Shanghai: the Architecture of China’s Great Urban Center
By Jay Pridmore
Abramsbooks £25.95

In the last twenty years Shanghai has undergone an unprecedented transformation. Between 1992 and 2002, investment in Shanghai real estate grew from $160m to $9.2bn and it now boasts more skyscrapers than New York. Yet behind the biggest housing boom in history lies a city full of contradiction and struggling to “meet its presumed future as China’s epicenter without entirely coming to terms with its past”.

Known as the Pearl of the Orient and the Paris of the East, Shanghai flourished as a colonial outpost during the 19th century and was renowned as a centre of vice and corruption until the Cultural Revolution swept away its wealthy expatriate communities. Today, Shanghai has once again become an international trading hub and the skyline is rife with some of the world’s most dramatic buildings from architects such as Norman Foster and Paul Andreau.

In Shanghai: the Architecture of China’s Great Urban Center, Jay Pridmore takes Shanghai’s architecture as a “lens through which to examine this ancient transport’s complex history”. From the futuristic skyline of Pudong, the business district, to the modernist relics of the city’s colonial past that line the riverfront still known by its British name, the Bund, Pridmore sees Shanghai’s cityscape as a constantly evolving narrative of the city’s past and the key to understanding its uncertain future.

Shanghai is a fascinating book that truly captures the dynamism of the city and the awe and isolation of the foreigner visiting for the first time. Combining a detailed history of Shanghai’s changing fortunes with photographs of its most iconic landmarks, Pridmore paints an acute portrait of “one of the most ambitious, vibrant and significant ‘new’ cities of the twenty-first century”.