Ricerc@Sapienza

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.