Shanghai’s Willow Court Apartments

An article popped up in the Shanghai Daily, a government run and controlled English language newspaper here. The paper is a rather awful publication that parrots the government line and seems to support itself with adverts for (ahhemm) ‘massage services’.  I generally ignore it. Anyway, it rarely talks about architecture or preservation for obvious reasons – tricky subjects with the Communist censor on your shoulder, and aren’t property prices and some new ugly high rise development called Vienna Black Forest Wealth Mansions or something equally bizarre so much more interesting? Still, the article contains some useful detail on the building’s history and origins and rather a lot of quite odd wistful extemporising on the theme a la the sort of articles that oddly pop up in Chinese airline in-flight magazines on lao Shanghai for some reason.

The article indicates that Shanghai will be holding a series of events this year on its art-deco heritage (no details though and presumably heavily stage managed as per usual), perhaps some in conjunction with Miami Beach, Florida, obviously another art-deco city, have been suggested. Of course, what the official newspaper fails to note, is that Shanghai has destroyed more precious and architecturally important art-deco buildings than anywhere else in the last 25 years and continues to destroy and bulldoze art deco at a furious rate. Not a subject considered suitable for public consumption and discussion that it would seem!!