due to the natural curve of the Huangpu river. The buildings also have a special historical meaning to many Shanghai people for its place in the recent history of the City. On the other side of Suzhou Creek, opposite the Broadway Mansions, Waitanyuan development will preserve several of the existing buildings facing the Huangpu River and the former British Consulate.
In a wider context, these three small blocks mark the ‘urban corner' of the Huangpu River. This is where the river turns east, facing the high-rise commercial development in Pudong.
Planning work is now underway that will fundamentally change the context of this landmark and its relationship to the River and the Bund. To the north of Broadway Mansions the ‘North Bund' development will create a series of high rise towers and an open riverfront along the Huangpu River. This development will also remove the historic street pattern and residential community for much of the area to the North and the East of the site
Redevelopment and Context
Individually, the three individual buildings are not of significant architectural value. However taken as a group, Broadway Mansions, Astor House Hotel and the Russian Consulate form a coherent piece of streetscape – the historical building scale and street character of which are disappearing from Shanghai.
The difficulty in finding new uses for outdated structures such as these three blocks is compounded by their historical and social position in the city. Urban regeneration has taken the form of separating and regenerating single buildings divorced from the context. An example of this in Shanghai is the Shanghai Concert Hall development.
This historic structure, when removed from the context of the community and historic street pattern that surrounded it, has lost its sense of place and meaning. The building was designed to fit into a dense historic street pattern. The buildings facades and materials reflect the fact that it was part of the streetscape of that part of the city.
In 2004 the building was moved and the surrounding street pattern destroyed. In saving the building but removing its context, the building has lost its physical relationship with the city. Without its context, the facades and scale of the buildings have no meaning in relation to the new position at the centre of a green lawn. The building form and facades are asymmetrical. As the building had to fit into the city grid, the building's chamfered corners and entrance porticos reflect vistas and axis that no longer exist.
Planning for Broadway Mansions and Astor House Hotel
The three key buildings and the Waitanyuan site on the opposite side of Suzhou creek will certainly be preserved. To the south, on the opposite side of Suzhou Creek, the proposed Waitanyuan project will have a modest scale. Here although the earlier commercial uses and existing community have been removed, the existing street line will largely be retained and the remaining historic building line facing the Huangpu will remain.
Due to its imposing scale, Broadway Mansions itself forms the outer boundary of ‘the Bund'. It creates the edge to the historic cityscape along the river. It can be seen that the context of the urban fabric can be retained on the north side of Suzhou Creek.
The danger for the development is to the north of the site, by adding new buildings of an insensitive scale. For the North Bund development, the road carriageway, building volumes and setback will inevitably create a cityscape of a vastly, different scale. The future pattern of development in the North Bund has no relationship with historic streetscape of the site. Therefore, the removal of the context of Broadway Mansions buildings is a clear danger. This is where the site could be isolated and separated form the city rather than preserved within it.
Whatever type of the building function is eventually decided, hotel, entertainment or commercial use, the site is in danger of becoming the “edge” of the historic part of Shanghai. Though many examples exist worldwide, where existing structures are changed to new uses. Singapore's Boat Quay or San Francisco's Fisherman's wharf are examples of where existing riverside buildings have been redeveloped to new uses. The key to the commercial success of these redevelopment projects is the connection back to the city that surrounds them.
Therefore, to overcome this disconnection for the Broadway Mansions site, several strategies could be adopted:
Treating the area as a piece of city-scape - the value should be seen in the character of the spaces between the buildings as well as the buildings themselves
Pedestrian links - not only along the riverside but finding the easy routes to allow people to move through the site and connect to the new developments to the north.
Sensitivity to the scale of the existing Astor House Hotel buildings. In urban design, a transition space or low rise buildings are needed to address the scale of both the Astor House and the new high blocks that will be built to the north side of the site.
Above all, the real challenge in developing the site is the transition space to the north of Broadway Mansions and the Astor House hotel. These physical planning ideas also need to integrate with the functional and architectural design ideas for each block. The urban land and the buildings that link the historical site to the North Bund development are the key blocks that determine if the site can be retained as part of the cityscape or isolated from it.
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