim is to create 2006, http://bit.ly/1u6hxsG a collective action between visitors. The {28} Merriam-Webster place is considered as a factor of social dictionnary, http://bit.ly/1wdmPgb link, sharing and exchange.[29] Against the notions of individualism of the modern {29} Maury Hèlene, Hors-lessociety, the artist took an habitable Murs exhibition in Gourdon, France 2013 structure and orchestrated some domestic 56
Dom-ino installation by Argentine artist, Rirkrit Tiravanija 57
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activities, or free and spontaneous actions ... private and collective space were mixed.
Corridors, a place for interaction In the Fuzhou Building, there is one public space that every occupants have to cross each days : the corridors. Sometimes empty and other times, full of heterogeneous objects and knick-knacks props, where it can be difficult to circulate. One of the intriguing thing in these corridors is the residents habits and behaviours. It is quite important to understand that a large majority of the Fuzhou Building residents are elderly people, an average of 70 years old approximately. And if you take time to walk in this place everyday at the same time - around midday - you will see quite exactely The Fuzhou building is like a the same scene : a table at the center Shanghai alleyway house. When of one of the corridors, near a natural the alleyway are horizontal, the lighting point, where four women are spatial composition of the building is playing dominos, cards or mah-jong. It vertical. But inside, this is the same is just a friendship and neighbourhood organization. In the building, there are meeting, where they can chat or even the appartments, the corridors and the discuss about the neighbor of the 3rd facade. In the Shikumen, there are the houses, the alleyway and the gates. floor while playing parlour games. During my interviews, I met John, 34 The only difference is that, in the case years-old, who compared the Fuzhou of the Fuzhou Building, life and social organization is divided into levels. Building corridors, to the alleyways in John, 34 years old. Shanghai Lilong. There are the same «order in chaos» and public life similar to Shanghai Street Life. This comparaison between corridors and Shanghai street life are really interesting regarding the social life inside the building. In his essay, The Shanghai Alleyway House: A Threatened Typology,[30] Gregory Bracken described {30} Bracken Gregory, The the Shanghai alleyway house to be a rich Shanghai Alleyway House: A and vibrant generator of street life. He Threatened Typology, 2013 58
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wrote a compelling analysis which regard to this unique place in Shanghai: Maybe not quite consciously, but the propinquity that resulted from such constructions seemed to encourage communities to become more closeknit, and to make less distinction between interior and exterior, a thing that had since Confucian times been determined by the system of class relations existing in Chinese society. The fact that the alleyway house was also amenable to any number of different uses meant that the typology, in its robust flexibility, helped encourage its own dynamic diversity of street life. [...] it is this very diversity that makes for a healthy street life. In many ways the fact that anything could happen is one of the key factors in defining the alleyway house as good public space. Thus, the whole description of Shanghai alleyway house can be transposed to the Fuzhou Building case. Chinese life is created inside the former Hamilton House, according to residents behaviours.
Community and collective rules. Live with the others means also live together as good neighbours, by respecting some common rules. To have harmony in a collective place, people should respect the particularities of everyone, their cultures, their way of life, ... In China, and more specifically, in Shanghai, this principle concerned firstly the limits between private and collective space. In the Megalopolis, the notion of privacy is not the same as it is in Western coutries : insolation - for example - is quite bad, people can heard what is actually happening in private spaces. Also, by retaking the former example of the curtain in front of doorstep, it is easy to people in the public space to see what is happening inside private space. Overall residents are discreet and respect privacy of everyone. However, it can happen some troubles if the limits are not respected by an indiscreet neighbour. In this case, frequently, when
there is confusion between private and collective space, it is perceived like a
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violence.
In September 2014, I met a couple who described the difficulties to live with neighbours in heritage architecture places[31]. Not because there is a wrong privacy space, but more about the sharing in the collectives parts. They do not live in the Fuzhou Building, but in a 30’s architecture villa, shared between five families. In this kind of houses, each family has one’s own switch at the entrance with one’s own bill every months. When someone need to turn on the light in collective space, he press his own switch. The system is accepted by all the residents. But this is a kind of utopian vision. Some residents doesn’t respect the common rule. Especially children of one of the families - not Shanghainese, the couple precised – had fun by pressing all the switches downstairs. The invoice at the end of the month was steep and the trouble is still an issue in the building. With a Design point of view, this is in intriguing question and social issue : How might we manage collective life in those public spaces to create a better collective life ?
In few words. Let’s continue your walk inside the Fuzhou Building. While you are walking, you can eventually think about private and collective terms. Each notion is indispensable to the creation of the other. There is no collective space without privacy time and no more private space without collectivity. In fact, each people in the society need at the time to live with the others and also to have a private moment to built his own personality and an awarness about his living environment. {31} Cao Mengqing interview, September 2014, Searcher on Traditional Chinese Architecture in Shanghai and resident in a 30’s villa in the former French Concession.
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Heritage plaque denoting a Municipally preserved item
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Huqiu Rd restoration 65
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Restoration work on Huqiu Rd 67
Residential building on Sichuan Rd 68
Luxury brand store on Beijing Rd 69
Living in the Fuzhou Building corridor
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Living in the Fuzhou Building outside & inside 71
05
Appropriation 拨用 “..Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating taking something for one’s own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The “use” one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor.” Art on My Mind : visual politics, Bell Hooks
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A first glimpse on appropriation theme
the Fuzhou Builidng
It is time to heard some life sounds. People went out their appartment and surrounded the kitchen. More than kitchens, these are hotplates, microwaves and washbassin
It is noontime in the Fuzhou Building
basically placed on wooden boxes. The smell of fried fish went up in the stairs. You could ride in an elevator and go directly to the 5th floor. Just imagine, while the doors are opening, a landscape totally different from the rest of the building.
There is no white walls anymore, in fact, it seems like you are not even in China. Instead of that, there are no less than 5 or 6 aquariums with large size at the middle of the traffic area. Paintings from European masters
ornamented the walls, spaceships images displayed on a table, fixed with adhesive tape and the last empty space that which must be just white were besieged of flowers, bicycles, pomegranates and households products.
I had the chance to meet Mr. Han in the same corridors during my research. Coiffed and cleaned shaven, he had about fifty and lived on the same floor that the aquariums and the paintings. He didn’t place the various props himself in the corridors, but he knew the person who did it. After a short presentation while he asked me why I was here, I questionned him about the corridor.
Just stop one minute in front of the paintings, with a new Transcultural perspective. European reproductions placed on the walls inside 30’s architecture by Shanghainese residents. A perfect combination of cultures that tends to prove the particular status of the Fuzhou Building : a Transcultural place.
This short meeting with Mr. Han introduces the second chapter of this essay, about spatial appropriation by residents in the framework of an historical building. What are the limits of appropriation ? Why is it important according to the development of individuals?
Why there are all those objects in front of the appartment ? He smiled and asked me if I find that pretty. He explained that it was to brighten up the dark and dreary atmosphere of the building. Even if he didn’t create the space, he seems to be proud of it. He liked nature, Mr. Han’s neighbor. And art. And people didn’t say anything until now, so why not keep it going?
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Living in the Fuzhou Building appropriation on the 5th floor
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What is appropriation ? A house, strictly speaking, is no more than a local – a box – where we can add objects and bodies[32]. The fact is that inhabit is not a fonction, this is a condition. This is the fundamental feature of the Human condition. So how can we create a place of our own in an empty place ? The answer is quite simple it’s called appropriation. The process is represented by all the little things that people can do in a specific place : by adding decorations, objects, or by moving the space into different shapes, cleaning up ... In this way, how to define more preciselly the notion of appropriation ? What are the limits and the constraints linked to this notion in Shanghai ? In order to provide a better definition about appropriation, it is important to deal with this notion applied in two different contexts. There is the appropriation in private space and the appropriation in collective area.
What does it means to appropriate your own place ? Usually, appropriation is the concept in which each inhabitants will give to his place a face, something inside made of symbolical and physical qualities[33]. Housing is not only a {32} Vial Stéphane, cover, but it’s also an object that Habiter la terre, la maison, l’appartement. Une lecture provides a place to an individual a de Heidegger et Bachelard, place in the society. When someone 2009 customised his place, there is no link http://bit.ly/1CiUZ7p with the juridical status, but he added some psychologic and affective {33} Cassaigne Bertrand, rights to adapt the place into his own Habiter, 2006, http://bit.ly/1u6hxsG image. This constant appropriation is an important process : the 83
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changements created match with some personal dynamic. Each individual puts his mark by the disposition of objects, the colors of painting, the size of the sofa ... The same process happened when one resident moves into a new appartment, he takes possession of the space. He erases all the things that remind the previous owner, to create his own references. Mathieu, a foreign worker, told me that the first night he slept in his new room in Shanghai, he couldn’t sleep. But he doesn’t exactly know the reason of his insomina. After similars other nights, he decided to remove all the furnitures inside his bedroom. The bed, the bedside table and the wardrobe was reorganized with new patterns into a new frame. At this time - and only this - he felt better, the homesickness was gone and he finally could think about this new flat to be his own place [34]. In fact, space appropriation made by residents themselves give them a felling of protection against what is outside : public space and the unknown.
Community life and personnal appropriation Between these two concepts (private / public), there is a kind of opposition. It is as if the term of intimacy was the anthonym of collectivity. When someone intervenes in collective space, this is a social and cultural element. Social element because, to retake the previous example of the aquariums in the corridors, neighbours can talk, observe and enjoy to see the fishes. The aquariums became a tool to create interaction between residents. The cultural element concerns the personnal culture of everyone. When someone wants to appropriate a part of the corridors, he would do it, but never without affecting the desired space with his own experiences and imagination. These ideas of appropriation can come from his social status, his religious belief, his own history... all of those criterias are variable involved in the construction of the space. There are used to create the image he {34} Interview with Mathieu N, needs to convey. Strategy consultant, However, this sensitive issue is more Shanghai September 2014 84
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complicated than that : from the desire to appropriate the adjacent public space to the dismay of some residents regarding the presence of this type of space and the ambiguity that it brings. Indeed, some residents will not like the personnal appropriation of their neighbours in the collective corridor. In this case, when there is a broadening of space appropriation, link to the extension of private space into collective place, there will be a conflict. Why one resident have the right to surround a collective space where everyone should circulate ? Is it possible to manage it ? Why there is this wish to extend a personnal space ?
Appropriation, bearings and Spatial Possession However, in every different case studies which has this kind of extension of private life into collective part, there is the notion of possession. The territory and spatial ownership. Inhabit a space and even more when it affect the heritage building, doesn’t mean that people are entirely at home. Lao-Tseu 老子[35], a philosopher and poet of ancient China, said that :
If the heritage is the property of its legitimate owner, its beauty is the property of everyone.
The facade of a house is owned by the one who look at it.
Victor Hugo [35], french novelist, poet and dramatist, remind this last point.
{35} Baduel Pierre Robert, Habiter le patrimoine / Living heritage, Angers - France 2003
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There are others examples of appropriation, link to the notion of possession in Shanghai. One of them is the French street name in 1930’s located in the former French Concession in Shanghai. When French people have chosen to renamed the streets by French politicals names : Avenue Joffre, Avenue Petain ... This level of space appropriation concerned a large community in the district. Those street names in a Chinese public area defined a spatial appropriation by French politics. Why French authorities did it ? Obviously, one of the reasons was to prove colonial power in Shanghai, but, in an other hand, this appropriation defined and delimited the former French concession in a way that, when people saw the name, they knew where they were. Even if this consequence was created unintentionally, these French names in China helped French citizens to appropriate one part of Chinese land.
Possession to reassure Moreover, those names can also be an other way to reassure French community of Shanghai. Authorities provided marks and the foreigner community get their bearings to be involve in the city by repoducing an environment they already know. I met foreigners workers and students during my research and asked them if one day, they have the choice to live in a modern building or in 30’s architecture place in Shanghai, what will be their choice[36] ? Strangely, people who already visited this kind of heritage place in Shanghai gave me a similar answer : they will choose the modern coumpound. This is not because they are not interested by Shanghai history or to live a different experience of housing, but they Why this choice ? are afraid to be lost in an {36} Interview made with 14 environment that they foreigners, between June and October 2014. couldn’t recognize. Lucy, european expatriate, explained to me that {37} Interview with Lucy A., 27 years old / UK creative manager, the organization is not the same. [37] Shanghai, September 2014.
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«You’re proposing to live in 30’s architecture, but with the same price ? What are the conditions ? Do we have a balcony or ... ? Ok, well I would say that if you propose me an appartment in 30’s architecture building renovated, ok maybe I could think to live in it because I am curious. But for now, I really prefer to live in a modern coumpound. It’s familiar even if there is less curiosity for me. You know how it’s work, the circulation. With a Western architecture, you know already the building even if you never come into... You know that here is the toilets, here is a room, here is an other room ... You know how it’s works and you know how to enter, how to circulate, how to live in it, in fact». [37]
Appropriation, Possession and Property As it will be develop in the next pages, possession is also synonymous of property. A recent poll made by Tencent drew more than 360.000 votes, with most agreeing with the statement that «happiness is closely related to owning a home»[38]. Thus, to be ownership and to have your own territory that you can manage as you want, is an important point in happiness developement of individuals. However, the notion of ownership and property in China, is composed by many aspects that it is important to understand. Even if the aim of this dissertation is not to explain all the property issue in China, property is so close to the concept of appropriation, that it is relevant to spend a little time on this part.
Firstly, regarding the political history of the country and the abolishment of the private property made by Communist ideology. In fact, since 1949, each property was owned by Mao’s Government. That was before ! Since 2004, the juridical notion of the property called 所有权 (suoyouquan) in Chinese, is writted in the Chinese Constitution. According to an interview
{38} Feng Sue, Hit TV Series Strikes Chord with China’s “House Slaves”, 2009 http://on.wsj.com/17KMdFN {39} Desné Julie, 85% des Chinois ne peuvent pas s’acheter de logement, Lefigaro, 2010 http://bit.ly/1G14OwA
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given by Buildingsphere in 2011[39], the land remains the property of the State in China. Purchaser had to pay concession fees to Government to benefit an using right and this is not possible to modify the uses without the agreement of the administrative department concerned. An other particularity of Chinese law regarding real estate property is the right of usage for residential buildings is for a 70-year term. This right can be renewable when it expires. It must be noted that China knows, since the past years, a large-scale urbanization. Secondly, the cost. The housing market is a conundrum for the Chinese authorities. Despite intensive efforts to countain the higher prices per square metre, the estates prices jumped 33% between june and july according to the investigation made by China Real Estate Index System. In Shanghai, there is very hight square meter prices as costly as Paris : between 3000 and 7000 € per square meter[40]. According to Le Figaro, a French newspaper, 85% of Chinese people can not be ownership[39]. The reason is that a third of the Chinese biggest cities offer appartments 30% to 50% more expensive than their real value according to local standards of living and real estate offer. In Shanghai in 2011, if a familly own a house with a size of 60 square meter per person, a rate of 0.4% to 0.6% of the global price of the property will be taxed every year[41]. Liu Weimin[41], a searcher of the Development Research Center, said that to be equitable, this tax should cover not only the newlypurchased houses after a certain date, but all the existing housing. This includes also heritage buildings in Shanghai.
Few words on appropriation meaning To conclude to all those different key points, it is possible to sum up this part by saying that appropriation could be perceived as a tool to create a space with our own identity, a safe environment that 88
{39} Desné Julie, 85% des Chinois ne peuvent pas s’acheter de logement, Lefigaro, 2010 http://bit.ly/1G14OwA {40} BuildingSphere, être propriétaire à Shanghai, 2011 http://bit.ly/1G15nGx {41} Unknown writter, Les propriétaires chinois bientôt taxés, 2014, http://bit.ly/1u9kiUL
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reassure inhabitants by creating a division between private and collective area. But appropriation is also a way to take possession of a place, also applied by the notion of private property.
However, what happen when inhabitants cannot appropriate the space and create their own spatial organization ?
The importance of appropriation
In opposition to the heritage architecture and its appropriation, Le Corbusier, a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner and writer was also known for his definition of what it called Living Machine, pioneer of what it called nowadays modern architecture. Residents was considered through his primary needs[42]. Of course, according to many people, it was a leap forward in term of comfort and well-being. However, today, compounds, towers and others modern buildings are not synonymous of social progress and innovative technology anymore, but considered as the urban image of the lack of well-being. According to Lewis Mumford[43], a technological historian and architecture critic, by matching utilitarian and financial image of the skyscraper city to the romantic image of the organic environment, Le Corbusier had, in fact, produced a sterile hybrid. Thus, modern architecture is dehumanized by opposition to the ordered chaos inside 30’s architecture building.
Nevertheless, is it possible to combine the appropriation of a Western machine living with Shanghai 30’s architecture ?
{42} Creative Common, Le Corbusier, Date unknown, http://bit.ly/17KOYGY {43} Mumford Lewis, Yesterday’s City of Tomorrow, 1979
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Combination of Heritage and modernized buildings There is a simple observation on 30’s architecture : these buildings are not adapted to the modern life that tend to propose new skyscrapers with better facilities and commodities. However, to recreate a kind of modernization inside 30’s edifices, some rehabilitations are made, not always by lawfull methods, to create the same facilities that we can find in Western modern compound. Private bathrooms, lighting renovation, electrical installations ... Of course, these transformations modified the interior aspect of the heritage, but gave also a modern standard of living to inhabitants. Nevertheless, some of these modifications (Western facilities in Chinese living space) cannot be applied in Chinese context. The most recent example is the new trend in interior architecture design to have an open space in the collective part of a house[44]. There is no separation anymore between the kitchen, the living room, and the dinig room. But this Western vision of space opening in the housing cannot be applied in most of Chinese houses. Indeed, one of the Chinese habits is to fry the food and the smoke produced by cookers is introduced in all the space, creating a discomfort for the occupants. In this way, we can say that appropriation of a space has different constraints and limits regarding the culture of the residents and their way of living inside their environment. Indeed, to create a sterilized modern living machine in the framework of Shanghai 30’s heritage architecture cann’t be compatible. As I said before, there is the link with the culture of individuals, but also the relationship with time.
Consequences of appropriation through the time Actually, 30’s architecture is the result of different superimpositions of time transformations. Through different occupants, the space was rebuilt and transformed to be adapted to the different facilities of their time. {44} Interview with Peter L., 24 There is a 30’s villa in the Old French years old / Chinese engineer, Shanghai October 2014 Concession, near Fuxing Park, which is 90
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a great example of this time testimony through the resident uses[45]. When the building was built, in the late 20’s, the entrance was reserved to the building manager. There was an entire room with a view on the garden and the metal gate. However, according to need changements, the room had been earased to welcome collective toilets and bathroom for all the collectivity. There is still, nowadays, the old details on the ceiling that proved the old utility of this place.
Appropriation as a testimony of our lifes Those raw testimonies about their life of confinment, it is the only proof that remind the human lives in this cold building ! Those tags show all life-saving impact about writting or drawings. The cell become, during the confinment, the prisoner’s second skin, the graffiti is a tatoo which tells a story. Paul Heintz
This aspect is an other particularity of appropriation. The aim in this time, is to let a trace of our passage in the space. A witness of human life and inhabitants behaviours. There is a story about this particularity, but not in Shanghai. Even if it’s not in China, it is always quite interesting to see this example. In 2010, in the city of Nancy in France, Charles III prison was demolished. Just before the destruction, Paul Heintz a young photographer, immortalized some prisoners words writted on the walls of their cells[46].
There are many others examples about this reality on space appropriation, all of them traduct the idea of keeping a part of human life in a given space.
{45} Personnal observations in the Former French Concession, Shanghai June 2014 {46} Chatellier Anaïs, Le quotidien de détenus dépeint sur les murs,Sept. 2014, http://bit.ly/1ymY99m
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In few words Trying to summarize the idea of spatial appropriation in Chinese context with the notion of heritage, time transformation, privacy, property and owner identity is a quite complex issue. There are a lot a notions to discuss about, but all of them are assentials to understand the real question of spatial issue of 30’s architecture in modern Shanghai. In fact, this is the role of the inhabitants to create the evolution of these buildings through the time. By the little appropriations of dailylife like Mr. Han’s neighbours did in the corridors, or with the distinction between private part and collective life. To live inside the Fuzhou building seems like the past way of life as was Familistère de Guise in France. Those collectives buildings which have to deal with the occupants transformation, and the city expansion towards a new modernity.
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Living in the Fuzhou Building appropriation on the 6th floor 96
Living in the Fuzhou Building appropriation on the 5th floor 97
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Living in the Fuzhou Building 101
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Living in the Fuzhou Building Bird cage hung from the ceiling 103
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Living in the Fuzhou Building appropriation with vegetation 105
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Shanghai Nostalgia 上海怀旧 It’s never safe to be nostalgic about something until you’re absolutely certain there’s no chance of its coming back. Bill Vaughn
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A first glimpse on Shanghai nostalgia
Fuzhou rd
POST
POSTES
The testimonies are the details on the stairs guardrail, typically Art Deco style, the letterbox with those decorative messages written in French, even the main entrance - remember, the one with those pink horses stickers - is actually a call for the imagination and Nostalgia.
{47} Catch phrase from Xintiandi rehbilitation project.
If you go on the exploration of the Fuzhou Building and if you pay enough attention to the architectural details, you could find many proof about the historical aspect of the place.
Where Yesterday meets Tomorrow in Shanghai Today. [47]
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Just close your eyes to imagine the former urban landscape of Shanghai at this time. Remove the modern skyscrapers and all the buildings made of glass and steel to keep only some areas on the Bund. Forget the humming noises which come from the air-conditionner on the facades, the modern music that leads the dancer’s performance and the zoom of the last sports cars in the streets.
You need to visualize this place, when you go out the Hamilton House - Former name of the Fuzhou Building - through the huge revolving door and when you enter in the noisy sounds of Foochow Road where Coolies are waiting for clients and where the highest building is none other than former Peace Hotel, built by Victor Sassoon.
Even if you only can imagine what was the past splendor of the building and the dailylife inside it, there is a topical trend - since 1980’s - that tends to create a nostalgic feeling about the Thrities. This third part will be focus on the origin
and the definition of Nostalgia in Shanghai. What means Nostalgia for Chinese ? What is this trend ? Why there is this kind of feeling in Shanghai ? And what is the collective image of this period in the collective imagination ?
On the other hand, does Nostalgia is still a true reflect of the Shanghai past ? Think one minute about the chapter on space appropriation, in the previous pages. How can we be sure that the reproduction of the Thirties is not just a fantasy built by commercials and investors to sell their
products ? Even when there is no commercial purposes, the collective image of the Thirties traveled 80 years in Shanghainese memories. History is malleable and maybe the image leads by Shanghai nostalgia is not the same that the real period was.
Dusty bicycle in the Fuzhou Building
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Nostalgia definition According to dictionnary[48], the name «Nostalgia» is a Greek word, composed by the terms of Nostos (Return Home) and Algos (Pain). German people used the term of Heimweh (Homesickness). The WerriamWebster Britain encyclopedia[49], for its part, describes Nostalgia to be a pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again. Generally, Nostalgia is understood as a negative feeling, dispirited and withdrawn. When, in Shanghai, a foreigner express is nostalgia about the food in his native contry, he describes a fragile and gloomy mood, close to the notion of depression. However, it is important to understand that Shanghai Nostalgia is quite different - if not the contrary of the previous definition. Shanghai nostalgia is perceived as being positive, spirited and receptive and this is the reason why this term, applied is Shanghai case, is quite unique[50]. Shanghai nostalgia is considered as a positive mood, like an expression of confidence about the Future.
Shanghai as an historical and attractive city To describe Shanghai Nostalgia in details, it’s quite important to understand the past of the magalopolis. Especially to comprehend the fact that Shanghai is considered as a city of history, by opposition with the new one such as Haikou, Zhuhai and Shekou for example[51]. In this way, Shanghai is a city of history which was a former village fishing port called Hù (沪), which gets its actual name under the Song dynasty. Modest port and weaving village, the city acquires a particular status thanks
{48} The freedictionnary, http://bit.ly/1y1Cl40 {49} Werriam-Webster Britain encyclopedia, http://bit.ly/1y1CqF4 {50} Lu Hanchao, Nostalgia for the Future: The Resurgence of an Alienated Culture in China, University of British Columbia, 2002, p.3 {51} Dai Jinhua and Judy T. H. Chen, Imagined Nostalgia, Duke University Press, 1997, p.5
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to its geographical localisation closed to the Yangtze mouth and artisanal productives cities such as Hangzhou and Suzhou[52] From that point on, Shanghai became an important economic and sharing center in the country. The international aspect of the city came after, with the first Opium wars in the XIX century. The different treaties (Nanking 1842, Bogue 1843 and Wangxia (1844)), allowed the creation of the first concessions. In 1863, Americans and English colonies formed the International Settlement, while French colonie, concerned by the English interests, created the French Concession. First implanted on the Bund, the colonie extend progressively to the West of the city. In fact, to conclude on this short sum up of historical Shanghai, it is possible to say that almost 105 years of territorial occupation gave to the magalopolis its own identity. [53] Thus, since that time, Shanghai is considered as an unique city.
Historical Shanghai viewed as a shame Nevertheless, after the end of the colonies, Shanghai has been judged as a city of shame by all revolutionary patriots. Shanghai of pre-1949 was synonymous of evil and hellish and it was persue as political incorrect to cherrish memory of the time of the foreign concessions.[53] In fact, during this period, there was a kind of fear to remember pre-revolution time. Hanchao Lu, in the essay Nostalgia for the Future [54], explained the apprehension about Nostalgia felling : {52} Voyage-chine, Brève histoire de Shanghai, date unknown, http://bit.ly/1IC4jXN
Longing for the past used to be the most watched sentiment in China, for it was directly associated with the perceived danger of «restoring capitalism», the lethal accusation in Mao’s time that eventually ignited the Culture Revolution[54]
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{53} Gandelsonas Mario, Shanghai reflections. Architecture, urbanism, and the Search for an Alternative Modernity, China 2002, p.21 {54} Lu Hanchao, Nostalgia for the Future: The Resurgence of an Alienated Culture in China, University of British Columbia, 2002.
XIX°
1845
Land regulation treaty
Balfour and Chinese officials signed a treaty which defined the boundaries of the foreign settlement in the city.
1845-1943
Expansion
Development of the International Settlement and the French Concession. Creation of the urban landascape of Shanghai - a combination of various cultural influence between 1920-1930.
1949-1992
Housing crisis
The accomodation became overcrowded and sub-divided. Money was not avaiable for anything but basic maintenance, so the exteriors and common spaces remained in original conditions.
1992
«Head of the dragon»
The decision was made to transform Shanghai as the national economic development leader under China’s socialist market : the city looked to the future.
1994
Preservation
A list of 398 municipally preserved buildings was established.
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In the same time, Shanghai became a ghost city, invisible and insignifiant compare to the capital, Beijing. The Glory Age and the Paris of the East didn’t exist anymore. Isolated itself from the rest of the world, Shanghai remained a backward city in a huge country. As if the magalopolis had to be purified for all those luxurious decadence and outrageously scandalous era.
Birth and right of Shanghai Nostalgia In recent years, however, the situation has changed. Nostalgia value has evolved in Chinese mentality. Before 1980’s, it was the time of a collective dream of nationalism and there were persecution and intimidation of anyone who dared to cherish old society, but since 1990’s there is in Shanghai, a link between Nostalgia and society enjoying which is, in a certain way, link to the individualist dream of wealth by citizens[55]. Xiao Yen, in the essay The right to Nostalgia [55] makes an observation about the desire of citizens and the need of everyone to remember old times which is quite interesting to understand :
Nostalgia is not only a kind of remembrance, but a kind of right. We all have a longing for the past-lingering over some mundane ob-jects because these mundane objects have become the memorial to the trajectory of one’s own life, allowing us, without a doubt, to construct a human archive. [...] I look at this magnificent radiance as resistance against the desolate experience of alienation from human nature. Whenever one sees the reflection of stainless steel and glass walls cruelly swallowing up all traces of human life, whenever one unwit-tingly hails a taxi cab with a cloud of exhaust trailing behind, slowly and resolutely advancing on the cold, hard, paved concrete surface, the meaning of modern «progress» truly {55} Gandelsonas Mario, Shanghai depends on the expressive materiality of reflections. Architecture, urbanism, memory to sustain its equilibrium. and the Search for an Alternative Modernity, China 2002, p.21
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Nonetheless, there is one key point that is also important to take into account : Nostalgia is not a political protest against the Cultural Revolution, but saw as a powerful feeling that could serves as a booster for modernization[56]. As if, by remembering the past, Chinese and Shanghainese people can look to the future. A real Shanghainese process as said the Researcher Shu-Mei Shih : «A colonial nostalgia not by the colonizers but by the ex-colonized».[57] As from now, the question will be why ? Why this return to the Past, to vintage and ancient life philosophy ?
Reasons of Nosltagia : Chinese political evolution The first answer to this question concern the sensible changement of political system. Indeed, partially released from all those Maoist pressure, the urban society is open to the world, the revolutionary virtue erased in the presence of the desire of consumption and the ideology gives way to entertainment. These new developments meant a rehabilitation of the Shanghainese Past presented as an exceptional experience which is a source of pride and a kind of model for population. However, even today, some old expressions are excluded and all colonial veiled reference and Guomindang politic is ban. The neutral expression «Thirties» (sansshi niandai) is used to talk about the Shanghai of Republican era.[58] Lu Hanchao, Nostalgia for the Future: The Resurgence of an Alienated Culture in China, University of British Columbia, 2002.
{56}
Reasons of Nosltagia : Quest of a collective identity. The second answer concern the quest of a collective identity. An identity exclusively Shanghainese. Even if there is already some commun features between Shanghainese citizens as the mutual language, there is with the
{57} Shu-Mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917-1937, 2001, p.9 {58} Dai Jinhua and Judy T. H. Chen, Imagined Nostalgia, Duke University Press, 1997, p.5
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anguish of the 80’s, the repressions of the 90’s and the fast reorganization in Chinese society (with the emergence of the Socialist Market Economy politic), a chaotic indentity crisis in Shanghai.[59] This phaenomen is certainly one of the main reasons of the Shanghai Nostalgia development as an answer to cultural needs. It is to create a spiritual space for imagining and for consolation. To be Shanghainese takes all its sense. Thirties gave to Shanghai a collective image of the city that they can diffuse behind the borders and that they can to be proud of. Moreover, Shanghainese status tend to disappear. Cao Mengqin, in his interview[60], explained to me that with the increase of Chinese migrants population in the megalopolis and the only-child politic, still valid, the vast majority of Shanghai citizens are not Shanghainese.
Reasons of Nosltagia : Cultural Revolution and Shanghainese migrants Cultural Revolution also played a major role in the advent of Shanghainese Nostalgia. Of course indirectly. In this time, the frozen landscape of the colonial city didn’t give rise to Nostalgia. The permanence of the urban framework contrast with the political, economical and social Shanghai metamorphosis created with the Revolution. But among the contractors, intellectuals and Shanghainese artists whose in 1949, had choose emigration, the memories of their own past get confused with the city past where they lived their first years. In Hong-Kong, where there are mainly {59} Lu Hanchao, Nostalgia for established, those emigrants are looking the Future: The Resurgence of an Alienated Culture in China, in the Old Shanghai celebration to a University of British Columbia, remedy to the sadness of exil[60] They 2002. published books and articles, collected {60} Cao Mengqing interview, memories: illustrated calendars, photos, September 2014, Searcher on Traditional Chinese Architecture magazines... This «lost world quest» in Shanghai and inhabitant of a doesn’t mean that people are looking for 30’s villa in the former French a restoration, but this is a message about Concession. 122
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the Nature of Shanghai past, associated with the emergence of a modern chinese culture. All those reasons created a qualitative image of the Thirties and in a certain way, the celebration of the Past is obviously a movement with a commercial motive, leads by Shanghainese emigrants aspiration whose missed this 30’s Shanghai and its dreamed past.
Shanghai Nostalgia and Retro-Marketing In fact, Nostalgia is used for commercial purposes, that’s what it called Retro-Marketing[61]. The expression Thirties is so strongly connoted that it is enough to be sold. Often, it appears in the neons lighting above the front doors of coffee shop, restaurants, or night-clubs in the former French Concession, where liked to meet the hight-class pre-revolutionnary, now a meeting place for newly richs. Nostalgia have to rise from the dead the fascination that, in olden times, attracted so many contractors and foreigners tourists in Shanghai. Indeed, tourism is became again one of the main ressources of the city. Visitors go to the Bund, in Nanshi - the Old Chinese city, or in Xintiandi, in the former French Concession. They could find restaurants, coffee shop, bars, night-clubs and dance club. Shanghai uses its image of oriental and romantic metropolis and the sulfurous reputation that if was the definition of Past Shanghai - as a cultural identity and a commercial tool.
Nostalgia, emotions and luxury market. Clearly, the emotional component covers the nonfunctional symbolic meanings of those vintage brand. A key
Cao Mengqing interview, September 2014, Searcher on Traditional Chinese Architecture in Shanghai and inhabitant of a 30’s villa in the former French Concession.
{61}
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Shanghai Tang, promotional compaign, winter 2009
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characteristic of luxury products and brands is their specific symbolic meaning, which marks the major difference between the premium and luxury segment. Luxury was and still is highly associated with Western culture, and therefore Western luxury brands were generally perceived as being more luxurious and prestigious, and Chinese brands such as Shanghai Tang and Frankie Xie were clearly at a disadvantage[62]. However, this is changing.
«There is a growing sentiment that 5,000 years of civilization has created superior ways of doing things that have only been revived today».[63]
Nostalgia associated to the young emperors generation. Why vintage and - globally – retromarketing is increasing ? Why the concept is accepted by Shanghainese population, foreigner clients and luxurious investors?
This trend is highly related to the generation of young emperors, who were born after 1978 when the national reform started and into a new era of China represented by a growing economy and the one child policy[64]. Their parents and grandparents concentrated all their resources and efforts on their single child or even grand-child, which makes this generation the best educated, the most confident, but also the most selfcentered and ambitious among all the {62} Heine Klaus, Phan Michel, living generations in China. They are A Case Study of Shanghai Tang: avid, savy and frequently self-indulgent How to Build a Chinese Luxury consumers[62]. Brand, Asia Marketing Journal It is reasonable to expect that this 2013 proud generation is increasingly {63} Prasso Sheridan, China’s comfortable with its heritage and much new cultural revolution, 2007 more receptive to Chinese luxury http://for.tn/157NDZq brands. It is this generation which is {64} Degen Ronald, Opportunity actually changing the Chinese luxury for luxury brands in China, market; the newly rich attitude of today International School of will be replaced by sophistication and a Management, Paris, 2009 125
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more discrete taste and style[66]. Furthermore, even if vintage brands created old inspired products, they tried to integrate them in the dailylife of everyone. Integrate old fashion with modern clothes is a tool to keep and attract consumers.
Our challenge has been to make our collections relevant, wearable and modern. The new design would allow consumers to wear Shanghai Tang clothing with a pair of jeans on daily basis without losing their elegance Le Masne de Chermont[67]
Shanghai Nostalgia & communication Books, movies, musics .... added to brand communciation help to create this particular collective ambiance about Thirties. Even foreign countries are inspired by this powerful image. The most recent example is the South Korean drama «Inspiring generation», which in 2014, tell a story setted in the 1930s in Shanghai and depicts friendship, love and patriotism of young people[68]. With an atmosphere of passion, crime and fighting, the famous image of the Shanghai 30’s make people dream about it. In fact, writters and filmmakers since {66} Prasso Sheridan, China’s new the 80’s and 90’s want to approach the cultural revolution, 2007 memory of Old Shanghai. By romanized http://for.tn/157NDZq it, obviously. «Shanghai Triad»[69] directed by Zhang Yimou in 2000, {67} Heine Klaus, Phan Michel, A presents a facette of the 30’s link with the Case Study of Shanghai Tang: How to Build a Chinese Luxury Brand, notion of gang business, dangerousness, Asia Marketing Journal 2013 money, passion and scandalous times. {68} Inspiring Generation // The same image could be recognized 감격시대 // 感激时代斗神的诞生, in the movies «Lust Caution»[70] (Spy, Kim Jung Gyu, Ahn Joon Yong, Sexual attraction, Love, Old features as South Korea 2014 cars or streets like Nanjing Donglu which {69} Shanghai Triad, Zhang was mocked up with old streets signs) Yimou, 2000 [71] and also the «The White Countess» {70} Lust Caution, Ang Lee, 2007 (Refugiee, Neutral position of the city, Taxi dancer, Love, Attraction). {71} White Countess, Kazuo Ishiguru, 2005
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色,戒
Lust, caution
Even if the story takes place in 1942, the scenes present the set with a lot of details from the thrities such as : the architecture, the decoration props, clothes, vehicles, and activities (mahjong).
Lust, caution
06 - Shanghai Nostalgia - 上海怀旧
摇啊摇
shanghai triad
Gong Li interprets a cabaret singer and mistress of the Triad Boss. Betrayals, murders, sexual affairs and Shanghainese mafia, the movie presents the inflammatory face of the city.
Shanghai Triad
the White Countess
The movie focuses on a disparate group of displaced persons attempting to survive in Shanghai in the late 1930s. Aristocraty, taxi dancers, secrets and mysteries.
The White Countess
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Collective image of the city in the Thirsties Shanghai Tang is a great example of this marketing communication. Surnamed the Dior of China[72], the branding position of Shanghai Tang is clearly based on the slogan «made in China». But forget all about the questionable products and the plastic objects, Shanghai Tang proposed local products and vintage inspirationable clothes to the chuppies, the trendies chinese customers. Chinese models, Chinese fabric, Chinese style but also campagnain exclusively Chinese inspirations[73]. In the promotional booklet written for the collection Autum/Winter 2014, Shanghai Tang imagined an univers in adequation with its brand image «The city syline, vintage wood, exposed bricks and brare trees create the perfect backdrop for the collection’s city looks».[74] With this booklet and the fashion photographies inside, I asked to some people in the street to give me keywords according to the images[75]. What people think when they saw those pictures ?
Nostalgia
Luxe
Authenticity Vintage Classical Dream
Chic Style Elegant
Relevant keywords to express the concept & the image of what is the «Thisties» in people’s minds. Power Scandal Love Romance Money Dance
Contrast Passion Sensiblity Ironical Corrupt Beautiful
{72} Marketing chine, Shanghai Tang : la première marque chinoise de luxe, 2013 http://bit.ly/17XeyJ2 {73} Dorothée, Shanghai Tang, la 1ère marque « Made in China» qui se démarque, 2013 http://bit.ly/1EdiC2n {74} Shanghai Tang, Commercial booklet collection Autumn / Winter, 2014 {75} Survey made with 9 people in Shanghai October 2014
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Indeed, the global image of the 30’s is contrasted. The «Heaven built on top of a hell» is divided into two different kind of environment, the positive and the negative. In 1930’s, this is the time of the Green gang’s opium trafficking and the political corruption. We have in mind the moment when French authorities made this pact with the devil[76] : Du Yueshen, the chief of the Green gang. Prostitution rings, gambling houses, extortion rackets, crime and gangsterism, political volatility, cultural rootlessness, anomie, boredom, violence and cruelty. Shanghai is all of that. The terrible and dangerous image which can repulse as much as it can seduce. During the interview of Mr. Cao’s wife [77], who is not a native Shanghainese, she talked about the quite bad image that had Shanghai during the Maoist time. Even today, those stereotypes still exists and give to the megalopolis this hazardous, nasty, unsafe and deadly reputation. On the contrary, Shanghai is also synonymous of success. The city in which everything could happened, as it was the case for American metropolis such as New-York in the same period. After all, Thirties is also known as «Golden Age» of Shanghai. Fantasy, Luxurious ... the Paris of the East at the edge of any fashion and way of living questions.
Shanghai and Nostalgia places Still today, some particular places celebrate the Golden Age of Shanghai like Shanghai Old Tea house which propose an immersion in the typocal atmosphere of the 30’s with the features of this time : gramophone, old avertising, posters, furnitures, even the waiter wearing vintage clothes, and glasses. There are also places which are the intemporal symbols of this period like the Bund or Huaihai Road which represent still today the symbol {76} Horn Olivier, Reigel Anne, of Shanghai’s European lifestyle. On the Shanghai, les années folles, date contrary, sometimes places are recreated unknown; http://bit.ly/1DQv4HO just to give this particular atmosphere of the 30’s, but not always realized with a {77} Interview, September 2014, real immersion as it is the case for the adoptive Shanghainese. 140
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installation in People Square station, just under the Urban Museum of Shanghai. They recreated a lane in real size, but is there this particular ambiance that caracterize 30’s image ? It seems much more close to the Chinese fake architecture.
Nostalgia and memory. This theme takes the opposite stance of Shanghai nostalgia generated by the marketing and the commercial spirit of the thirties. Actually, to criticize the Nostalgia, it is important to understand what is the memory and especially, if it is reliable, can we forget and modify? The memory can be distinguished between the individual memory and the collective memory. And in both cases, the memory seems to play a major role in what is name the identity. After all, know who I am, it is at least to know that I was. In the case of Shanghai nostalgia, the collective memory is more interesting, because it often contributes to define a collective identity. To be Shanghainese takes then all its sense. But the memory can it be reliable? Let there be no mistake : the collective memory, just as the individual memory, is always selective: at an individual level, events more or less traumatizing from our childhood can be forgotten or push back. The collective memory, particularly the history, is more «logically» selective: thus, the Shanghai Glory Age of the 30s is glorified, forgetting the 50s and 70s when the city was a backward place regarding the rest of the country. Considering both twin buildings, The Fuzhou Building and the Metropolis Hotel, it is possible to recongnize the contrast of two nostalgias which coexist. The first one, personified by Metropolis Hotel, is a Nostalgia which aims at recreating Thirties as if we were still there. Actually under renovation, the building goes back over gilts typically Art deco, chandeliers in some 141
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stylized shapes, the photographies praising the glittering past of the building. But is this a just reproduction of the former Metropolis Hotel ? Time and memories had strongly contribute to modulate and to modify the elements which you can find today in the 30’s edifice, whether it is accesoires or serious arrangements. The willingness to recreate the former Metropole Hotel may leads to a go in for one-upmanship which unconsciously deviates from the orginal style of the building. The real memory disappears to the benefit of a multitude of styles and inspirations which is conform to the collective image of the Thirties. The second, represented by the Fuzhou Building, is a Nostalgia which has not still taken place, and which may or may never see the light of day. The residents are aware of the site’s heritage character, without trying necessarily to recreate the spirit of the Thirties. Some indications punctuate here or there the interior of the building, tending to prove that the Fuzhou Building is an Art deco building, typically Thirties, but the residents do not consider themselves necessary to live in the past. The building is in the hands of the residents, abandoned by the city, and survives, shaped by the diverse hands which live there. In this manner, nostalgia, could be find in some arrangement made by the locals, an isolated decision, such as the mailboxes writted in French and the posters which celebrate the golden age of the megalopolis.
In few words Anyways, Nostalgia is still in people minds and the trend about the Thirties updated the old songs, movies and prewar famous personnalities. Dress with the Qipao style recovered the preference of the fashion designers. The demand of souvenir made the happines of a specialized commerce. High-class inhabitants are looking for «colonial» houses that they could appropriate with special furnitures - table lamp, door handle, chairs - and other decoration elements.
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Shanghai roads in 1930s 145
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The Metropole Hotel under construction, November 11th 1930
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The Fuzhou Building under construction, December 3trd1930
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Inside the Metropole Hotel, museification or rehabilitation?
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The Shanghai Bund: A History through Visual Sources
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A first glimpse on the comparaison between two period : 1930’s & 2015’s
The fuzhou building details
If you come back on the Fuzhou Building example and, during your space exploration, you take the elevators. A priori, this small
But is that really the case?
When people talk about 1930’s, it seems that it was an other world. Behaviours, belief and other mores were totally differents.
space is the same as in every building. Modern coumpound or even 1930’s famous hotels as Peace Hotel or Metropole Hotel the twin building of former Hamilton House. But, in an other way, those elevators are the best place to explain why Fuzhou Building is a mix of cultures and a mix of differents levels of appropriatin according to the notion of time.
11 10 9 8 7
5 4 3 2 1 0
12
6
5
The first detail which had to be considered concern the lift-buttons. If you already visited Shanghai or if you live in the city, you already know that, when you want to go to the ground floor, you have to push the number 1. Nevertheless, in Fuzhou Building, the number that you will press is the 0. This
little detail gives many clues about the former builders. Indeed, in Europe, 0 is the number associate to the ground floor. 80 years after the creation of the buildings, and after many repairs, the lift-buttons are still the same, like a testimony of old times and transcultural place.
The second detail is the electrical fan, added few years ago in the elevator, to create a refreshing space on hot summer days. A typical Chinese addition, link to Shanghai
climate and the city environment, fan is also a tool to create this transcultural space and this link through times.
Thus, would it be possible to create a parallele between those two periods : 1930 and 2010? The fourth part of the dessertation, will be develop this question. Just imagine you, one more time, in Fuzhou Building, but this time, you went to the top of the edifice, on the last floor. Here, the organization is quite different. There is less corridors, more space is given to private place. There are called «Penthouse» in a New-York style. Private flat, more modern, with a little part on the outside. A patio or a vast balcony, it’s depend.
Elevators are, indeed, the space where it is possible to find a combination of cultures and a combination of different additions according to history and time evolution.
In this context, how could we make hypothesis about similarities between both period - 1930s and 2010s ? How is it possible to think about the old times of Shanghai and look in the future ?
Through the window, you could observed the other side of Huangpu river. Pudong and its towers. Pudong and its business center. It is the area which describes the best the future of Shanghai. Glass, steel, concrete, technology, smart cities, connected and futuristic space. Maybe this is it ... the feeling - close to the Shanghainese of 1930’s - when they saw those new infrastructures trying to get out of the ground. It is like if the history is repeating. A new historical departure, with a renew of all the urban landscape.
On the Fuzhou Building rooftop
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Shanghai, a cosmopolite city First of all, one of the main particularity of Shanghai is that the megalopolis, since the begining of its history, is a cosmopolite city. Often compared to New-York, Shanghai had, in 2008, around 20 000 000 of inhabitants[78], made it the most populated city in China. But the vast majority of its population doesn’t come from Shanghai, but from Chinese countryside, or even other countries all around the world. In fact, there is a large diversity of ethnies and culture in the city. Some people called the megalopolis : Expat’Land or laowai paradise ... Shanghai is the city in which there are the most expatriates and westeners [78]. A large number of foreigners in this city are there in a temporary situation: stage, fixed-term contract, student or simply Shanghai : American City, tourists, Shanghai gives the impression English, French, Italian, Russian, of being a gateway city for many of its German, Japanese, and still a inhabitants. Indeed, this cultural mix little Chinese, is an unparalleled that was not started today or yesterday phenomenon in the world. An and more particulary the sino-western illustrator, to be understood contact. by his reader, should represent Shanghai as a goddess with Indeed, Albert Londres, French twenty heads and hundred fortyreporter who visited Shanghai in the four arms.[79] early 1920’s described the city with those intriguing words [79]. Mainly business man, investors, people with a high social status, Shanghai had also its lot with numerous adventurer and explorator who went to this exotic city made fortune and changed their life. In old times, the population in the Foreign settlement and French concession was largely Chinese : more than 1 492 896 in 1933 and only about 70 000 foreigners[80]
{78} Tabou Céline, Shanghai, le New-York Chinois, 2009 http://bit.ly/15nsric {79} Londres Albert, La Chine en Folie, France 1932 {80} Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945, Harvard University 1999
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Obviously, the proportion between Chinese people and foreigners is still the same, especially since recently with new restrictions with regards to the number of Western people which could come to Shanghai. Visas reglementations, working demands ... allowed Chinese authorities to keep control on the expatriate flux and circulation. This is one of the main point that tend to demonstrate that 2010s doesn’t have the same powerful relationship between Eastern-Western than in 1930s. Foreign government doesn’t control the Shanghainese spatial evolution anymore.
Shanghai, an international and powerful megalopolis In fact, Shanghai has also this notion of «self-congratulatory»[81] that tend to show to China and even the entire world that the city have a different status, an unique identity. Shanghai is not an European city born from a simple colonial graft on Yangzijiang deltaic land. Even if it is the obvious heir of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, it was at that date already included in the network of the Jiangnan commercial cities.[82] The economic development of the city, particularly from the mid 1910s, is based not so much on the great families of foreign entrepreneurs such as Sassoon and Kadoorie as a powerful class of Chinese entrepreneurs. In 1949, Shanghai became the largest metropoloe in Asia. The city represents a quarter of China’s industrial production - against only 5% fifty years later. Nowadays, Shanghai takes its revenge on backward past of cultural revolution and it is the commercial and financial center of mainland China. Global financial center, international harbour, foreigners invests in the city. Chinese government took again Shanghai and used the city as a dynamical tool to rhe rest of the country, but is it really the case ? Shanghai is it still Chinese ? I would say, the status of the Magalopolis is not so clear. Politicaly speaking, yes, of course, Shanghai is Chinese, but 166
{81} Dai Jinhua and Judy T. H. Chen, Imagined Nostalgia, Duke University Press, 1997 {82} Sanjuan Thierry, Pékin, Shanghai, Hong-Kong, trois destins de villes dans l’espace chinois, , 2001, p. 153-179
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economicaly understood, the city is international. Foreigner companies, by investing in the city capital and by creating infrastructures and modeling urban landscape, appropriate a part of Shanghai. To give a real example, there is the case of the new Disneyland Park. A future project, expected to open in 2016[83], and even if it was clearly a way to create financial ressources to the Chinese State (and Disney Company), this first park in China will be introduce an American culture in the Asiatic city. In fact, this example could be link to the notion of appropriation as said before. Appropriation by Westerner «There are cities where we made guns, in Shanghai. As if the story was other fabrics, other hams. In Shanghai repeating but with different values we made money. This is the first and last and differents constraints than field ... I was told that Shanghai spoke before. only English. This is a terrible lie. Any alphabet is unknown. The language of this country is not a language of letters, it is a language of numbers ... It’s a Shanghai, a city of money golden calf fat. If Lenin saw Shanghai, he is excusable! I am in China and I To be clear, Shanghai is a city am not in a Chinese city. Bank, Bank, controlled by money. Then and now. Banking, Banco. Ten, twenty, a hundred, By refering to Albert Londres’s two hundred. There it is...».[84] quotation in 1930’s [84] Even the Bank architecture in the Bund was compared to Churches or even Vatican. All urban infrastructures remained the cult of money. Today, money is no longer the privilege of large Western banks like cathedrals or opium traffickers as could be the terrible Du Yue Sheng, head of the Green Gang. The great fortunes of the new China, the vast majority, raised their property in real estate and the stock {83} Screamscape, Shanghai market. But if men and business have Disneyland, date unknown changed a lot, Shanghai remains the http://bit.ly/1ywvuyC richest city in China. In fact, Shanghai had money and {84} Londres Albert, La Chine en Folie, France 1932 the government allows the city to be 167
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the locomotiv of all the country. But with this financial advantage, there is also the speed notion that came with it. All goes fast, as well as the opportunities. This is it ! Shanghai is a city with opportunities. Everything could happened, and this is one of the other particularity of the city.
Shanghai and its feverish exuberance After all, Shanghai is a city of spectacle.a showcase and a window display for China countryside and also in front of the foreign countries. There is a great way to describe this purpose in both periods : it is the public lighting. During my research, I saw old pictures of Shanghai in 1930’s taken on the Bund, by night. It is quite amazing to see decorative lighting all along the architecture of old building. The facades are embellished, the streets are like a stage were passerby could observe and appreciate the beauty of the lines and the richness of the metropolis. Through the time, Shanghai didn’t loss this particular aspect of spectacle. Still today, we can observed the advertising movies and lighting on the facade of Pudong skyscrapers. More technological perhaps, and certainly in accordance with the international definition of the show, this enlighting is one of the most poetic similarities between 1930s and 2010s. Did already went at the Bund sightseeing tunnel under the Huangpu river ? Unquestionably, this project is one of the most astonishing and eccentric experience in this Shanghai localisation, with those special multimedia effects[85]. This place is great illustration to what is today the Shanghai public show. I would say also that, maybe, public lighting and all the spirit behind this reprentation are one of the reason why Shanghai is a fashionable city, an object of fascination in the western culture and attract many tourists all over the world. Exactelly like in 1930s.
Shanghai, the city that never sleeps. However, to continue on the same notion of fashionable city, we could say that 168
{85} Shanghaihighlights,
date unknown, http://bit.ly/1yynNK3
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Shanghai is a city in which the word «Festive Joy» take all its sence. When people think about thirties in Shanghai, they also assimilate the trendy lifestyle : nightclub, dancing hall, bar lounge, cinemas and all those parties and Shanghainese craziest nights. Mrs. Cecil Cherleston said in her memoir, the following description of a typical Shanghainese night : [86]
«From the Cathay we went to the Canidrome, an outdoor pleasureplace of inifinte beauty, with a big stage and dancing-floor in the centre, and softly lighted walks planted with trees, flowering shrubs, and exotic flowers. We watched a pair of Filipinos tango, a hefty peasant in a Caucasian number, and under taht sky of silver starshine and purple clouds would gladly have seen more. But we had only begun our advendture and, after a couple of waltzes and a foxtrot, we all moved on».[86]
In fact, this notion could be applied also in the Shanghai of 2010s. After all, the night stage of Shanghai is reputed to be one of the best in Asia ! It is also quite curious to see that some nightclubs from 2014 are located in the same places than the most attractive places of 1930. Take the example of M2, one of the most famous Shanghai clubs. One of the particularity of the club is that it is located on the fifth floor of a mall on Huaihai Road. Just to remember, Huaihai is the main fashionable street in old times in the former
French Concession, called at this time, Avenue Joffre.[87] In fact, some places and famous areas conserved the same reputation of places where it is great to be seen. Futhermore, international artists since old times came into Shanghai. Fat Nellie, a ephemeral music-hall celebrity[88], but also Charlie Chaplin, Marlène Dietrich, Albert Einstein, Pearl S. Buck and many others world celebrities.[89] It seems that
Andrew, Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954, 2011
{86} Field
Les rues du Vieux Shanghai, 2010 http://bit.ly/1ytpb1T
{87} Adrien,
{88} Horn
Olivier, Reigel Anne, Shanghai, les années folles, date unknown, http://bit.ly/1DQv4HO China, World celebrities in Shanghai, date unknown, http://bit.ly/1AvLXkI
{89} Cutlural
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today, the same effervescence attract famous people, whose have to be seen : Roger Federer, Nicole Kidman or Paris Hilton. In fact Shanghai is the city of opportunities and since its renewal from Cultural Revolution, it seems that the megalopolis is actually making its coming-back on the international cultural stage.
Shanghai, a vertical city Traditionnally, Chinese houses have low-high. However, since 1930’s with the birth of Western Settlement and the creation of the new Shanghai landscape, there is a new way of construct link to a race to verticality, a competition between the higher buildings. In this period, Shanghai became the pionneered high-rise construction in Asia. Before skyscrapers and the birth of modernized Pudong, the buildings on the Bund were fighting each other to have the better high. But it was not so easy of course ! Did you notice, if you saw the 30’s architecture buildings on the Bund, that there are much wider than they are high ? In fact, the former Shanghai architectural rules stipulated that the buildings should not exceed the height of one and a half times the width of the road in front of which they were built. However, this rule didn’t stop the beginning of the vertical expansion. There was - what it could be named - an architectural conflict during the creation of the Bank of China. The building make 33 floors, higher than its neighours, the prestigious Cathay Hotel. In consequences, Victor Sassoon, the powerful owner of the luxury Hotel, objected and built a green pyramid at the top of his own building to be taller than Bank of China ! The tradition of building high was interrupted only in the first two decades after the foundation of the People’s Republic, when political and economic hardships hampered the evolution of tower architecture. After the rebirth of Shanghai into the internationnal stage, making the city an economical superpower, the race to verticaly started again. In 1930, the Place was the Bund, in 2010, it is Pudong. The vertical expansion of the district could have more than one reason. 170
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In fact, according to a technological point of view, the vertical expansion of the aera is not by lack of land, because the ground is flat and very broad. In fact, the basement is unstable. It is therefore necessary to drill very deep to find the rock. Only high buildings can amortize the cost of such drilling. However, the result is here and whatever the reason why, Pudong is now represented by those high skysrcapers. If in 1930’s, the Bund was compare to New-York architecture, now Pudong could be compare in the same way to Manhattan. In fact, Pudong transformation is fast and the objective is quite important : it is to make Shanghai the heart and engine of the new Chinese capitalism. Towers, skyscrapers and others high-rise buildings are a way to give to the world the New image of the city. In less than 10 years, in front of the Bund buildings, a new city is born. Skyscrapers of futuristic forms, arrogant towers of glass and steel, daring and modern masterpieces, designed by leading international architects. Jinmao Tower, Shanghai World Financial Tower, Shanghai Tower, Oriental Pearl TV Tower ... During my interviews, I understood that, even if there could be technological and financial reasons, the vertical expansion of Pudong is a great way to promote the city. Remember the last James Bond : Skyfall (2012). Lighting, neons, technology ... Shanghai is represented as a modern and futurist city. Pudong is the new image of Shanghai, as was the case of the Bund, in 1930.
Shanghai, a cutting-edge city To stay on the chapter of the technological and innovative Shanghai, it is possible to develop the essay with a comparaison between the cuttingedge aspect of the Megalopolis. The combination of Western and Eastern provided, in 1930, a serie of new technologies and facilities to improve the cititzens dailylife. For example the banks, the western style streets, gaslight, electricity, telephone, running water and trams. In a global scale, Shanghai became the first city in China to have all those new improvements. To take a closer example, you could go back to the Fuzhou Building 171
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case. Certainly, there are the elevators. Just imagine the arrival of those innovative spaces in 1930 in China, when all the houses were less than 5 levels. It was incontestably an innovative dailylife improvement that tend to prove the richness of the Building in question. Futhermore, the commodities are not the only clue to the innovative aspect of Shanghai. You have now to consider the material construction of Fuzhou Building. The interior partitions were made of a new material named aeroconcrete which is a new product - invented in the mid 1920 - of aerated concrete brick made of coal ash from power plants located in Henan Province. This material simultaneously provides structure insulation, and fire- and mold-resistance. A quite innovative material, isn’t it ?
In few words In fact, Shanghai before and now is still an innovative, cosmopolite, economic and fashionable city. It seems that, during its development, the city has been catching up and create a continuity between 1930 and 2010 as if time never stopped. People who saw for the first time the Shanghai of the Thirties, will be still astonished by the city of 2010.
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Shanghai tower under construction, 2013 175
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Modern towers on Pudong & the Fuzhou Building to contrast 177
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Modern clothes on heritage building 179
08
Conclusion çť“čŻ [ Conclusion ] The function of the essay’s Conclusion is to restate the main argument. It reminds the reader of the strengths of the argument: that is, it reiterates the most important evidence supporting the argument. The conclusion provides a forum for you to persuasively and succinctly restate your thesis given the reader has now been presented with all the information about the topic.
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The question The aim of the essay was to answer to the following problematic : what is the place of Thirties Architecture in the modern Shanghai ? Through four parts about the relation between inhabitants and their living environment, the spatial appropriation, the nostalgia trend and the parallel between the two periods, the dissertation paints a general picture about what thirties architecture is today. It also provides some further informations on subjects dealt at the beginning of the research : What is the actual identity of 30’s architecture ? How Chinese, Shanghainese and Foreigners interact with this heritage ? Why those spaces are a topical subject ? What could be their hypothetical future ?
Architecture from the Thirties saw as a Transcultural object. The global dissertation tends to prove that the Architecture of the Thirties, tangible testimony of the Old Shanghai, is the reflect of different combination in different levels. One concern the mix of cultures, whereas the other is much more about the mixes of periods. This type of architecture, so unique to Shanghai, is a perfect Transcultural object. The Fuzhou Building is not only Western Building built by foreigners architects, but also Eastern and Shanghainese, because people who actually are living in this place are Chinese. Space appropriation and sentimental impact that they have with the housing environment, gave to the place a transcultural identity. One example that caracterize this notion of transculturality are the balconies. Unknown from Chinese people at the beginning of the last century, balconies had been add by foreigners when they created Thirsties Architecture in Shanghai. Nevertheless, even if in Western countries, these places are used as an extension of the house, where people could take a rest, create a little garden with plants, chairs and tables, Shanghainese doesn’t know how to appropriate balconies. In most of the case, they use this place 181
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as storage spaces. Thus, balconies became a place of transculturality. Built for one reason by Westerner, it was appropriate and recreate by inhabitants with their own culture and their spatial needs.
Transtemporal Architecture Futhermore, the addition of differents elements through the last 80 years created a mixed place. Between Eastern and Western, 1930’s and 2010’s. As Samuel Y. Liang said, these places should be considered as a disctinct space, not merely a traditional type in a linear historical process; it needs to be seen as something that embodied Shanghainese or Chinese modernity, one that full of complexities and hybridities and as such in sharp contrast to the modern, as marked by purist design and functionalist planning of the sort to be found in the former foreign concessions.
Thirties architecture identity Shanghai Nostalgia is transformed by years of marketing process. The collective image that people have in mind when they think about 1930’s is falsified and embelished to be used for purely commercial purposes. In fact, there is some legitimacy to say that Shanghai Nostalgia is conduct by a false image of the Thirties. Thus, people who actually are living in this kind of place could be divided into two categories of individuals. First, it concern the inhabitants who have this poetic link with their living environment, who care about the Building History and try to keep and restore this place as it was suppose to be. Then, there is a second category of individuals who just think to appropriate their spaces with their own personnality and individuality to bring their own past and history in the heritage place. The identity of Thirties Building is a mixed of choice, believes and behaviours, made by the residents. Shanghainese, Chinese and Foreigners create, what we can call, the Thirties Architecture identity.
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The future of Thirties Architecture In an era of remodelling and expansion of the megalopolis, the city makes efforts to keep a large scale of its architectural heritage. There are few examples of this protection : The Bund area; Xintiandi; some parks such as Fuxing; some villas typically Western inspirational in the former French Concession; or even some industrial places such as M50 transformed into an Art galley. All those places are actually preserve in the interest of protecting a typical Shanghainese Architecture, but also and especially to promote what was considered as the Golden age of Shanghai. However, some other places such as the Fuzhou Building, the Amyron Apartments, the Hanray Mansions, the Gascogne Apartments or the Kwok residence are still occupy and transform throughout the time by their residents. That in turn raises the question : what does the architectural heritage of Shanghai need to survive ? Should we left the Buildings to the hands of their inhabitants or should we renovate, restore and turn it into museums dedicate to the Past glory of the city ? Actually, this is a double issue. On one hand, heritage architecture is inheritance that a group of human wants to deliver to the next generations in the same state. Don’t betray or sabotage the space and it sense. On the other hand, heritage survival, its durability and transmission to next generations depend on its integration in today’s society. In this case, the best way to protect the heritage is to take up the site, give it a fonction, a role in the society ... in fact, to live in it. Modified, transformed, remodeled, metamorphosed along the time and the personnal history of the inhabitants.
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References ç›Žĺ˝•ĺŚ [ References ] 1. a complete or selective list of works compiled upon some common principle, as authorship, subject, place of publication, or printer. 2. a list of source materials that are used or consulted in the preparation of a work or that are referred to in the text.
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Websites 网站 Adrien, Les rues du Vieux Shanghai, 2010 http://bit.ly/1ytpb1T Creative Common, Le Corbusier, Date unknown, http://bit.ly/17KOYGY Kurtenbach Elaine, Rising Seas Threaten Shanghai, 2009, http://bit.ly/1yeOMsl Vial Stéphane, Habiter la terre, la maison, l’appartement.Une lecture de Heidegger et Bachelard, 2009, http://bit.ly/1CiUZ7p Larousse dictionnary, http://bit.ly/1IGNcSw Dr. Watson, Poetically Man Dwells, 2011, http://bit.ly/1ubr5mm Gustin Nicolas, From urban village to density, 2014, http://bit.ly/1za9qwC Les abattoirs, L’habitat vu par l’art contemporain, 2009, http://bit.ly/1AOS7z6 Cassaigne Bertrand, Habiter, 2006, http://bit.ly/1u6hxsG French National Broadcasting Institute, La maison de Monsieur Jiang, 2009 http://bit.ly/1sx618L Tong Scott, Chinese soap highlights housing issue, 2010, http://bit.ly/1501hhd Merriam-Webster dictionnary, http://bit.ly/1wdmPgb 187
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Tay Sue-Anne, The history of a Shanghai Villa, 2012, http://bit.ly/17GBfRu Voyage-chine, Brève histoire de Shanghai, date unknown, http://bit.ly/1IC4jXN Feng Sue, Hit TV Series Strikes Chord with China’s “House Slaves”, 2009 http://on.wsj.com/17KMdFN Horn Olivier, Reigel Anne, Shanghai, les années folles, date unknown; http://bit.ly/1DQv4HO Prasso Sheridan, China’s new cultural revolution, 2007 http://for.tn/157NDZq Cutlural China, World celebrities in Shanghai, date unknown, http://bit.ly/1AvLXkI Shanghaihighlights, date unknown, http://bit.ly/1yynNK3 Horn Olivier, Reigel Anne, Shanghai, les années folles, date unknown, http://bit.ly/1DQv4HO Prasso Sheridan, China’s new cultural revolution, 2007 http://for.tn/157NDZq Marketing chine, Shanghai Tang : la première marque chinoise de luxe, 2013 http://bit.ly/17XeyJ2 Chatellier Anaïs, Le quotidien de détenus dépeint sur les murs,Sept. 2014, http://bit.ly/1ymY99m Desné Julie, 85% des Chinois ne peuvent pas s’acheter de logement, Lefigaro, 2010, http://bit.ly/1G14OwA Tabou Céline, Shanghai, le New-York Chinois, 2009 http://bit.ly/15nsric Unknown writter, Les propriétaires chinois bientôt taxés, 2014, http://bit.ly/1u9kiUL Screamscape, Shanghai Disneyland, date unknown http://bit.ly/1ywvuyC 188
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Dorothée, Shanghai Tang, la 1ère marque « Made in China» qui se démarque, 2013, http://bit.ly/1EdiC2n The freedictionnary, http://bit.ly/1y1Cl40 Werriam-Webster Britain encyclopedia, http://bit.ly/1y1CqF4 BuildingSphere, être propriétaire à Shanghai, 2011 http://bit.ly/1G15nGx
02
Books & essays 书
Mumford Lewis, Yesterday’s City of Tomorrow, 1979 Gandelsonas Mario, Shanghai reflections. Architecture, urbanism, and the Search for an Alternative Modernity, China 2002, p.22 Green B., Johnston T., Lear R., Robertson C., Snoodijk J., Patterns of the Past: six more Shanghai walks, Hong Kong 2008 National Geographic, Shanghai, France 2011, p.67 Warr Anne, Shanghai Architecture, China, 2007 Gravari-Barbas Maria, Habiter le patrimoine. Enjeux, approches, vécu (Live the Heritage, Issue, Approach, Experiences), France 2005 Degen Ronald, Opportunity for luxury brands in China, International School of Management, Paris, 2009 Baduel Pierre Robert, Habiter le patrimoine / Living heritage, Angers - France 2003 189
09 - References - 目录学
Shanghai Tang, Commercial booklet collection Autumn / Winter, 2014 Maury Hèlene, Hors-les-Murs exhibition in Gourdon, France 2013 Le Scouarnec René-Pierre, Habiter, Demeurer, Appartenir, France 2007, pages. 79 à 114 Ren Xueifei, Forward to the Past : Historical Preservation in globalizing Shanghai, Department of Sociology University of Chicago, 2006 Vazquez Howard, Les dynamiques urbaines de Shanghai : trois artères péricentrales en mutation, 2010 Lamaison Pierre, interview with Claude Lévi-Strauss, La notion de maison, France 1987, first paragraph. Shu-Mei Shih, The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917-1937, 2001, p.9 Dai Jinhua and Judy T. H. Chen, Imagined Nostalgia, Duke University Press, 1997, p.5 Heine Klaus, Phan Michel, A Case Study of Shanghai Tang: How to Build a Chinese Luxury Brand, Asia Marketing Journal 2013 Bracken Gregory, The Shanghai Alleyway House: A Threatened Typology, 2013 Sanjuan Thierry, Pékin, Shanghai, Hong-Kong, trois destins de villes dans l’espace chinois, , 2001, p. 153-179 Dai Jinhua and Judy T. H. Chen, Imagined Nostalgia, Duke University Press, 1997 Lu Hanchao, Nostalgia for the Future: The Resurgence of an Alienated Culture in China, University of British Columbia, 2002, p.3 Dai Jinhua and Judy T. H. Chen, Imagined Nostalgia, Duke University Press, 1997, p.5 Heine Klaus, Phan Michel, A Case Study of Shanghai Tang: How to Build a Chinese Luxury Brand, Asia Marketing Journal 2013 Leo Ou-fan Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945, Harvard University 1999 190
目录学- References - 09
Field Andrew, Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919-1954, 2011 Londres Albert, La Chine en Folie, France 1932
03
Movies 影视 Lust Caution, Ang Lee, 2007 White Countess, Kazuo Ishiguru, 2005 Last Standing House, Gan Chao, 2007 Dwelling Narrowness, Teng Hua-Tao, 2009 Horn Olivier, Reigel Anne, Shanghai, les années folles, date unknown,
04
Maps 影视
Regional Development of Shanghai, 1945 191
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05
Photographies 照片 All photographs and other images used on this essay come from personnal data, except for the following photographs : p.20 Bund by night, A certain slant of Light, 10 may 2010 http://bit.ly/1C8jFkY HSBC building p.26 http://bit.ly/183d3Jx p.26 Shikumen Lilong, ShanghaiStreetStories blog, http://bit.ly/1Gv7hzw Astor House, p.26 http://bit.ly/1woNuXC p.27 Former Slaughterhouse 1933, http://bit.ly/1BF4twT p.57 Dom-ino installation, Office de tourisme internationale «pays de Gourdon», http://bit.ly/1zvIKXq
p.127-129
Lust, Caution : photo Ang Lee, http://bit.ly/182nNYn
Shanghai triad - Gong Li, http://bit.ly/1Jc7Vhj p.130-132 The White Countess, http://bit.ly/1CgsWHt p.133-135 p.144
Shanghai road, Shanghai Archives, http://bit.ly/1xydh15
The Metropole Hotel and the Fuzhou Building under p.146-149 construction, 1932, British Steel Project Archive, http://bit.ly/1yHHdfB
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10
Acknowledgement 称谢 [ Acknowledgement ] The acknowledgments section of a dissertation or research report allows the author to recognize and thank those who helped contribute to the finished product.
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Above all, I would like to express my thanks to all those people who helped and supported me during my research : John, Mr. Han, Han Jianar, Ni Xu, Hao, Peter, Lucy, Mathieu and all the people interviewed in the street. I would also like to thank Mr. Cao Mengqin and his wife for their assistance and guidance at the first step of my researches. Their great understanding of heritage architecture in Shanghai and their own story in 30’s Architecture helped me to be more confortable with the different themes of this subject. I would express my gratitude to Art Deco Community for their famous Art Deco weekend, walks and conferences in which I found many ways to improve this essay. I would like to extend my gratitude to Karolina Pawlik who supervised my work. Her constructive criticism and her advice were invaluable help to develop this essay. Thanks to Jeremy Cheval, Mathieu Bernard, Aude Hazard and all the China Studio. I’m very grateful to Adèle Poirier and Ombline de Villèle. These two friends and co-workers provided with humor some pertinent comments on the.global essay. Special thanks to Tyfaine for your spontaneity and your self-control. Peace Peace ! Last, but not least, I thank Michael Jackson & Le P. Remix for the song History without which I wouldn’t have been able to finish this essay in time.
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