Janos Gerle
>A pioneer of Chinese modernism
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János Gerle @ The Hungarian Quarterly rediscovers the architect who transformed Shanghai in the 1930s.
The Hungarian architect László Hudec (1893–1958) is a name to be reckoned with in China where he settled for a long period, but he is almost unheard of in his home country beyond a tight circle of architectural historians and his extended family. Quite a bit has been written about Hudec outside Hungary: Luca Poncellini, an architecture student from Turin, recently completed a study which is soon to appear as Volume 13 of Holnap Kiadó’s architecture series. It’s odd that he has vanished from collective memory, as tér és forma (‘space and form’), the mouthpiece of modern architecture in the interwar years, featured one of his buildings, and Hudec kept in touch with a number of important Hungarian architects. I first came across his name decades ago when, searching the database of the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, I stumbled across a newspaper article from the 1930s: a “Hungarian architect designed the first skyscraper in Shanghai, the first in Asia.”
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Until recently, the Chinese paid little attention to their architectural heritage, particularly the architecture of the “bourgeois era”. The remarkable pace of China’s growth and the radical transformation of its cityscapes, however, have led to an upsurge in interest. As the old urban framework is swept away, much of what remains is now seen as precious. The work of László Hudec, too, is the subject of research, films and exhibitions. He is considered a pioneer of Chinese modernism, the most productive and flexible representative in the process of its Europeanization, or Americanization, between 1920 and 1940.
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