Rooms with a view
- Source: Global Times
- [10:58 July 14 2010]
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The lounge of an Embankment serviced apartment.
By Liu Mengyue
Frequent visitors to Shanghai are as keen to experience the city's vibrancy and color during their brief stays as those of us who live here. And for many, choosing to put up in a brand name five-star hotel that could be anywhere in the world, doesn't really live up to this. Little wonder that any number of boutique hotels and serviced apartments have sprung up recently, each offering a unique taste of Shanghai living. Many are converted from old Shikumen buildings and feature antique furniture and other memorabilia. But few have surpassed the efforts of Spanish-born Tucho Iglesias, the founder and designer of Chai Living, which is behind the renovation of 15 serviced apartments in Hongkou.
From the outside, The Embankment looks like any other old Shanghai residential building from the 1930s; stripped down walls and a maze of balconies with laundry hung from them. Inside are neat rows of green mailboxes lining the lobby walls.
Iglesias looked at more than 200 sites in Shanghai before finally deciding on this building, which was constructed by the Sassoon family. "I instantly fell in love with this area when I first moved here in 2005," he told the Global Times. "The building overlooks Suzhou Creek and it has an unimpeded view of the Pearl Tower."
He believes the location and design of the building both contribute to an authen-tic experience of how local Shanghainese live. Iglesias himself has become good friends with an 80-year-old calligrapher who lives in the building. "We made a long pao (dragon robe) together, on which he wrote the Chinese brush character Li, which means power. It was exhibited for two weeks at the Expo."
Iglesias, a former lawyer, designed almost every aspect of the furniture and furnish-ings in the 200 square-meter apartments: everything from the tables to lamps and even the cabinet handles. "The floors are all made of elm wood which has been reclaimed from century-old doors," Chai Living communications manager Li Dengfeng, told the Global Times. "We've used underfloor heating throughout, so the material had to be very durable."
