Shanghai’s Hudec Architrecture

Thanks to Sue Anne Tay of the great Shanghai Street Stories blog for alerting me to this new book and selflessly couriering a copy in person over to London for me! Now Hudec has been covered before on China Rhyming – back in 2010 I spent a day walking around his old, and at that time deserted house on Columbia Road (Panyu Road) in the old Western External Roads district of Shanghai. At that time it was empty, in a bit of state and being lived in by a migrant family who were paid to keep it barely functional. We took a lot of pictures. Fortunately (and against the odds in bulldozer driven Shanghai) the house survived to become The Hudec Memorial Hall and is now open to the public I believe.

Laszlo Hudec himself was responsible for some great Shanghai buildings of the 1930s – the Park Hotel, Grand Theatre, Moore Memorial Church and DV’s Woo’s Residence. Now Hua Xiaohong and Michelle Qiao have produced a charming little book – Shanghai Hudec Architecture – produced by the Tonji University Press. It has a lot of details, architectural plans and photos of all Hudec’s buildings and is well worth the cover price of RMB56 (or just RMB33.60 on Amazon.cn). How you get the book outside China I do not know. Sue Anne Tay has a longer article on the book worth reading here.