Not a month after they revealed their newest landmark would be a pretty blatant knockoff of some other building, Chongqing is drawing ridicule once again for copycat architecture. Its newest project is a 280-meter, 70-floor tower on the bank of the Yangtze river to be completed in 2017. Designed to imitate a pair of rapturous figures posing in the form of "庆," Chongqing's second character meaning "celebration," the design is being compared to Beijing's CCTV tower. more ›

In China's biggest muncipality, Chongqing, lies one of the most sought after sites in all of urban China. The site, which resembles lower Manhattan, has now been bought by one of Asia's biggest real estate companies, Capitaland, for more than 1 billion US dollars. Developers aim to transform the unique and charismatic site into an economic heavyweight in the future. more ›

more ›

Here at Shanghaiist, our intrigue with Thames Town, the British-themed residential area in Songjiang district, goes all the way back to 2006. But we haven't really been doing justice to the German Town located in Anting, 30 kilometres away from the city centre. Well, as it turns out, "Little Germany" isn't doing any better than its better known sibling. Yang Xifan of Der Spiegel has made a trip to the town, where she speaks to "Yu X", a real estate agent in the neighbourhood (who has a lot of time on her hands these days), as well as architect Johannes Dell, from Albert Speer & Partner, the firm that was hired to design the district. more ›

Sorry about the delay in getting out the latest part of this series. In case you'd forgotten (and rightfully so), we've been searching through a list of 155 unprotected heritage sites in Shanghai. Here is Part I (Baoshan and Hongkou) Part II (Huangpu, Zhabei and Putuo) and Part III (Luwan and Jiading). Part IV is about Minhang and Yangpu. more ›

Part III of an ongoing series taking a closer look at all of Shanghai's 155 "important heritage sites" that are currently unprotected. Here are the locations in Luwan (French Concession!) and Jiading Districts - which housed the creator of the Chinese alphabet (bopomofo!), the poor discarded second wife of Chiang Kai-shek, and China's best art forger. more ›

Yesterday, Shanghai Daily reported that there were 155 historically significant homes in the city that are currently unprotected. These houses were previously used by Shanghai's most influential politicians, industrial tycoons, scholars and such, but are now in a dilapidated state (though, luckily, not yet torn down). Interestingly, many Chinese newspapers printed out exactly which 155 homes these were, so I thought I'd document them. more ›

The authorities have finally made good on their decision to demolish Ai Weiwei's studio in Shanghai's northern district of Jiading. Supporters on scene have been uploading a real-time photostream of the sad operation happening today. more ›

Completed in September 29, 2010 and decked out in rainbow colours just in time for the 2010 Asian Games, the RMB3 billion Canton Tower is currently the world's tallest tower and also the tallest structure in China (yes, it's even taller than the Shanghai WFC!). more ›

Despite Ai Weiwei's house arrest last Friday and AFP reports that yesterday's Crab Fest was canceled, I decided it might be worth checking out anyway. Turns out plenty of others felt the same way. Hundreds gathered at Ai Weiwei's soon-to-be-demolished studio in Jiading yesterday to eat crab, jam it out on guitars, admire the architecture, and get some super special party favors. more ›

We've heard our skyline compared to Blade Runner and an equally sci-fi term: "the future." Basically always, they're referring to Lujiazui. One company is adamant about changing that: Ping An Insurance. more ›

Oh gosh, here's some really sad news. Remember Ever-spring Hall, which we featured a photo set of just a couple of days ago? The last couple of rainstorms were not kind to it - according to Shanghai Daily, its roof has completely caved in. more ›

Last year, Shanghai resident Katya Knyazeva stumbled upon Ever-spring Hall, a piece of historic Shanghai that had fallen by the wayside. Located just 100 meters east of the Temple of the City God on Wutong Lu, it was turned into a gymnasium at some point in time and then left to rot. A shame for architecture for which the saying was penned, "First, there is Ever-Spring Hall; second, there is Yu Garden." more ›

Lego aficionado Tsang Yiu Keung has built this microscale replica of the gigantic China Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. Not only is it built to scale, but it even lights up from the inside! Just like the real one - or at least it would be if there was a five-hour line of minifigs waiting outside. more ›

If it is what we can look forward to in 2012, then holy cow! I think Shanghai might have finally gotten its first absolutely must-see museum attraction. Designed by Perkins + Will, the "Shanghai Nature Museum" features a nautilus shell-like design shape and will contain 35,000 square meters of display space, as well as research space underground (which members apparently have access to). more ›

If you've ever wanted to know the nitty gritty about preserving and/or buying one of those beautiful lane houses - or really, anything built before 1949 - still dotted along the city (especially before they get torn down and replaced by another skyscraper), Shanghai Scrap has an informative interview with Amy L. Sommers, who recently co-published "A Tragedy of the Common: Property Rights Issues in Shanghai Historic Residences" with Kara L. Phillips of the Seattle University Law Library. more ›

Our city was profiled recently in the New York Times' Great Homes and Destinations section. Shanghai expat Nichol Bradford opened her Huaihai Lu lane house to the NYT, showing off her Art Nouveau styled building and Hot Dog Decor-styled... well, decor. There's even a photo gallery so you can get a better look at Ms. Bradford's stylings. As with most homes featured there, it's absolutely out of my personal budget, but gee - ain't it nice to share what you could have in this city? more ›

Thought the end of Expo would mean the end of giant construction projects in Shanghai? Ha, how naive! Shanghai's only gotten a taste of creating huge structures out of nothing, and now it's revealed its plans to make what would essentially be Puxi's answer to the Lujiazui business district in the South Bund area. more ›

While everybody loves to have a big living space, most people here aren't able to find one in China's highly packed cities. Taking the matter into their own hands, some talented folks in Haikou, Hainan built a super narrow building - one side was only 20cm! more ›

Perhaps it wasn't immediately obvious from our pictures, but the stairwell leading down to Shanghai's first Apple Store is pretty translucent, i.e. not a good place to wear skirts. Unfortunately, women are wearing skirts to the Apple store and dudes are taking the opportunity to leer up at them. According to Shanghai Daily, one customer on opening day thought men were admiring the architecture of the staircase until she went to admire it too, and then looked up to find out what they were really looking at. She alerted staff to the situation and left, only to encounter two more men leering with "wicked smiles" on their faces. Heh. more ›

Shanghai's "One City, Nine Towns" initiative, the most famous of which is probably "Thames Town," was set up to facilitate sustainable urban growth through international-themed satellite cities. It's also one of the most bizzare aspects of Shanghai sprawl existing. Sarah Wesseler covered the strange story behind these crazy, and ultimately failed, themed villages for Assembly Journal. more ›

Yup, you've read right, this colourful, decorative and impressive bulilding that you see before you is in fact a hotel. WebUrbanist lists the Tianzi Garden Hotel, located in the relatively small town of Langfang, Hebei Province, as one of the world's 15 bizarre buildings. Apparently, it even made it into the Guiness Book of Records, boasting to be the world's 'biggest image building.' The hotel image depicts three gods. Fu, God of fortune, Lu, God of prosperity and Shou, God of longevity who all stand side by side, 10 storeys above street level. Surely with all this good luck and protection, guests to the Tianzi Hotel are guaranteed a successful and happy stay. more ›

Spotted by Dinglespeaks:
more ›

For many, Shanghai can be an overwhelming stew of cars, crowds, and construction noise, which is why the serenity and industrial cool of the 1933 complex is so refreshing. We've covered 1933 and its artsy shenanigans before, but it's worth revisiting the place that might provide us sanctuary for the next 20 years - or be shut down tomorrow. more ›

I don't care what half the people said on that recent post about how ugly Shanghai's new cruise ship terminal was - it is an architectural horror and the amount of commenters who signed up specifically to say it was great makes me wonder how many PR flackies SPARCH has on hand. But this post isn't about that - this post is about some real architecture worth oohing and aahing at: the plans for the Shanghai Cultural Plaza. more ›

Shanghai has some insanely ugly buildings, but I was of the impression that they had scaled back on the craziness a little bit in the last couple of years. I don't know how I'd gotten that impression. This monstrosity, designed by SPARCH Architects, is going to be Shanghai's new cruise-ship terminal. more ›

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here). more ›

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here). more ›

While they've got one up on Shanghai for at least meaning to fell their tower, this demolition fail in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province is still pretty insane. The planned explosion was supposed to reduce the tower into a contained heap of rubble. Instead, it split the whole thing in half, causing one side to fall over and the other side to lean like it was in Pisa. Liuzhou residents didn't seem alarmed. more ›

From Tai Kang Lu to M50 and beyond, Shanghai is abuzz with creative parks and hubs. One of the most recent to spring up, 800SHOW, is a one-time steel factory spanning 20,000 sqm in the heart of Jing'an District. This week, we caught up with logon, the architectural firm behind the renovations, to get the inside scoop on 800SHOW and understand this interesting side of Shanghai’s never-ending urban development. more ›