Shanghai's Bund is the most famous street in China, a collection of colonial buildings of both historical and architectural importance. Plans by SOHO China to add a 31-story office building on the Bund have drawn wide criticism from locals, since the building is seen as bizarrely shaped and far too tall.

The Bund is a national treasure, and when adding modern buildings to this famous historical area, we should build remarkable pieces of architecture that are in harmony with the surrounding environment and reflect the features of our time.

The exact location of the planned SOHO office building is outside of the historical preservation area, and on a part of the Bund where most of the buildings are modern. However, there are still old buildings near it in the north. Therefore, the design of this building should take its relationship with the historical architecture into consideration.

However, as the renditions show, the planned office building strikingly contrasts with the surroundings thanks to being 135 meters tall, brightly colored, and uniquely shaped.  The property developers seem unaware of the integral feeling of the building. Perhaps they just focused on profit.

Feng Jizhong, a famous scholar of architecture and a colleague of mine, compares the relationship between historical and modern buildings to attending a banquets. Supposing you are late for a banquet, how will you greet others? If you don't greet them at all, they'll consider you as arrogant and aloof; however, if you say hello one by one, you'll seem too common.

New buildings are in the same position. Thus, making it both have a sense of harmony with the surrounding historical sites and maintain its own distinct features at the same time is a truly difficult task.

There were certainly innovative buildings in the past which were strongly opposed at first but finally got accepted by the public and are even viewed as masterpieces today, like the Centre Pompidou and the Eiffel Tower. More than a hundred artists, writers and journalists submitted joint letters to resist the construction of the Tower at the time. However, it finally proved to be a French national  landmark.

However, unlike the planned SOHO office building, these masterpieces were  not built for commercial use, that is, not for profit. They were eventually widely acknowledged as brilliant because they convey strong ideas and also reflect the distinctive features of their times.

As the SOHO office building is only built for profit, money constrains its design. It is designed as very tall to make up for its very narrow base and keep high capacity, and its function is too complex. It captures nothing about our zeitgeist, let alone the features of Shanghai.

Height and the strange shape are not the only reasons for the public's strong opposition. In the 1990s, an even taller building was constructed near the Bund but there was no reaction from the public.

I think the reason that SOHO office building has been severely criticized can be mainly attributed to the improved awareness of the public of the importance of preserving historical sites. Nowadays, the public's feelings about the city have become sharper. I'm happy to see their involvement.

But not everyone is an architect.  I don't agree with some people's requirement that new buildings on the Bund should exactly copy the historical style. I think there is no need to follow the old style, since  we are already in the 21st century.

There is a 170-meter-tall building across the river in Pudong, with a dome and bases resembling Greek temples. It stands out from its neighbors, but it's still not consistent with our time. We need architecture that truly reflects our time, our city, and our culture.

An outstanding building is like an organism that has grown naturally from the earth. There are many successful cases of brilliant architecture being implanted into the arcade of historical buildings. The ways and styles are different. We should aim for excellence of design, not just profit.

The article was compiled by Liu Jiawei, a Global Times intern, based on an interview with Zheng Shiling, a professor of architecture at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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