Shanghai 1933 (上海1933老场坊 Lǎo chǎng fang) also known as 'Old Millfun' was originally the “First Slaughterhouse in the Far East”, whose construction was funded by the Municipal Council in 1933. It served a number of purposes over the years, including medicine factory and cold storage facility.
The designer was the English architect Balfours. It has a square external shape, as well as a round inner building. Four side buildings are connected to the main central building with staircases. It is constructed by using the imported cement from Great Britain.
Despite the utilitarian purpose of the building, much thought was put into its style and decoration. The building is filled with decorative elements, such as beautifully designed Art Deco motifs in many of the windows and “flowering” columns. There is even a religious element to the design. All the windows were built facing west, the direction of the Buddhist holy land. This was thought to help aid the cattle’s process of reincarnation. On a more practical note, it is also the wind direction in Shanghai and helped to counter the smell of slaughter.
The walls are 50 centimeters thick and the inside is hollow. In the workshops, a structure of reinforced concrete flat slab is adopted. Designed for efficiency, the hulking spiderweb of intertwining staircases, ramps, bridges and corridors was all part of guiding the flow both of thousands of workers to their stations, and of millions of cattle to their deaths.
Rough floor surfaces prevented cattle from slipping, even on blood-slick floors. The lovely lattice windows on the outside were built to create maximum air circulation. The entire building was built around a central atrium that let in natural light. Cattle were herded through “air bridges” of varying width which controlled the animals’ flow, and the building’s sharp angles allowed small spaces for people to stand in, in case the cattle began to panic.
Mysterious light and intricate space are created by intertwining passageways that narrate the past stories of this former slaughterhouse. It was renovated according to the principle of conservation, and modern architectural vocabularies, such as steel and glass, have turned it into and urban complex combining leisure and entertainment.
The mottled historical traces in the architecture are kept in both the umbrella – shaped concrete columns, which have a great visual impact, and the exquisite façade details, that provide many decorations.
The Incinerator 焚化炉 Fénhuàlú
The Incinerator was erected together with Shanghai 1933 in the 1930s. It covers a rectangular area of approximately 600 square meters and contains four floors, each of which is 3.6 meters high.
A gigantic chimney stands at the back of the building, facing directly towards Yujing Creek.Its facades adopt the cement materials similar to Shanghai 1933, but employ more top-hung iron windows.
The vertical lines repeating on the facades have formed a kind of rhythm, and three main materials (concrete, steel and glass) constitute a chorus of spatial textures.
As supporting facility of the slaughterhouse during that time, the incinerator was a gigantic industrial building.
The functional relationship of these two buildings no longer exists today, and only their confrontation in the space remains.
It has been changed into a private office space.