The history of Shikumen, the origin of Shikumen in Shanghai

Shikumen is a new type of architecture that integrates the western culture and the characteristics of traditional Han Chinese houses. Shikumen is a new type of building that combines western culture and traditional Han Chinese residential characteristics. It is the most characteristic residential building in Shanghai. Shanghai's old alley is generally Shikumen building, which originated in the Taiping Rebellion period, when the war forced the rich merchants, landlords, government officials along the Jiangsu and Zhejiang have to raise their families to seek refuge in the rental sector, foreign real estate developers to take advantage of the opportunity to build a large number of homes.

In the 20s and 30s of the last century, the enclosure is still the main feature of the Shanghai residence, but no longer pay attention to the carving, but the pursuit of simplicity, multi-fold into a single into the Shikumen residence came into being, a combination of Chinese and Western. This kind of building has absorbed a lot of the style of the Han Chinese houses in the south of the Yangtze River, with stone as the door frame and solid thick wood as the door, which is why this kind of building is named "Shikumen". Shikumen is the most representative residential building in Shanghai, and is often regarded as one of the symbols of Shanghai's modern urban civilization.

Early 1870s

Early Shikumen was created in the early 1870s, and it was derived from the residential form of Jiangnan houses, which were generally three-roomed or five-roomed, and maintained the symmetrical layout of the traditional Chinese architecture with a central axis.

The old Shikumen house is characterized by a long, horizontal patio, with rooms on both sides and a long, floor-to-ceiling living room with long windows. The hall is about 4 meters wide and 6 meters deep, and it is a place for meeting guests and banquets. On both sides of the hall is the second room, behind the wooden escalator leading to the second floor, and then back is the back patio, its depth is only half of the front patio, there is a well.

Behind the back patio is a single-story sloping annex, which is usually used as kitchen, utility room and storage room. The whole house has entrances at the front and back, and the front fa?ade consists of the wall of the patio and the wall of the compartment, in the center of which is the "Shikumen", which is made of stone as the door frame and matched with black lacquered and thick wooden doors; the back wall is roughly the same height as the front wall, forming a nearly closed fa?ade.

Shikumen is located in the downtown area, but still has a little high walls and deep courtyard, the benefits of quietness, quite popular with the Chinese gentry and wealthy merchants who lived in the concession at that time.

After the 1910s

The old-style Shikumen was gradually replaced by the new-style Shikumen. Most of the new style Shikumen adopt single or double room, the double room Shikumen only retains the front and rear compartments on one side, while the single room completely eliminates the compartments.

The biggest change in the internal structure of the new-style Shikumen is the back of the attached house to change the slope of the roof for the flat roof, above the building of a small bedroom, that is, the pavilion room. The roof of the pavilion room is made of reinforced concrete flat plate, surrounded by a railing wall for sunbathing. In order to reduce the footprint and save building materials, the new Shikumen also reduces the depth of the living room and lowers the height of the floors and walls.

Compared with the old-style Shikumen, the new-style Shikumen in the appearance is also different, the new-style Shikumen exterior wall surface more water brick, red brick or a mixture of green and red bricks, lime hooks and seams, rather than as the old-style Shikumen as white lime stucco, the old-style Shikumen commonly used horse-head wall or the Guanyin Pocket type of wall has also been no longer used. Another important difference is that the new-style Shikumen no longer use stone for the door frame, but instead of bricks with clear water, the lintel decoration has become more complex.