Following the establishment of international trading relations in the nineteenth century, Shanghai became a commercial and cultural centre of East Asia and home to a large number of European commercial offices and consulates. Examples of Shanghai’s Art Deco style – European building styles combined with Asian elements, characteristic of the city’s early-twentieth-century architecture, are strung along the Bund, Shanghai’s boulevard on the west bank of the Huangpu river. An ensemble of historic buildings, now called the Rockbund Project, reflects the diversity of the colonial architecture and forms the northern part of the Bund. By restoring the existing buildings and planning new ones, a team of architects is helping to revitalise the Rockbund Project, which will accommodate office complexes, hotels, retail and apartments. We have been commissioned to restore and convert eleven buildings. The aim of the restoration concept is to present buildings that have aged with dignity and style: the facades will be carefully cleaned and repaired. Subsequent conversions will be removed and the buildings returned to their original state as much as possible. Existing structures within the roof area of some buildings will be expanded in reaction to changes in usage. The expansion of the Andrews & George Building to create Rockbund 6 will combine historic fabric with contemporary architecture: its listed three-storey facade, which marks the southern edge of the planning area, will be renovated and eleven storeys added. The extensions to the National Industrial Bank and the former Royal Asiatic Society are visible from Museum Square. The RAS, China’s first public museum, now houses the Rockbund Art Museum. Inside the Art Deco style building, the newly created flexible areas enable a range of different presentation concepts and the volumes of the upper floors have been spatially linked through the creation of a new atrium.
The RAS was erected in 1932. It is a vital testimony to European-Chinese relations during the last two centuries and became the first building in China to serve as a public museum. Within the urban block it adopts an exceptional position through this historic function as a museum and its later incarnations as an exhibition and educational building. The Art Deco style building is a tall, narrow, rectangular structure set deep in its site. The original 1932 facades were extensively restored, retaining as much historical substance as possible. In order to enhance the building’s functional possibilities as modern museum, an extension was added to the rear, creating a new east facade which opens up to Museum Square on the ground floor level, and providing an outdoor terrace on the roof. This addition refers to the historic context in both materiality and proportion. While the entrance vestibule, Art Deco staircase and interior room structure have been restored, the exhibition spaces themselves are treated with a contemporary design approach.
