This book takes the unique housing typology of the Shanghai alleyway house and discusses its role in Shanghai life. Gregory Bracken examines the architecture and history of the alleyway house, its part in the city's cultural and social development, it's portrayal in Chinese film and literature and the future of this unique urban dwelling as Shanghai's rapid redevelopment threatens to destroy the alleyway house, and therefore a slice of Chinese architectural and cultural history, altogether.
This book takes the unique housing typology of the Shanghai alleyway house and discusses its role in Shanghai life. Gregory Bracken examines the ar...
As a nineteenth-century commercial development, the alleyway house was a hybrid of the traditional Chinese courtyard house and the Western terraced one. Unique to Shanghai, the alleyway house was a space where the blurring of the boundaries of public and private life created a vibrant social community. In recent years however, the city's rapid redevelopment has meant that the alleyway house is being destroyed, and this book seeks to understand it in terms of the lifestyle it engendered for those who called it home, whilst also looking to the future of the alleyway house.
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As a nineteenth-century commercial development, the alleyway house was a hybrid of the traditional Chinese courtyard house and the Western ...
