The Hudec Memorial Hall – 1 (exterior)

Later this year the Shanghai architect Laszlo Hudec’s old house on Panyu Road (formerly Columbia Road) will open to the public as the Hudec Memorial Hall. This is great news and there’s more details here. So I don’t know what’s in the house now or what will be exhibited. Hudec was obviously important – over 100, mostly excellent, buildings in Shanghai including the Park Hotel and a few that have been torn down too (35 are gone now out of the total 100). Apparently the Hungarians are responsible for this restoration – good on them. Anyway, as I can’t see inside yet I thought I’d repost some photos taken in 2010 when (with Duncan Hewitt and Bill Savadove) I spent a brisk spring morning crawling over the building which at the time was in a desperate state of repair and looked like it might go. A migrant worker family were (sort of) looking after it but it was a bit knackered. Amazingly it’s been saved though the once lovely gardens (see first picture below) have gone to some 1950s blocks and a particularly ugly concrete block of a hotel slap bang in front of it. So, anyway, what the house and gardens once looked like and then a bunch of photos from 2010 and back with more in June hopefully when we get a look inside.

I’ll post the outside today and the old inside tomorrow…there’ll also be more photos on my tumblr overspill site at http://chinarhyming.tumblr.com/