Author: Zhao

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One night fifteen years ago, I flew to Mexico City. Overlooking the earth from the window, I saw an ocean of lights on the ground, undulating and endless, as if concentrating the lights of the world. I have never seen so many lights. I can't imagine such a big city on earth. At that time, I also flew to Shanghai at night, overlooking the night scene of Shanghai in the air, and saw a completely different scene. I can't see the outline of the building without bright lights. On the dark ground, there are sparse and dim lights flashing. It is also a big city with a population of tens of millions, and the disparity between the two cities is so great. By contrast, I'm a little depressed. As a China native and Shanghainese, in terms of the scale and prosperity of the city, compared with overseas international metropolises, it is really hard for me to feel proud. However, my memory screen will never be blank. I think of countless beautiful buildings in Shanghai. I know that as a city with a history of nearly a thousand years and a prosperous dream of nearly a hundred years, the richness and diversity of Shanghai's architecture can eclipse any city in the world. However, at that time, such an idea was close to the self-comfort of "Ah Q".

This is of course an old saying. Shanghai today is not the same as Shanghai fifteen years ago. In these fifteen years, probably no city in the world has undergone such great changes as Shanghai. The most striking thing in this change is the architecture of the city. New high-rise buildings have mushroomed in every corner of our city, occupying the ground and sky in various shapes and postures, and changing the outline of the Shanghai horizon. A few days ago, I flew back to Shanghai by night flight from Hainan Island, overlooking Shanghai under the cover of night in the air. I saw the light as boundless as the sea, spreading all the way to the end of the day in my field of vision. In the ocean of lights, you can clearly see the roads and buildings outlined by lights. The roads are similar, all shining straight lines, but the buildings are different. They are different in height and twists and turns, such as towers, dangerous rocks, behemoths, exquisite cups, plates and bottles, and hazy jungle mountains, flashing magical light under the sky. This is the light of a modern international metropolis, which illuminates the vast night sky and reflects the wisdom and prosperity of mankind. Naturally, I remembered a scene I saw in America fifteen years ago. Compared with the overseas wonders that surprised me fifteen years ago, the sea of lights in front of me is broader, more brilliant and more dazzling. And I know very well that the sea of lights I saw on the plane is only the suburbs of Shanghai! How unpredictable and dazzling is the sea of lights under the night sky in the bustling urban area?

All people who come to Shanghai are amazed at the great changes in Shanghai and the rapid development of Shanghai's urban construction. New buildings are driving, covering, squeezing and changing old buildings at an unprecedented speed. This is the pace of the times.

Yes, architecture is the footprint of history. The architecture of different times embodies the economy, culture, art and customs of different times. It can be said that architecture is the crystallization and symbol of wisdom, interest, wealth and aesthetic taste of an era. If the city is compared to a person, then the building is the clothes on this person. From a person's clothes, we can see a person's character and his emotional taste, and from the architecture of a city, we can also see the city's character and his experience. Known as the "World Architecture Expo", old Shanghai can find all the architectural styles in the world. Just look at the Bund. Every building here has a different style, including ancient Greek and Roman architecture, Baroque and Gothic architecture, European Renaissance architecture, Jewish and Japanese architecture. For example, HSBC, built in 1923, is a mixture of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. Its huge colonnade and towering dome are like the Pantheon in ancient Rome. The British who built this building boasted that it was "the most exquisite building in the Far East from Suez Canal to Bering Strait". This is probably not an exaggerated evaluation. I used to go to the Bund when I was a child. Standing in front of this huge building with a huge dome, I feel flustered and mysterious. Such a building is a gorgeous flower where rocks yield to human imagination and creativity, and human wisdom and dexterity make granite bloom forever. At that time, there were two beautifully carved bronze lions at the entrance of the building. I once rode on the back of a bronze lion, looked up at the column above my head and fell into an absurd fantasy. I see countless characters in ancient Greek mythology. ...

I have a photo album given to me by photographer Er Dongqiang: One Last Look. This is a very durable picture book. Photographers use their own lenses to shoot the old houses with exquisite architecture and different styles in old Shanghai one by one, from the exterior to the interior, from the distant panorama to the close-up part, from the courtyard walls, roofs, porches, windows and stairs with completely different colors and shapes to the embossed flowers on the colonnade and windows ... When reading this picture book, people feel really dazzling and beautiful. These old houses, like thousands of people in Qian Qian, have the same face, and there is no repetition or similarity. Facing these old houses built more than half a century ago, you have to admire the rich imagination and exquisite craftsmanship of our ancestors. Looking at these old houses, you have to admit that the city with these buildings is a tasteful city that advocates art and individuality. It is a magnanimous city with a broad mind, and it is a city that combines noble with ordinary, grand with subtle. I'm surprised that I've seen some houses, but I don't see them. I hardly recognize this old house that I see in the picture book every day. They are so fresh and unique. For example, in Shannan Village at the south intersection of Fuxing Road in Shaanxi Province, for many years, I have to pass its fence almost every three days. I once visited Huang Shang, an old writer who lives in Shannan Village, and I once set foot in one of the buildings. At that time, I only felt that the environment was elegant and the house was beautifully built, and I did not leave a special impression afterwards. When I saw it for the last time, I suddenly found that they were such a wonderful group of buildings. This is a bird's eye view. Er Dongqiang chose an aerial perspective that I had never seen before. In the shade, this group of buildings are arranged in irregular positions, avoiding uniformity and repetition. In the shade, there are red roofs with complicated geometric figures, red and yellow walls with smooth lines, and chimneys with unique shapes and symmetrical undulations ... Some houses, which I saw for the first time in this album, are silently located in many inconspicuous corners of our city and never show off. Some of these old houses have become workshops of factories, and some have already lived in ordinary residents. Colorful clothes are drying on the beautiful windowsill. They surprised me that there are so many beautiful buildings hidden in Shanghai.

Of course, not all the old houses in Shanghai are so exquisite. Like the polarization between the rich and the poor in society at that time, the old houses in Shanghai were also polarized. The old house in Er Dongqiang's lens is a pole, but it occupies a small part of the pole. In the architecture of old Shanghai, they stand out from the crowd. In the overwhelming group of "chickens", "cranes" are a minority. In this crowded big city with houses like ants' nests, there are more simple and practical houses, which are the pole of most people. Among this great pole, the most famous one is Shikumen building, which was created by Shanghainese and is a typical modern building combining Chinese and western. Shikumen buildings have different appearances, colors and shapes. The walls are blue bricks and red bricks, and they are also painted with cement mortar. Their appearance absorbs the characteristics of many western-style buildings. However, when you open the front door and walk in, from the patio to the central hall, and then to the wings and kitchen shelters on both sides, you will feel that you have entered the old-fashioned Jiangnan folk houses. If you walk up the narrow wooden stairs in the dark, pass the exquisite pavilions, enter the spacious front building, or fold into the deep wing, the white tiles in the simple bathroom will shine like a ray of sunshine in a dark cloud ... At this time, you will feel a bit like a western-style "house". However, compared with western-style "houses", Shikumen buildings are full of narrow alleys, dark and steep stairs. Pushing open the window of the room, it seems that you can touch the door wall of the opposite home. The breathing in the neighborhood is clearly audible and there is no privacy at all. There is another big difference. There are always a few trees around the western-style "house", and the buildings are covered by shade, while there is little shade in Shikumen Hutong, and the space here has been filled with bricks and wood. Shikumen building is built for cash-strapped citizens. Designing such a house is like Bacon said: "The house is for living, not for people to see, so we must give priority to the use value of the house, and then consider the style of the house." This is the architectural concept of the poor. But who can say that the architect who designed Shikumen house didn't rack his brains on the style of the house? Although the Shikumen house is simple, the designer has made great efforts in aesthetics. In Shikumen house, the decorations on archways, lintels, eaves and windowsills are rarely repeated. Some brick carvings on the gatehouse look like exquisite works of art today. And these decorations are obviously not for living, but for people to watch and enjoy. For example, Bugaoli on South Shaanxi Road is a typical Shikumen residence. At the entrance of Bulgari, there is a tall archway sitting east to west. This China archway is grand and quaint, just like the gatehouses of palaces and temples. In the French Concession full of foreign buildings, this archway is a dazzling landscape, which is still eye-catching today. A friend who lives in Bulgari said that when Prince Sihanouk took refuge in China in the 1970s, he was attracted by the terraced buildings on the roadside when he drove through South Shaanxi Road. He thought it was a temple left over from the old times, so he got off the bus and walked into the terraced building, only to find that it was the residence of ordinary people. Such a unique residence must have left an impression on his memory. A few days ago, I went to see a "new world" transformed by Shikumen. In the city center not far from Huaihai Road, it used to be a residential hutong, but now it still retains the outer wall of Shikumen, but it is unrecognizable and magnificent like a five-star hotel. The atmosphere that Shikumen should have is gone. According to investors' imagination, it will become a hotel, shopping mall, restaurant, bar and a tourist attraction. When I walked out of the already superficial "Shikumen", I had some doubts in my heart: Will tourists visiting the footprints of old Shanghai be interested in such a place? Since it is a "Shikumen", it is necessary to retain the original flavor of life in the door wall, the narrowness and narrowness that Shanghainese once had, and the unique vulgarity of fireworks.

Er Dongqiang used "Last Glance" as the name of his album, and its significance is self-evident. With the large-scale transformation of the old city and the construction of the new district, the old houses in Shanghai are disappearing. Some houses in the picture book have become the foundation of elevated roads and new high-rise buildings. This is both exciting and regrettable. However, it is impossible for a city's architecture to change its old appearance overnight. In terms of urban architecture, Shanghai can't completely preserve the original appearance of the old city like Paris and St. Petersburg. Shanghai can only be a city where old and new alternate, old and new alternate, and old and new coexist. In Er Dongqiang's photos taken for the Bund, behind the undulating old houses, tall new buildings have sprung up, which is a kind of disharmony from an aesthetic point of view. But what can we do? Of course, photographers can't change this reality.

The style of the times determines the architectural style. The prosperous Tang Dynasty left an immortal Chang 'an City, while the splendid imperial city Beijing was a symbol of the prosperity of the Ming Dynasty. The World Expo-style old Shanghai architecture is a commemoration of the colonial era. In the middle and late 20th century, from 1950s to 1970s, many buildings were built in Shanghai. These buildings have improved the living conditions of many Shanghainese who used to live in shanty towns and reflected the progress of society. From now on, most of these buildings are "for living, not for people to see". The shape of the house, almost nothing special, is a box of matchboxes, gray concrete walls and the same face. At that time, many new villages were built, and dozens of identical buildings were arranged neatly, like boring barracks. They are not even as good as the old Shikumen houses. It was an era when there were few achievements in architectural aesthetics, and roughness, simplicity and practicality replaced everything. I have the most ready-made example around me Shaoxing Road, where I used to live, used to be Moliere Road in the French Concession. In the middle of the road, there is a five-story Western-style apartment built in 1930s, which is simple and smooth in appearance, with alternating windows and streamlined balconies in Fiona Fang. There is a two-acre garden in front of the building, with tall cedars and exquisite flower beds. This garden apartment used to be the most beautiful building on this road. In the early 1970s, people cut down the big trees in the garden and built two simple six-story houses in the garden. As a result, the former garden apartment no longer exists, and the two gray cement buildings that suppressed the shade and blocked the sun became the symbols of that era. Their roughness and monotony are in stark contrast to the apartments that are blocked behind the sun. Because there was such an era that people did not pay attention to architectural aesthetics, people's aesthetic consciousness of architecture was almost numb. It doesn't matter whether the house is beautiful or not, as long as it is practical, as long as it can decorate a comfortable living space inside the house. For a family, this may be very affordable and harmless. However, for a city, this may be a disaster. This disaster is: the city has become without personality, style and aesthetic feeling. The personality, style and aesthetic feeling of a city are interwoven by buildings. In the sixties and seventies, I have been to many cities, and I feel that all cities are similar. Why? Because almost all the new buildings in these cities are based on the same model.

More than ten years ago, I chatted with an architect in Shanghai, and the architect told me that his design rarely came true. He said, "There are really too few opportunities. No matter how good my design is, if I can't put it into practice, everything is equal to zero! " I can hardly forget the gloomy and helpless expression on his face when he said this. Today, history finally gives architects in China a chance to show their talents. At this moment, you can see their works when you open any window in Shanghai. In recent years, the newly-built high-rise buildings are dazzling and colorful. Listening to the radio the other day, I heard a news about architecture: from the late 1980s to now, more than 8,000 high-rise buildings with more than 20 floors have been built in Shanghai! This is an amazing number and may have set a new world record. These new high-rise buildings make Shanghai people proud. Gone are the days when Shanghai was stagnant in architecture. Because this change has come too fast, as fast as the tide in Qiantang River, I'm afraid most Shanghainese can't tell the story of these new buildings. People just want to know when so many tall buildings were built.

Some people say that it is the age of architecture, which is not nonsense. Shanghai, which appeared in front of the world with the attitude of economic take-off, of course, her new building is no longer just "just for living, not for people to watch". Careful observers will find that these new high-rise buildings look like one after another, and each new building tries to look different and show its unique personality, just like a young girl walking down the street. Everyone wears different clothes, including many strange clothes. Their shapes are long, square, round, prismatic, triangular and irregular polygons. They even imitated the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, making the building a hollow frame building ... The building materials of these high-rise buildings are also rich and varied, except reinforced concrete, glass, stainless steel, granite, glazed tiles and even gold-plated roofs.

These various new buildings are indeed signs and symbols of economic take-off, and also show the imagination and creativity of modern people. However, in all fairness, while I am proud of the number and construction speed of these new buildings, it is hard for me to be intoxicated with their aesthetic achievements. How many duplicate works are there in these 8,000 tall buildings? How many mediocre works are there? How many ugly works are there? Too many to count. From the air, many tall buildings are similar to rectangular concrete columns, and those square buildings with glass walls are simply imitations of American architect Ludwig ludwig mies van der rohe. How many of them can make people fall in love at first sight and see unforgettable unique works? It seems that there are very few. People's inner impetuousness is also manifested in architecture. Yes, new Shanghai is different from other cities. It has many new high-rise buildings. However, if you ask, "What are the styles of these new high-rise buildings?" You will probably be speechless. There is no doubt that new buildings are not necessarily successful buildings, nor are they necessarily tall buildings, immortal buildings, rich and luxurious buildings and beautiful buildings. The eyes of mankind and history will screen everything mercilessly. It is good that some people compare architecture to painting. An art exhibition can be put away after the exhibition, and those crappy paintings can be shelved and not shown to others. The building is different. They stood there. As long as there is no earthquake or fire, they may stand for ten years, a hundred years or even a hundred years, occupying the sight of generations and becoming historical sculptures. So Dick Lane said, "Architecture pursues eternity." Of course, eternity is impossible. We can change the word: "forever". Recently, I read China architect Zhang Kaiji's Random Talk on Architecture. He does not advocate building more high-rise buildings. The book tells a story that happened in the United States: in 1950s, a large area of high-rise residential buildings were built in St. Louis, USA, but many deficiencies were found after the completion. 1976, the city decided to blow up all this large area of high-rise residential buildings. Such a story is frightening. I hope this story will not be repeated in Shanghai.

Yes, Shanghai is a city where old and new coexist alternately. In the shadow of tall new buildings, those old houses in old Shanghai have become dwarfs in the giant country. However, height and height are not the criteria to measure the beauty and ugliness of architecture. Dwarfs are not necessarily ugly, and giants are not necessarily beautiful. I am not an old-fashioned person, but in the face of those old houses built more than half a century ago, I have to feel their uniqueness and exquisiteness. As a symbol of the past era, they are worthy of their ancestors and history. The era we live in is an era full of weather and breaking the shackles and shackles. It should be natural to surpass our ancestors and history in architecture. There are many successful masterpieces in the new high-rise buildings in Shanghai. From my personal point of view, Jinmao Building, Pudong International Conference Center, Hua Ting Hotel, Shanghai Center, New Jinjiang Hotel, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Radio and Television Building, New Century Plaza and other buildings. They are all very beautiful buildings, and they have the characteristics of the times, and their designs are unique and creative. I know that no Shanghainese can appreciate these 8,000 tall buildings one by one, and the best among them will stand out and be discovered sooner or later. I met Er Dongqiang the other day. He is sorting out his recent photos, including some new buildings in Shanghai. Er Dongqiang told me that in Pudong, he saw some excellent buildings, which have entered his lens. I admire these new buildings in his photos. I can't say their names or where they are located, but they do show me the uniqueness and exquisiteness of this building. This kind of building dwarfs those buildings with dull appearance and similar faces. The newly-built high-rise buildings in Shanghai also seem to be polarized, one is mediocre and rough, lacking individuality, and the other is exquisite and unique, full of the spirit of the times. I hope that in the years to come, the latter pole will gradually grow. It is said that architecture is solidified music. I think music can also be divided into beautiful music and poor music. Those poor music can only be noise, which destroys the tranquility of nature and life. Then, architects of my generation, please use your talents to create more beautiful music, let them freeze in the air, become a beautiful symbol of our time, and become a flower of wisdom blooming between heaven and earth.

Half a century later, these new buildings have become old houses and historical relics. At that time, there will be a few artists who are strong in winter, and they will be able to shoot a few picture books like "The Last Look" with passion, and show the architectural style and achievements of China at the end of the 20th century to China people in 2 1 century, so that they can be proud of their ancestors.