Shanghai: Architecture & Design

Bahamon, Alejandro (ed.)

ISBN 10: 3937718222 / ISBN 13: 9783937718224

Published by Daab Pub, Cologne, Germany, 2005

About this Item

Fine in fine dust jacket (in protector) ; Red hardcover binding, color photos, architectural drawings. Showcases a variety modern architectural projects in Shanghai, China; 4to ; 237 pages.

Seller Inventory # 61604

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Shanghai: Architecture & Design
• Publisher: Daab Pub, Cologne, Germany
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: German
• ISBN 10: 3937718222
• ISBN 13: 9783937718224
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Shanghai is the fastest growing city at the moment and will be one of the most important metropolitan cities in the world. The diversity of Western and Oriental influences can be seen on its streets, in the silhouettes of its buildings and in their interiors, where tradition, design and contemporary tends mingle to create a distinctive language. In a mere 10 years, Shanghai has acquired a skylight comparable with that of New York, which was build over the course of more than 50 years. In this book you will find the image of the contemporary Shanghai, like the world's future highest building to the new Shanghai International Formula One Circuit. About 35 projects are published, buildings, restaurants, shops and offices.

Reviews

In an era of coffee-table design books with multiple, long-winded introductions and breathless essays by architecture writers, it's refreshing to see this book's simple form-a one-paragraph intro, followed by images of the buildings-some realized, others still models. The descriptions of the 34 projects presented here are also brief, leaving the emphasis on the photography (though the text does come in five languages, including English). The mix of recent and future projects includes both the spectacular (the Shanghai World Financial Center, to open in 2007, which aims to be the world's tallest building) to the more low-key (a club called ARK, in the historic Xintiandi district). Most of the projects tend toward bigger-is-better: from the Top of City Lights apartment complex to the mixed-use Hong Kong New World Center, they are grand, tall, modern, extravagant, or all of the above. While the prose isn't exactly sparkling ("The original brickwork was preserved to obtain an interior that evokes a certain degree of nostalgia"), this 101/4" x 123/4" book does a capable, unpretentious job of capturing the dynamism and boldness of present-day architecture in Shanghai, a key global city still largely underdocumented by the West.
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