Shanghai Vertical: Skyscrapers and the “whole” city
Research in progress: “Reaching God: The representation of skyscrapers in Chinese urbanism”
Through a historical study of skyscrapers in Chinese cities, Wanying Li explores the necessity of understanding skyscrapers within urban development, and the political metaphors behind them. Wanying is a current Master of Research in Architecture student at the Royal College of Art.
July 1991. Located along the bank of the Huangpu river, from Lujiazui Pudong to Pudong Park is a construction site. One of the countless similar locations throughout Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta — a larger conurbation that includes Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The geometric combination of steel beams, cranes and concrete is the common landscape of the region’s rapidly expanding cities.
i. How to know Pudong: Going Vertical
Lujiazui — river water twists and turns, the bank is concave in the place called “bay”, the bank outside the convex is called “zui”.
Before the 1990s, Pudong was a large area of farmland and a very small number of industries. Its economic and social development was relatively new. In contrast, Puxi, formed of colonial and twentieth-century Shanghai development was located across the Huangpu river on the western bank. Historically, Shanghai has gradually developed from the west to the east:
“The unbalanced development can span both vertical and horizontal dimensions; vast mass forms urban politics and urban life through numerous social and material relationships.”[1]
For most of the twentieth century, the urbanisation of Pudong happened in a structurally disorderly, informal way.
“I would rather have a bed in Puxi than a room in Pudong.”
This is a widely circulated sentence among the old Shanghainese in the 1990s. Today, Pudong Lujiazui, the core area of Shanghai’s international financial centre, contains skyscrapers towering into the sky. Some 281 multinational companies’ regional headquarters gather there, along with more than 10-factor markets such as stock exchanges and futures exchanges and more than 1,700 high-tech companies. The pulsation of financial technology shuttles between the streets and the skyscrapers. Lujiazui has undoubtedly become one of the representative microcosms of “China’s Reform and open-up” policy.
In the late 1950s, skyscrapers began to appear in the ‘east’ (by which I mean the Middle East and Asian countries). The first skyscraper in China was built in 1959, the Shanghai Exhibition Center (110m). In 1978, the Chinese government began to carry out economic reforms (Economic Reform and open-up). With rapid economic development and industrial upgrading, China’s urbanization process was also accelerating. In emerging Chinese cities, such as Shenzhen and Shanghai, new city skylines were gradually taking shape.
In 1984, in the outline of the Shanghai Economic Development Strategy report drawn up by the Shanghai Municipal Government, the strategic concept of creating conditions for the development of Pudong was put forward for the first time. A historical opportunity was quietly coming to Pudong. In 1986, the State Council, in approving the “Shanghai City Overall Plan” submitted by the Shanghai Municipal Government, made it clear that, at present, special attention should be paid to the planned construction and renovation of the Pudong area. The plan was to develop financial, trade, science and technology, higher education and commercial services facilities in Pudong. In short, to make Pudong a “modern” new area. Six tall buildings were completed in 1990 alone.
The development of Pudong has changed from a local strategy in Shanghai to a national strategy at the political level. Once the Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower was completed in 1995, it became the iconic cultural landscape of Shanghai, and later an image of the new, modernising China.
ii. Skyscrapers: Giant Totems
The Oriental Pearl Tower, a 463-meter radio and television tower, has been hailed as a symbol of the rise of New Shanghai. The tower is so famous that many people remember the name of the tower or its image before they remember the city. As you enter the city centre, it is the first sight you see. Although there are many buildings taller than the Oriental Pearl in cities around China, to this day it is still the most memorable one. This strange pinnacle of three balls is now symbolised in urban space.
“As far as urban semiotics is concerned, buildings are the media that carry and spread the social ideological system. Therefore, landmark buildings have the symbol of high spirit and the iconic meaning of culture. It represents a certain era of social consciousness and regional civilization of the creation of the ‘mind map’.”[3]
Rapid urbanisation brings contradictory results to cities: the number of cities increases rapidly, the scale of cities expands, the functions of cities become complex, the differences between urban individuals become more and more heightened. With the rapid development of cities, the concept of urban landmarks is changing quietly.
“Most arguments that the new skyscraper towers are necessary to improve urban densities, reduce sprawl, increase ‘sustainability’ and so on are almost entirely specious. French urbanist Jean-Marie Huriot sees such discourses as little more than a smokescreen camouflaging the powerful symbolism of extreme vertical architecture.”[4]
Skyscrapers, as landmarks, mark the prosperity and economic strength of a city or a country and are a metaphor for the strong desire of politicians, businessmen, and architects for wealth and power. They also visually mark extreme social and spatial inequality. In the face of these vertical buildings, we should look squarely at how vertical metaphors permeate.
The human, as a vertical creature, often associates erectness with consciousness, just like the word “orientation metaphors”, “That is why we describe social status or wealth as ‘high’ or ‘low’ rather than ‘great’ and ‘small’.”(Stephen Graham, 2018) Urban scholars point out that large buildings are often used to show off power and wealth, to advocate leadership or religious beliefs, to expand and extend the boundaries of possible things, even as owners, families, or the competition between architects and builders.
“These broad volumes are interconnected through a myriad of social and material relations that shape the polities of cities and urban life just as powerfully as do processes and relations organised to sustain the flat and horizontal ground levels of cities.”[5]
iii. Skyscrapers / Skylines and the city
The construction of the Lujiazui area in Pudong in Shanghai was started in the 1990s. It only took some 20 years to build up more than three million square metres of buildings in less than two square kilometres, forming the current urban skyline of Pudong. How can a ‘whole’ building be evaluated against the silhouette of the city? How was it designed?
The urban spatial outline of Lujiazui was designed through early planning. The main idea of this plan is that three concentric circles form three spatial contours in the Lujiazui business centre. The first circle is made up of three high-rise towers of more than 400 meters: the Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai World Financial Center and the Shanghai Tower. Their layout is like a “triangle,” and in the planning documents, this “triangle” is the commanding height of the whole of Pudong and even Shanghai. The second circle is devoted to the development of tall buildings of around 200 metres high, while the third circle allows for the construction of buildings up to 100 metres in height.
In this way, Pudong (as seen from the Bund across the Huangpu River), forms a three-circle cascade of skylines.
Far from the planning documents now, Pudong’s skyline is changing. Before the completion of the 632m Shanghai Tower, the skyline of Lujiazui was the central visual point of the Oriental Pearl Tower, and the skyline presented a single peak with a high centre and a low level on both sides. After the completion, the alignment of the skyline has changed greatly, showing a picture of double peaks echoing each other. Murray says,
“A skyline is a specific way of observing and representing the city, namely one that points out the heights of the built environment, which is emphasised most from a low and distant viewpoint.”
In order to perceive the skyline, we must consider the specific viewing point, the position and the height of the viewing point, which is of decisive significance to the perception of the skyline. For example, if you look at the Bund buildings from Binjiang Avenue in Shanghai Pudong to Puxi, you can see the whole outline line of the Bund. However, if you stand on the Baidu in Puxi, the buildings along the Bund will overlap and you won’t be able to see the entire skyline unfolded. With the change of viewing point, the contours, alignment and the staggered relationship of the urban skyline will change. Therefore, in order to achieve a complete viewing effect of the skyline, there must be a specific viewing point, distance, viewing angle, and viewing height.
As Kevin Lynch says,
“The forms of cities, their actual functions, and the values and ideas that people have given them have formed a unique phenomenon… The formation of form is always the result of man’s attempt and human value orientation.”
With the continuous growth of vertical buildings, and in order to avoid the visual superposition effect, the question remains should high-rise buildings keep a large distance and protect the skyline with historical and cultural values? As a kind of material form, the urban skyline is also the embodiment of the urban value of various elements.
Endnotes
[1] Neil J. (2014). Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, Berlin: JOVIS
[2] Xu, Jiangang(: director of the Party History Research Office of the Shanghai Municipal CPC Committee). (2018). Pudong Legend[J]. Radio and Television Shanghai
[3] Liu, Junping. (2013). Art Observation: Reflection on landmark architecture as a social symbol. China Academy of Arts
[4] Graham, Stephen. (2018). Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers. Verso Books.pp.159
[5] Neil J. Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization
