The buildings nobody looks up at

Everyone photographs the Pudong skyline from the Bund, then walks the Bund itself, then leaves. Almost nobody stops and looks at the buildings they are standing in front of. Which is a shame, because the Bund's west side is one of the best collections of 1920s and 1930s architecture in Asia, and much of it is Art Deco.

I did not care about architecture before I started guiding here. A retired architect from Barcelona changed that on a slow Tuesday in 2019 by making me stand in front of one facade for twenty minutes and actually look. Now it is my favourite walk in the city.

What to look for

Art Deco in Shanghai is not the Miami Beach version. It is heavier, more restrained, and often mixed with Chinese motifs in ways that European Deco never attempted.

Four things to train your eye on:

• Vertical emphasis. Long unbroken lines running up the facade, drawing the eye up. Deco wanted buildings to look tall before they were tall.
• Geometric ornament. Chevrons, zigzags, stepped setbacks, fan shapes. Look at the spandrels between windows and the panels above doorways.
• Setback massing. Buildings that step back as they rise. This was partly a zoning requirement and partly a stylistic signature.
• Streamline curves. Rounded corners and horizontal banding, especially on buildings from the mid-1930s onward, when the style shifted toward Streamline Moderne.

The walk, building by building

Start at the north end, at Waibaidu Bridge

The steel truss bridge over Suzhou Creek is a good starting point because it gives you a full view back down the Bund waterfront in one frame before you get close to it.

The Peace Hotel (formerly Sassoon House), 20 Nanjing Road East

Built in 1929, the tallest building in Asia at the time. Green pyramid roof, granite base, brick shaft. Walk around to the side entrance and look at the metal grille work and the stepped stone detail at the base. The interior lobby is worth stepping into; the ceiling detail alone justifies five minutes.

The Bank of China building, 23 Zhongshan East 1st Road

Built in 1937 by a Chinese architect, L.E. Hudec, who was responding to the foreign-dominated skyline around it. It is the one Bund building that deliberately incorporates Chinese design language. Look at the roof pavilion and the dark, almost brutal stonework. It was built taller than the neighbouring Sassoon House specifically to make a point.

The former HSBC building, 12 Zhongshan East 1st Road

Not Art Deco, it is neoclassical, but you should see it because of the domed rotunda inside. The ceiling mosaics were covered over for decades and rediscovered. Walk in through the main entrance and look up.

Further south along Zhongshan East 1st Road

Continue past Yan'an Road and the buildings get quieter and more Deco. Several former bank and shipping company headquarters have rounded corners, horizontal banding, and excellent metalwork on the doors. This stretch is where you will have the pavement mostly to yourself.

The side streets matter more

The Bund frontage is the showpiece. The real Deco is one block inland.

Walk up Sichuan Middle Road, Jiangxi Middle Road, or the small lanes behind Fuzhou Road. This is where the apartment blocks and office buildings from the 1930s are, in brick and pale stucco, with curved corner balconies and original steel windows. Many are still residential. Some are being restored. A few are crumbling in a way that is genuinely beautiful.

Look for the small Art Deco apartment blocks with stepped parapets. There are dozens and nobody has put them on a map.

Practical notes

• Go on a weekday morning. The Bund is manageable before 10:00 and mobbed on weekend evenings.
• The walk from Waibaidu Bridge to the south end of the Bund is about 2.5 km and takes 90 minutes at a normal pace, longer if you actually stop and look.
• You can enter the lobbies of several buildings during business hours. Be quiet, be brief, and do not photograph people working.
• Wear proper shoes. The pavement along the Bund is stone and hard on the feet.

Then cross the river and look back

The standard move is the Bund promenade at night for the Pudong skyline. Do that, but do it after the walk, not instead of it.

The better version is to take the ferry from the Bund across to Pudong (2 yuan, and much better than the tourist tunnel), walk along the river on the east side, and look back at the west bank. From there you see the whole Bund as a single composition: the low Deco and neoclassical waterfront backed by the modern towers. That view explains the city better than the postcard one does.

Or go up to a rooftop bar on the west side and look east. Either way, once you have actually looked at the buildings, the skyline stops being the only thing worth seeing.

Originally published on 71Asia Tours blog.