On a holiday morning, at the intersection of Middle Huaihai Road and Wukang Road in downtown Shanghai, a crowd of over a thousand people at any given moment converges on a single building.
These visitors crane their phones upward, frame by frame, to shoot the 102-year-old wedge-shaped facade of Wukang Building, arguably the favorite architecture in Shanghai among visitors from home and abroad.
Originally named Normandie Apartments and designed by Hungarian architect Laszlo Hudec in 1924, Shanghai's first veranda-style apartment block looks like a vessel with its "bow" pointing southwest. Renamed the Wukang Building in 1953 after China's liberation in 1949, the eightstory building was home to many film stars and cultural figures in the decades that followed.
The building became viral among visitors after it completed a comprehensive renovation as part of the city's efforts to improve the quality of life for residents living in old buildings in 2019. Xuhui district data shows the wider Wukang-Anfu block draws 30,000 visitors on an average day since then, peaking near 100,000 on holidays, with Wukang Building quickly standing as a new landmark of Shanghai tourism.
Clarisse Le Guernic, a French woman who has lived in Shanghai for 11 years and now serves as a "Shanghai international tourism ambassador", includes the building on nearly every downtown city walk route.
"Foreign friends arriving here don't first look up at the building — they're stunned by the crowd," she said. "They ask: 'Why so many people? In Paris, we photograph the architecture. In China, people prefer photographing themselves with the architecture'."
But for residents living in its 114 units, the place is more than a scenic spot to take photos. "For us, this is first of all a place to live," said Bai Zufang, Communist Party of China head of the Wukang residential community.
Yet the building's most unusual chapter is not how it handles crowds, but how it managed the first problem its own residents raised. After the 2019 restoration — which took down exterior drying racks and awnings and aligned every air-conditioner unit — the question from residents was simple: "Where do we hang our laundry?"
After discussions, the answer ended up on a rooftop platform that was originally the roof of the building's garage. The apartment block was built with a row of automobile garages at its base; the flat garage roof, level with the second floor, forms a wide open terrace that residents can step onto directly from the building.
Since this rooftop platform sits directly above the garage, absolutely no drilling into the structure was allowed. To work around this, the heavy planting beds are kept securely in place using repurposed old tires filled with concrete. Rows of bamboo screens were also set up around the area — they gently block the view of residents hanging laundry to dry, while still letting fresh wind flow through the whole space.
Carol Richman, a university lecturer from the US, has been inside the building once. "China is filled with wonderful historic buildings, yet this one carries a truly singular legacy all its own," she said.
Contact the writers at heqi@chinadaily.com.cn
