Ricerc@Sapienza

Shanghai was one of the first cities in China to fa ce the probIems reiated to the maintenance and to the guardianship of industriaI heritage. ParticuIarly interesting is the restoration of the Shanghai Municipal Council Slaughterhouse, with its specific and unusual architectural solution and evocative inside spaces. The Slaughterhouse, built in 1933, was arranged into a square with an inner circle, four perimeter buildings were linked to the centraI main buiIding through scuIpturai concrete ramps, bridges, and spiraI staircases.

Since 2010, the creation of the Bund 1919 has begun, through the redevelopment of the historic Wing On 2 cotton industrial complex located in Wusong.
The renovation project was carried out by the Shanghai Shenfang Investment Management, of which the sole members are Red Town Corporation (developer of Ten Steel) and Shangtex (the textile company that owns the area).
The relevant characteristics are both in the industrial architecture and in the role that this mill has in the history of cotton industry in Shanghai and in China.

Exploring Shanghai's industrial heritage constitution means embarking on a journey through the history of one of the most exceptional cosmopolitan cities ever established. The urban system, architecture, technology reflect the meeting of many cultures and enterprising people. Some decade after the location of the foreign settlements, in the middle of 19th, the city added to the commercial vocation an important manufacturing activity. The rapid industrial rise of the late 19th laid the foundation for the golden age of Shanghai.

The 50th Moganshan Lu is a system of industrial buildings built from 1930 which illustrate the growth of Shangtex – a industrial textile company owned by the Shangtex Holding Corporation - and the evolution of construction technique used in industrial facilities in Shanghai.
From the mid-1980s artistic life in China changed: painters and sculptors until then employed by the State, begin to exhibit in domestics and foreign private galleries and the 50 Moganshan Lu abandoned by the textile industry, was transformed into a coordinate system of galleries and studios.