# 'un-chinese' like buildings sprouting up in China



## pesto (Jun 29, 2009)

johsam: thanks; Holland is certainly one of the world's great centers for architecture so I would expect lots of interesting work. But I'm curious about how crazy someone can get in historic or other consistent neighborhoods. Maybe Zaandam has particularly liberal rules.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Those pictures look like functional design, probably hiding the water tank. They're just triangles ... not really castles at all.


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## oliver999 (Aug 4, 2006)

travelworld123 said:


> here are a few i have found in my photos, the full on 'fantasy/disneylike' ones i don't seem to have taken any photos of, but these ones are also what i'm talking about:
> 
> here is one that i think we were driving towards shanghai back from either suzhou or hangzhou or wuzhen (forgot). throughout this expressway were buildings like this


hi,the first two pics are hangzhou surburb for sure, suzhou or wuxi has different style.
thanks for pics.


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## travelworld123 (Sep 24, 2008)

hkskyline said:


> Those pictures look like functional design, probably hiding the water tank. They're just triangles ... not really castles at all.


hmm i think i shouldn't of said 'castle-like' but more non chinese. idk, hard to explain, theres others but unfortunatly i couldn't find any pics


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## travelworld123 (Sep 24, 2008)

oliver999 said:


> hi,the first two pics are hangzhou surburb for sure, suzhou or wuxi has different style.
> thanks for pics.


oh, so the hangzhou suburban style buildings are like this? interesting.
didn't know different city suburbs have their own style of buildings


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## oliver999 (Aug 4, 2006)

travelworld123 said:


> oh, so the hangzhou suburban style buildings are like this? interesting.
> didn't know different city suburbs have their own style of buildings


zhejiang rural villager house 









suzhou wuxi villager house


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## flyinfishjoe (Mar 20, 2010)

This same thing is happening in India too...only a heck of a lot worse! It is far cheaper and easier to construct an ugly concrete box and paint it atrociously fluorescent colors than it is to build in vernacular architecture!


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## travelworld123 (Sep 24, 2008)

flyinfishjoe said:


> This same thing is happening in India too...only a heck of a lot worse! It is far cheaper and easier to construct an ugly concrete box and paint it atrociously fluorescent colors than it is to build in vernacular architecture!


sigh... its really sad to here that. hope they realise and actually put in some 'indian' flavour into the designs.


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## travelworld123 (Sep 24, 2008)

oliver999, yes that hangzhou photo u posted is exactly like the others ones i saw!
looks like a typical western suburban house.
theres no culture on those buildings!!!


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## travelworld123 (Sep 24, 2008)

ok, heres what i'm also talking about, i made another thread over in the Cityscapes section on traditional/cultural architectural design elemtents on modern buildings.

i put some photos that i took and from the net of what i mean by what would be really good.

heres the thread

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=62677989#post62677989
^^


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

I understand the rural areas around Hangzhou look like massive urban sprawl developments but are actually farmer's apartments (check out the lack of roads and tilled fields between the houses). They stretch for hundreds of km, in a dense network across the countryside (check it out on Google Earth). They are the richest farmers in China, each owning a multistoried villa.

If you take the train from HK to Shanghai, you will start to see all this before Hangzhou. At first I thought it was a tacky 1990s pomo development, but then when I realised it was neverending to the horizon, and like the largest city on earth I was pretty amazed. It took me years to work out what I was seeing was actually rural (after a thread here on SSC), and why Hangzhou seemed so much bigger than Shanghai. By *high speed train* it took over 2 hrs of solid sprawl' to reach Shanghai.











Basically from what Ive gathered the Hangzhou council that built these houses enforced design criteria, each area sectioned up into different 'themes', mirroring the foreign concession era districts of colonial Shanghai. Thus you get steep roofed European style houses (think Germany), then turrets and watchtower styles, then onion domes in Russian style etc. The onion domes were the most amazing I have to say, but Ive never been able to find pictures of them. 

I think even when you get tacky single piece of architecture it will still be impressive if its mirrored by thousands of similar buildings for mile after mile.


What I saw were houses like this but multiplied like the first picture, it seemed a forest of watchtowers stretching to the horizon:


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## travelworld123 (Sep 24, 2008)

omg spliff fairy, this is EXACTLY what i'm talking about, i just couldn't get the right photos!!!

this is what i saw for miles just these multi story houses.

thanks for the info too! how u know all this? do u live in china?

hmmm yea so they represent the different european concessions... still would be better if it had chinese flavour.

if this was in europe or america or something, like whole suburbs with chinese style buildings, i'm sure there will be complaints saying things like 'theres too much chinese style here' or 'its taking over our european architecture' or something.
but in here, they just built endless amounts of it... idk if they like it or not (the residents) but i just see it as the chinese keep seeing western things 'superior' so they copy many of its elements, whether in architecture/buildings, fashion, style, etc...

it needs it's own! (not saying there isn't) but still!


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## fragel (Jun 16, 2010)

^^I myself think these houses are ok. Not all old stuff are beautiful, especially the old houses of the poor farmers. Many of the new houses were not even 'designed' since the owners built them by themselves, a floor plan will do the trick. Nowadays villages tend to build massive amounts of silimar looking houses, and such houses are generally designed by construction companies. There is no policy or guidance from the city government for such communities. After all, these are farmers' houses and not for commercial purposes. 

If possible I would choose to live in a community shown below, but such houses generally cost much much more than 'un-chinese' houses (you may wanna say 'un-traditional-Chinese' since it is weird to say 'un-Chinese'):


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## dirtybird (Oct 8, 2004)

Wow, that last development looks super nice! Only thing I don't like is the lack of sidewalks.

Do you know how much the units cost? Any pictures of the interior?


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## BearCave (Feb 2, 2007)

travelworld123 said:


> but i just see it as the chinese keep seeing western things 'superior' so they copy many of its elements, whether in architecture/buildings, fashion, style, etc...


It's not because they are 'superior' but because they are much more cost effective.


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## Ribarca (Jan 28, 2005)

From an architectural point me might think it's lame and bland but people love living in these kind of neighborhood. That you see this especially in Shangai is not surprising. Shanghai is slightly different since Shanghai has always had a large European influence on its architecture.

In the new terrotories here in Hong Kong some developments as well in Greek style with columns etc.. In Holland we also have lots of new developments that hark back to the old days. E.g. towns built in the style of old castles, or as old canal towns.

In Beijing I saw a lot more buildings inspired on old Chinese styles.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

European style is also alot cheaper to build (no sloping roofs, heavy tiles, decorative motifs or roofed enclosure walls), but there is still alot of 'traditional' builds (read: >120 years old style).

btw, 

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=660768


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## Spookvlieger (Jul 10, 2009)

^^ it's insane... almost the whole area between hangzou and bejing(1000km!) is developed like this.... It gives me the shivers just looking at it on GE


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## Spookvlieger (Jul 10, 2009)

Something else insane: A small village, huaxi in China constructs the 15th tallest skyscraper in the world...

http://www.chinasmack.com/wp-conten...scraper-built-in-rural-chinese-village-01.jpg


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## Spookvlieger (Jul 10, 2009)

^^ oh and in that area around the village, a bunch of new cities with skyscraper downtowns are growing like cabbage, there names aren't even on GE....Ever heard of Zhangjiagang? Me neither, It happends to be a 1.2 million city that didn't existed before 1980 where GE doesn't show the name of...


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