Photography by Shou Yousen
Shanghai has played a very important role in the process of China's modern modernization, and is regarded by many scholars at home and abroad as a window for the study of modern China. The inclusiveness of history has accumulated a kaleidoscope of cities with changing world art genres, and has also shaped a unique Haipai architectural culture - tolerance and haina.
As one of the outstanding historical buildings in Shanghai, Jing'an Hotel is also a projection of diversified architectural features, adding a unique memory of the place. Although its external design does not have much decoration, it defines the architectural space through the interaction between structure and materials, just like simple poetry, giving the material a rustic personality and natural tension, thus presenting a pleasant scale, further meeting the needs of residents to enjoy the relaxation and high-quality service of the Mediterranean in the East. Its predecessor, hagrid apartments, is a Spanish-style multi-storey apartment designed by the American architect Hashard, although the building materials and decoration do not use the tall Roman columns or heavy granite veneers in the classicism of the Bund modern building complex, but let people feel a kind of "Art Nouveau" wave of decorativeism under the wave of simple geometric decoration. Comparisons of the designer's later works (the pillow stream apartment built in 1930) show the techniques that run through it, such as the simple floor and symmetrical structure, and the arched design of the probing entrance porch.
It can be said that the Jing'an Hotel is one of the representative works of Khashad's early design from eclecticism to decorative arts under the influence of the Art Nouveau movement, and it is also his early exploration and experimental work of decorativeism.
The history and style of Jing'an Hotel
Located at No. 370 Huashan Road, Haiyuan Residential Area, Jing'an Temple Street, Jing'an Hotel is a Western-style building with an elegant and strong Spanish style, and was included in the list of the second batch of outstanding historical buildings in Shanghai in 1994. The building was designed by Hashard and built from 1925 to 1934, the overall shape of the building has eclectic and Art Deco style colors, after nearly a hundred years of historical changes and precipitation, has become a unique memory in the hearts of many people.
Jing'an Hotel, formerly known as "Hagrid Apartment", has a reinforced concrete structure, simple tile slope eaves, and cement mortar rough walls. There are four balconies in the middle of the symmetrical façade and at both ends, the entrance is equipped with a stone arch ticket porch, and the large staircase inside the door rises to the 2nd floor foyer. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, when the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Lands opened the land property rights registration, the British expatriate Duner applied for property rights registration on behalf of Haig Building Co., Ltd., but the "joint-stock limited company" was only a name used for application, in fact, several senior staff of the British merchant HSBC Bank initiated and jointly purchased land and built a house by the British and American overseas Chinese in Shanghai and other people for self-occupation: for example, Room 82 of the apartment and workshop No. 39 belonged to the British Chamber of Commerce and Foreign Firm, and Room 81 was used by the American Shanghai Telephone Company. Number 12 is attributed to the British expatriate Robinson and so on. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, this building was transformed into the office building of the East China Bureau of the Communist Party of China, and later became the office building of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China. According to the dictation of the staff interviewed by the author, Chen Yi also worked in this building. In December 1977, in order to meet the needs of the development of tourism, the building was transformed into a hotel, renamed Jing'an Hotel, in 1992 two floors were added, a total of 9 floors, with 104 sets of guest rooms, including a set of first-class suites, 7 sets of double suites, 96 sets of single rooms, 8 floors and 9 floors of restaurants, the overall construction area of 4932 square meters.
The lighting fixtures of Jing'an Hotel have a history of nearly 50 years. In the author's interview, a hotel staff member who has worked here for more than 30 years introduced: "These lamps and lanterns are specially purchased from Spain during the decoration inspection, at that time, a lamp was more than 200,000 yuan, and the cost of the whole building was also very large, but it was really beautiful, and many customers who came here to drink coffee would ask about this lamp." Marble lamp using Spanish marble whole piece for cutting and polishing, its unique cloud pattern, color quality innocence, natural texture, is the rock lava after the volcanic eruption after tens of thousands of years of solidification formed solid, with the characteristics of "just in the soft, hard in the soft" characteristics, refracted out of the light soft and quiet, warm with elegance and simplicity, projecting the unique atmosphere of time flow and years of precipitation, setting off the unique historical memory of Jing'an Hotel.
For more than 50 years, Jing An Hotel has won wide praise from all walks of life for its excellent service, exquisite cuisine and beautiful environment. The hotel's specialty "crystal shrimp" has a high reputation in the society, and the reputation of "eating in Jingbin" has also been passed on by word of mouth and recognized by customers at home and abroad. So far, the hotel has received many heads of state, heads of government and dignitaries, including former US President Richard Nixon, The Queen of England's sister Princess Margaret, and Prince Norodom Sihanouk of the Kingdom of Cambodia. In addition, many customers and Jing'an Hotel have more than ten years of deep feelings, even if they go to other places, every year to Shanghai will also choose to stay here, the staff of the bar bar introduced, he has worked here for decades, some old customers he still recognizes, this is probably rooted in the memory of this generation of Shanghai open and inclusive character bar. With the passage of time, innovation has made Shanghai burst with vitality, and the precipitation and memory of history have made the city more charming and timeless.
Arched portico at the entrance
The projection of the combination of artistic genres: from eclecticism to modern decorativeism
Rashad & Co. is an influential architectural firm in Shanghai in the late 1920s and early 1930s, founded by Americans Halshad and Phillips in Shanghai. The architectural style was mostly eclectic in the early days, and mostly with an Art Deco style in the later period. The Jing'an Hotel is one of its turning points from eclecticism to decorative exploration.
Although the overall impression of the building is the romantic Spanish impression of the red roof and white wall, the details can see the neoclassical preference for ancient Greek and Roman columns, but unlike the shanghai HSBC Bank and others that use the three-storey Ionic giant column, the design of the Jing'an Hotel has made the previous tall Collins column into a small decorative column decoration on the rounded geometric modeling window. The round arched stepped portico of the entrance is decorated with a golden square pattern of the passage with a sense of futuristic symbolism, with a symbolist tendency in the decorative style, belonging to the visual color of symbolism. Its garden design, from the perspective of the overall axisymmetric environmental space design in the historical satellite map and basemap in 1948, is to integrate the architecture and landscape space to form an Art Nouveau style, which is a rebellion against the symmetry and romanticism of the Western classical garden, opposing rigid classicism, focusing on the concept of art, life and nature, taking the building as the background in the landscape, promoting naturalistic characteristics, imitating landscape paintings, and a large area of lawn design around it. To add the relaxed life atmosphere of Jing'an Hotel to the nature and openness of English pastoralism.
Eclecticism is the theme of The Early Design Style of Hashard Foreign Firm, in the turning exploration, from the Jing'an Hotel, we can see the architectural exploration under the influence of the fusion of various artistic styles, and the combination of neat facades and rounded semi-terraces and three-sided vertical windows presents a sense of rhythm and order in the decorative style, abstracting the functional structure of the window into a sense of order and geometry of architectural shapes. In 1929, the Sassoon Building, designed by Republic & Company, was completed, which pushed Shanghai into the era of Art Deco architecture in an all-round way, almost exactly in sync with the era of Art Deco architecture in New York. Because the Art Deco architectural skills meet the needs of modern life and have a wealth of decoration, they are widely favored. As the mainstream of new architecture in modern Shanghai from the 1920s to the 1930s, Art Deco architecture constitutes an important feature of Shanghai, while the Jing'an Hotel, which integrates multiple art schools with Spanish characteristics, has become a very unique historical existence as a residential building.
Specially purchased from Spain, the marble lamp is cut and polished from the whole piece of Spanish marble, and the refracted light is soft and quiet, warm with elegance and simplicity.
"Art Nouveau", the first international modern art movement and modern architectural movement in Europe, was an overall artistic trend, while trying to create a new decorative style, a rebellion against the imitation of historical forms of academic neoclassical art in the 19th century. Art Nouveau, an important process of intellectual and stylistic emancipation of modern architecture, originated in 1893 and lasted roughly into 1915, and was soon replaced by the later Art Deco genre. Art Nouveau differed from any past architectural form-based trend of art and design, but drew inspiration from nature. In academician Zheng Shiling's book "Architecture and Art", the different national factions of the European Art Nouveau movement are summarized, known as "Art Nouveau" in France and Belgium, "Youth Style" in Germany and Scandinavia, "Arts and Crafts Movement" in Britain and North America, "Vienna Secession" in Austria, "Liberal" in Italy (also known as Flower Leaf Style), Spain called "Modernism", etc., and the British also called Art Nouveau modern style. Art Nouveau marked a new phase of change in architectural forms that quickly spread across Europe and, with the architects, took on a much larger scale. The British art historian Larre Venka Massini pointed out in his History of the Development of New Art in the West:
"The only feature that distinguishes Art Nouveau from other contemporary styles is the free application of decorative elements in works of art, where in the traditional styles of painting, architecture and applied art, formal, expressive and emotional factors always control the decorative elements, when Art Nouveau tried to free the pure visual requirements from mental inhibition."
The typical figure of the "Art Nouveau" was the Brussels-based architect Victor Horta (1861-1947), who combined the curved decoration of Art Nouveau with cast iron structures to create architecture with dynamic forms and free spaces. Curved cast iron decoration has also become a symbol of an Art Nouveau movement, and some cast iron decoration can also be seen in the exterior decoration and interior decoration of Jing'an Hotel, which is morphologically compatible with the simplicity of nature and curves in Art Nouveau and modernist styles. According to the author's interview with the staff of Jing'an Hotel, after jing'an hotel was taken over by Jin Jiang Group in the 1970s, the supervisor insisted on the Spanish style tone used in the overall design of the hotel building, and continued and redesigned it in the interior decoration design, and led the designer team to go to Spain from Shanghai to collect wind and research, and purchased many materials including colored windows, wood carvings, oil paintings, lamps and lanterns. The cast iron components can vaguely capture the elemental characteristics of art nouveau influences that are biased towards natural shapes, although there is no complex natural curve in the interior of the Tasel mansion, but there is also an impression of the era of 20th century artistic aesthetics, so that the overall architecture gives people a harmonious sense of history.
Stained glass decoration inside The Jing An Hotel
The interior design of Jing An Hotel may have been influenced by the Wave of Art Nouveau in Barcelona in terms of element preservation and design. Barcelona was the most active center of Spanish architecture in the 20th century and the center of the Spanish Art Nouveau movement, with the architects Antoni Gaudí (1856–1926) and Domenic Montaner (1850–1923) leading the modern architectural movement in Spain, blending naturalism, classicism, Art Nouveau and Gothic functionalism. Gaudí's work is an abstraction of medieval architectural forms and an expression of the Catalan regional style, combining ceramic art, stained glass, wrought iron and wood in architecture, advancing the phenomenon of pan-European "national romanticism". With this wave, many local artists and makers have also joined in, nourishing the overall construction industry, which has also indirectly influenced the design of Jing'an Hotel, and details such as stained glass, cast iron components, and wood carvings are also reflected in Jing'an Hotel. The bar's glass windows, porch, reception, stairwell, stained glass decorated with wood-colored interior decoration, adding more agility and glittering colors, some of which have begun to fade with time, but can't help but let people imagine her different style in the long river of history along the trajectory of time. Although the overall composition is slightly simplified against the works of the masters, the influence of the Art Deco school of the mid-20th century can still be felt. The decorative graphics in the building gradually take on a geometric character, but the decorative stained glass windows are still natural themes, and the dappled sunlight projected through the colored windows is full of a romantic atmosphere from Spain, which adds a little lively color to the sense of history.
Related links: Hashad's other architectural works in Shanghai
The Golden Gate Hotel (built in 1925) is an early work by Harshard, with its façade treatment and roof tower on the bottom two floors in a retro style, but the overall simplicity. The façade of the adjacent Xiqiao YMCA Building (built in 1933) is almost identical to that of the Golden Gate Hotel, but the walls are made of brown bricks of varying shades to form its most prominent feature. The Shanghai Electric Power Company Building (built in 1929) and the China Enterprise Bank Building (built in 1931) completely got rid of the retro style, without any classical decoration, but pursued a fine line effect, using Art Deco style pattern decoration. Pillow Stream Apartment (built in 1930) is another multi-storey apartment designed by Hashard with Spanish style and eclectic style, located at No. 691-731 Huashan Road, Jing'an District, Shanghai, which was selected as one of the representative works of Rashad in 1994. Since there are fewer documents in Jing'an Hotel, the comparative analysis of pillow stream apartments and Jing'an hotels can be seen in the similarities in design techniques, as well as the use of more space and decorative style in the pillow stream apartments designed after Jing'an Hotel, so it can be inferred that Jing'an Hotel is its early exploration in the direction of decorativeism. The new building of Yong'an Company, completed in 1933, is contrary to the design style of Hashard Foreign Firm in the past and appears on Nanjing Road with the appearance of a completely modern skyscraper. The 19-storey building with steel frame structure has lost any detail decoration, and the only expression of the building here is the towering feeling formed by vertical lines and layers of contracted shapes, showing a strong modernist style.
The artistic wave of the times was projected on the stylistic changes of an architect in China, from neoclassicism to eclecticism to decorationism to modernism. This is also what Professor Wu Jiang mentioned in the "History of Shanghai's Century of Architecture", "After entering the 1920s, Shanghai's architecture entered a new period of unprecedented prosperity with the rapid development of society and economy. Shanghai's status as the largest modern city in the Far East was determined, and a large number of landmark buildings representing the characteristics of Shanghai's urban appearance were built, and Shanghai's modern urban style was finally formed during this period."
Author: Zhou Youmei (Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Landscape, Tongji University, Ph.D. in Landscape, University of Sheffield, UK)
Editor: Zhou Minxian
Editor-in-Charge: Li Ting
The pictures are photographed by the author, except for the annotations
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.