thames town - London Meets Shanghai

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kennedy said:
Why couldn't it have been a walkable, Chinese neighborhood though? I don't know why I'm so hung up on the style, but it just doesn't make any sense to me.
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czsz said:
I actually saw some very cool hutongs in Beijing. There was one (off the street that runs between the Forbidden City and the Drum Tower) that was being colonized by very hip-looking record stores. There were a couple others with nice cafes and very florid restoration/decoration.
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The Buick-driving yuppies are about to pounce. Things happen fast these days in China.

czsz said:
I stayed in one in another part of the city that was fairly raw though. Traffic jams of bicycles and cars causing hours of honking (they're really no more than one lane wide), stuff getting made/washed outside by people squatting, also in the way of traffic (it didn't help that a sewer line was being built down it), dirt and dust flying everywhere. The fact that the hutongs are mostly lined by blank walls does not help make them any more hospitable. I can't imagine living in one of the houses without plumbing and needing to traverse the hutongs to use the crowded public bathroom all the time.
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^ The cultural and physical state of vernacular architecture in China at this time. A hard sell to the emerging middle class, but probably nowhere near as slow as selling Craftsman architecture in the U.S.
 
Can you guys link to examples of the craftsman revival? Just out of curiosity.

I'm not sure Thames Town is an expression of disgust for the way of life of those who live in "traditional" homes (or a converse admiration of those who live in the West) as much as it is just a novelty / real estate gimmick. True, there are a bunch of these "Epcot" developments around Shanghai, but they're not exactly the norm for upper middle class suburban Chinese.
 
czsz said:
Can you guys link to examples of the craftsman revival? Just out of curiosity.Can you guys link to examples of the craftsman revival?
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Plenty here (ignore the first house; it's working-class Tudor, not Craftsman).

czsz said:
I'm not sure Thames Town is an expression of disgust for the way of life of those who live in "traditional" homes (or a converse admiration of those who live in the West) as much as it is just a novelty / real estate gimmick.
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Does this somewhat trivialize aspirations of newly-rich Chinese by applying American attitudes? I can remember when the only Scotch drunk by folks-in-the-know was Grant's.

(As long as you're up, get me a Grant's.)
 
I mean, it does make sense that many up and coming Chinese have embraced a new aesthetic linked to "what the wealthy have", but most have done this by moving into modern apartment blocks and suburban tract houses. By comparison, Thames Town is a gimmicky novelty; its only counterparts are the other few theme developments built around Shanghai.
 
^In fairness, the Bund is stock full of architectural history that spans art deco to beaux arts to Gothic.
 
I mean, yeah...most of Shanghai was developed by colonial powers, and most of the city center consists of buildings that wouldn't be out of place in London, New York, or France. But that doesn't mean that Thames Town, which is a totally self-contained quasi-medieval English village, isn't still a novelty there.
 
Now let us list all the novelty architecture in the US. Start with Washington, D.C.
 
For starters:
rease-biltmore-estate.jpg


And isn't this NC's most visited tourist attraction?

Clearly there's a market for novelty everywhere. Of course this sort of thing bothers many (the "oh how Disney" folks) but when it's done right, why does it matter where it is geographically?
 
^ Nonsense, Brother Kennedy. Take another look.

Maybe read up on Richard Morris Hunt, the creator of this piece of trash, and its New York sibling, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
 
kennedy said:
^ What a gaudy piece of trash. ^
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Am I wrong in presuming that was sarcastic? I truly hope it was sarcasm. I've never toured the Biltmore Estate but I've had plenty of exposure to some of Hunt's other works starting at an early age with tours of many of the Newport Mansions (The Breakers, Marble House, and Belcourt among others) during field trips as early as 6th grade (still tour them anytime I get a chance). There are a lot of words I'd use to describe his work, but "trash" isn't one of them.
 
Perhaps it was an emotional response, not to the architecture, but the to the troubling idea of American royalty.

Also, it's French and has no place here. We should knock it down and build something with the word freedom in the title.
 
ablarc said:
Maybe it was sarcasm. *fingers crossed*
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Really? I'd really hope you wouldn't think I was being serious. I love the Biltmore Estate, along with the Breakers, the Marble House, and various other Newport mansions. I would never describe anything like that as gaudy or trashy.
 
I don't think Biltmore is novelty in the same way Thames Town is. Biltmore was self conscious imitation of the European aristocracy. The Chinese aren't all flocking to Thames Towns to cement their status the way robber barons in the US were building chateaux for that purpose in the late 19th century.

Thames Town is more the equivalent of a place like Forest Hills, Queens: a suburban escape that transports the occupant/visitor to another world.
 
Well, it's basically the same concept for very different socio-economic classes. The Biltmores were imitating European elite, while the middle-class Chinese are imitating the upper-middle-class British.
 
No, my point is exactly that they're not. Fairy tale European villages don't connote wealth to most up and coming Chinese: if they did, there'd be more of them. These things connote escape. They're tailored for a much narrower demographic who are titillated by the idea of pretending to live in Europe because it's Europe, not because it's seen as more affluent.
 
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