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0世纪30年代，当时还只有十几岁的贝聿铭(I.M. Pei)看完电影，走出坐落于上海南京西路的大光明大戏院(Grand Theatre)。他抬头往上看，被一幅景象深深地打动了。剧院旁边的国际饭店(Park Hotel)是当时上海最高的建筑，作为装饰艺术(Art Deco)的典范作品，它威严俯瞰着由众多低矮小楼组成的上海滩。日后设计了很多世界著名建筑的贝聿铭说，这一情景给他带来了极大震撼，让他从此走向建筑设计之路发挥了重要的推动作用。
Stefan Irvine for the Wall Street Journal
邬达克的作品之一
匈牙利驻上海领事馆的文化教育参赞朱迪•哈吉巴(Judit Hajba)说道。"中国人认为邬达克就是个上海建筑师。"
邬达克是匈牙利人，家里是名门望族。他出生在奥匈帝国一个名叫Beszterceb a nya的小镇上，现在是斯洛伐克的中心城市，名叫Banska Bystrica。1918年11月，25岁的邬达克刚从俄国西伯利亚战俘营逃出来，流亡来到上海。很难想象，他日后会成为一个将自己的风格刻印在上海城市轮廓线上的人，但那时的上海充满新想法和新机会，对全世界的生意人、游客、冒险家和流亡者都敞开欢迎的大门。
"他在适当的时间出现在了适当的地方。" 哈吉巴女士说道。
大清王朝于1911年灭亡，在此之前，西方列强从风雨飘摇的清政府手中攫取了大量领土和租界，上海成为一个半殖民地城市，本土和外国企业如雨后春笋般涌现出来。凭借其在匈牙利布达佩斯皇家约瑟夫理工学院(Royal Joseph Technical University)获得的建筑学学位，刚刚踏足这片土地的邬达克在一家美国建筑公司克利洋行(R.A. Curry)找到一份工作。皇家约瑟夫理工学院是仿照巴黎美术学院(Ecole des Beaux-Arts)设立的一所大学。
"可以看得出来，邬达克从未忘记他在学校接受的正统教育，总是让建筑物保持恰当的比例，即使像上海国际饭店这样的高层建筑也有基部、中部和顶部的划分。"《上海建筑》(Shanghai Architecture)一书的作者、建筑师安.沃尔(Anne Warr)说道。
Courtesy of Hudec Heritage Project
匈牙利建筑大师邬达克(Laszlo Ede Hudec)
邬达克到上海这个新兴都市的最初计划是赚点钱，然后回家。然而，他感觉在克利洋行的忙碌工作很有意思，并很快得到了晋升。克利洋行建造了很多学校、写字楼、私宅和商业建筑，同时获得不少设计奖项。邬达克特别喜欢自己设计的上海花旗总会(American Club)大楼，那是中美商会(American Chamber of Commerce)和拉萨尔函授大学(LaSalle Extension University)的办公场所。多年后，它一度成为上海高级人民法院的所在地。这个盒子一样的八层建筑外墙上贴有深棕色的墙砖，这种装饰手法在20世纪30年代的上海变得十分流行。该建筑深具美国乔治亚复兴式风格(American Georgian Revival)的特点，每层楼上都有对称的连排窗户。在顶层，邬达克设计了一排白色大理石的帕拉弟奥式(Palladian)拱窗，形成一个装饰性的骑楼。
邬达克决定在上海住下去，他娶了一个在上海出生的德国商人的女儿吉赛拉(Gizella)为妻，并创建了自己的公司。他为外国人设计住宅和办公楼，而且越来越多的中国商人和政客也成为其客户。
有一半英国血统的何东爵士(Sir Robert Ho Tung)，一个商业王国横跨上海和香港的实业巨头，请邬达克设计他在上海的私宅。这栋建筑物有一个面冲南的门廊，矗立着威严的希腊爱奥尼亚(Ionic)立柱，此外还有半露方柱，法式窗户和带铁扶手的小阳台，庭院是一个曲径通幽的假山园林。整个院落实现了完美的中西合璧。后来，何东爵士的这栋私宅成为上海辞书出版社的所在地。
邬达克来到上海时，正值第一次世界大战刚刚结束，"这个城市渴望变化，而邬达克也想顺应这种变化，"沃尔女士说，"他希望以一种全新的设计理念来建造一个全新的世界。"
沃尔认为，1927年是邬达克的一个事业转折点；当时他去美国采风，其建筑设计风格也随之发生变化。当邬达克从加州、芝加哥和纽约回来时，笔记本上画满了素描，满脑子都是各种新的想法。
"他的风格开始从古典主义转向装饰艺术和现代主义。"沃尔说道。
Stefan Irvine for the Wall Street Journal
邬达克设计的上海国际饭店
后来，邬达克承认自己在设计上海国际饭店时，受到纽约暖炉大楼(American Radiator Building)的影响。那栋大楼建于1924年，现在叫做美国标准大厦(American Standard Building)，是布莱恩公园酒店(Bryant Park Hotel)的所在地。上海国际饭店还运用了很多当时的尖端技术，如洗碗机以及纵贯整栋大楼的奥的斯(Otis)电梯等。
沃尔说，当时的上海建筑物一般都在泥地上打松木桩作为地基。"而在上海国际饭店这个项目上，"她说，"邬达克提出一种全新的薄钢板堆垛系统，从而避免出现外滩沿岸建筑发生的地陷问题。"
由于中国内战的加剧，邬达克于1947年离开上海，先去了意大利，后来前往美国加州，1958年在那里去世。1949年，中共解放了中国；此后数十年间，邬达克在"老上海"的建筑作品逐渐淡出了人们的视野。
Mishi Saran
（编者按：Mishi Saran是一位作家，现在常驻上海。）
沃尔说，当时的上海建筑物一般都在泥地上打松木桩作为地基。"而在上海国际饭店这个项目上，"她说，"邬达克提出一种全新的薄钢板堆垛系统，从而避免出现外滩沿岸建筑发生的地陷问题。"
由于中国内战的加剧，邬达克于1947年离开上海，先去了意大利，后来前往美国加州，1958年在那里去世。1949年，中共解放了中国；此后数十年间，邬达克在"老上海"的建筑作品逐渐淡出了人们的视野。
Mishi Saran
（编者按：Mishi Saran是一位作家，现在常驻上海。）
In the early 1930s I.M. Pei, then a teenager, walked out of the Grand Theatre on Shanghai's West Nanjing Road after a movie, glanced up -- and was spellbound. The Park Hotel, next door to the theater, was the tallest building in town, a splendid Art Deco specimen that soared powerfully over a low-slung city. The young man who would go on to design famous structures around the world says it played a key role in his decision to become an architect.
Still an imposing presence 75 years later, the hotel is just one of more than 65 Shanghai buildings -- many of them city landmarks, in a rich variety of styles -- designed by László Ede Hudec.
'The Chinese think of Hudec as a Shanghainese architect,' says Judit Hajba, cultural and education affairs consul at the Hungarian Consulate in Shanghai.
By birth he was Hungarian, son of a prosperous family in Besztercebánya, a city in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The city now lies in the heart of Slovakia, where it's called Banská Bystrica. When Mr. Hudec washed up in Shanghai as a 25-year-old in November 1918, stateless and recently escaped from a Russian prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia, he hardly seemed like a man who would put his own remarkable stamp on the cityscape. But Shanghai in those days was bursting with new ideas and throbbing with opportunity; it was a city where traders, travelers, adventurers and refugees of all nationalities found an open door.
'He was the right man in the right place at the right time,' Ms. Hajba says.
Businesses both local and foreign flourished in the semicolonial city, where Western powers had clawed out territories and concessions from a flagging Qing dynasty in the years before its 1911 collapse. Scrambling to his feet, Mr. Hudec got a job with an American architectural firm, R.A. Curry, putting to use his degree in architecture from the Royal Joseph Technical University in Budapest, which was modeled on L'École des Beaux-Arts Paris.
'You can see Hudec never forgot his classical training, always ensuring his buildings had the right proportions; even the Park Hotel is divided into a base, a middle and a top section,' says Anne Warr, architect and author of 'Shanghai Architecture.'
Mr. Hudec's path to Shanghai had begun in 1914, when the new graduate enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army at the outbreak of World War I. In a skirmish with the Russians, he was captured by Cossacks and sent as a POW to Siberia. With his gift for languages -- he picked up Polish, Russian, English and French along the way, on top of the Slovak, Hungarian and German he already spoke -- he was able to wangle a fake Russian passport and then escape to Harbin in northeast China, where he exchanged his documents for a frontier pass that allowed travel within China and Japan.
Mr. Hudec's plan when he arrived in boomtown Shanghai was to make some money, and then go home. But his work in R.A. Curry's bustling office was exciting, and promotions came rapidly. The firm tackled schools, offices, private homes and commercial buildings, picking up awards for their proposals on the way. Mr. Hudec was particularly fond of his work on a building commissioned by the American Club in China that housed offices for the American Chamber of Commerce and space for the LaSalle Extension University. Years later, for a period, it became the Shanghai High People's Court. The box-like eight-floor structure had dark brown bricks as facing tiles on the outside walls, a style that became popular in Shanghai in the 1930s. The building was mostly American Georgian Revival, with its characteristic, symmetrical rows of windows on each floor. On the top floor, Mr. Hudec placed a row of seven white-marble-arched Palladian windows to form a decorative arcade.
Mr. Hudec decided to stay on in Shanghai. He married Gizella, the Shanghai-born daughter of a German businessman, and started his own firm. He designed homes and offices for foreigners and, increasingly, for wealthy Chinese businessmen and politicians.
Sir Robert Ho Tung, a powerful half-English magnate whose commercial empire straddled Shanghai and Hong Kong, commissioned a Shanghai home from Mr. Hudec, who gave it a south-facing porch with graceful Ionic columns. The building had pilasters, French windows and a shallow balcony with an iron balustrade; the yard featured a rock garden and labyrinths. It was a harmonious marriage of East and West. Later, Sir Robert's home became the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House.
Mr. Hudec arrived in Shanghai at the end of World War I 'in a city that wanted to change, and he wanted to change with it,' Ms. Warr says. 'He was interested in designing in a new way for a new world.'
In 1927 came what Ms. Warr calls a seminal point for the architect: a trip to the U.S. that produced a midcareer shift. He came back from California, Chicago and New York City with a notebook full of sketches and a head full of ideas.
'He began to move his style away from the classical toward Art Deco and Modernism,' she says.
Later, Mr. Hudec would acknowledge the debt that his design for the Park Hotel owed to New York's American Radiator Building; built in 1924, it's now called the American Standard Building, and houses the Bryant Park Hotel. The Park Hotel in Shanghai also embodied cutting-edge technology, from its dishwashers and Otis elevators down to its foundation.
The Shanghai standard at the time, Ms. Warr says, was to build atop timber piles driven into the muddy earth. 'For the Park Hotel,' she says, 'Hudec specified a new steel-sheet piling system, which prevented the building from sinking as the buildings along the Bund had done.'
With the turmoil of civil war engulfing China, Mr. Hudec left Shanghai in 1947, moving first to Italy and then to California, where he died in 1958. The Communists took over China in 1949, and the curtain fell across Mr. Hudec's work for decades.
Mishi Saran
(Mishi Saran is a writer based in Shanghai.)
Still an imposing presence 75 years later, the hotel is just one of more than 65 Shanghai buildings -- many of them city landmarks, in a rich variety of styles -- designed by László Ede Hudec.
'The Chinese think of Hudec as a Shanghainese architect,' says Judit Hajba, cultural and education affairs consul at the Hungarian Consulate in Shanghai.
By birth he was Hungarian, son of a prosperous family in Besztercebánya, a city in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The city now lies in the heart of Slovakia, where it's called Banská Bystrica. When Mr. Hudec washed up in Shanghai as a 25-year-old in November 1918, stateless and recently escaped from a Russian prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia, he hardly seemed like a man who would put his own remarkable stamp on the cityscape. But Shanghai in those days was bursting with new ideas and throbbing with opportunity; it was a city where traders, travelers, adventurers and refugees of all nationalities found an open door.
'He was the right man in the right place at the right time,' Ms. Hajba says.
Businesses both local and foreign flourished in the semicolonial city, where Western powers had clawed out territories and concessions from a flagging Qing dynasty in the years before its 1911 collapse. Scrambling to his feet, Mr. Hudec got a job with an American architectural firm, R.A. Curry, putting to use his degree in architecture from the Royal Joseph Technical University in Budapest, which was modeled on L'École des Beaux-Arts Paris.
'You can see Hudec never forgot his classical training, always ensuring his buildings had the right proportions; even the Park Hotel is divided into a base, a middle and a top section,' says Anne Warr, architect and author of 'Shanghai Architecture.'
Mr. Hudec's path to Shanghai had begun in 1914, when the new graduate enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army at the outbreak of World War I. In a skirmish with the Russians, he was captured by Cossacks and sent as a POW to Siberia. With his gift for languages -- he picked up Polish, Russian, English and French along the way, on top of the Slovak, Hungarian and German he already spoke -- he was able to wangle a fake Russian passport and then escape to Harbin in northeast China, where he exchanged his documents for a frontier pass that allowed travel within China and Japan.
Mr. Hudec's plan when he arrived in boomtown Shanghai was to make some money, and then go home. But his work in R.A. Curry's bustling office was exciting, and promotions came rapidly. The firm tackled schools, offices, private homes and commercial buildings, picking up awards for their proposals on the way. Mr. Hudec was particularly fond of his work on a building commissioned by the American Club in China that housed offices for the American Chamber of Commerce and space for the LaSalle Extension University. Years later, for a period, it became the Shanghai High People's Court. The box-like eight-floor structure had dark brown bricks as facing tiles on the outside walls, a style that became popular in Shanghai in the 1930s. The building was mostly American Georgian Revival, with its characteristic, symmetrical rows of windows on each floor. On the top floor, Mr. Hudec placed a row of seven white-marble-arched Palladian windows to form a decorative arcade.
Mr. Hudec decided to stay on in Shanghai. He married Gizella, the Shanghai-born daughter of a German businessman, and started his own firm. He designed homes and offices for foreigners and, increasingly, for wealthy Chinese businessmen and politicians.
Sir Robert Ho Tung, a powerful half-English magnate whose commercial empire straddled Shanghai and Hong Kong, commissioned a Shanghai home from Mr. Hudec, who gave it a south-facing porch with graceful Ionic columns. The building had pilasters, French windows and a shallow balcony with an iron balustrade; the yard featured a rock garden and labyrinths. It was a harmonious marriage of East and West. Later, Sir Robert's home became the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House.
Mr. Hudec arrived in Shanghai at the end of World War I 'in a city that wanted to change, and he wanted to change with it,' Ms. Warr says. 'He was interested in designing in a new way for a new world.'
In 1927 came what Ms. Warr calls a seminal point for the architect: a trip to the U.S. that produced a midcareer shift. He came back from California, Chicago and New York City with a notebook full of sketches and a head full of ideas.
'He began to move his style away from the classical toward Art Deco and Modernism,' she says.
Later, Mr. Hudec would acknowledge the debt that his design for the Park Hotel owed to New York's American Radiator Building; built in 1924, it's now called the American Standard Building, and houses the Bryant Park Hotel. The Park Hotel in Shanghai also embodied cutting-edge technology, from its dishwashers and Otis elevators down to its foundation.
The Shanghai standard at the time, Ms. Warr says, was to build atop timber piles driven into the muddy earth. 'For the Park Hotel,' she says, 'Hudec specified a new steel-sheet piling system, which prevented the building from sinking as the buildings along the Bund had done.'
With the turmoil of civil war engulfing China, Mr. Hudec left Shanghai in 1947, moving first to Italy and then to California, where he died in 1958. The Communists took over China in 1949, and the curtain fell across Mr. Hudec's work for decades.
Mishi Saran
(Mishi Saran is a writer based in Shanghai.)
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