The Shi Ku Door style buildings of Shanghai

The Shi Ku Door style buildings of Shanghai people

The Shi Ku Door (Shi Ku Men) --- characteristic residential quarters in Shanghai mostly embodies the Shanghai features. Generally, the old lanes in Shanghai are of the Shi Ku Door architectural style, they derived from the Taiping rebellion Period(AD1851－1864), in the turmoil of war, the merchant princes, landlords and bureaucrats from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces were forced to settle their families in the foreign concessions for seeking sanctuary, therefore, the foreign house merchants began to build houses in bulk. In the 1920's-1930's, the enclosed construction style was mainly of the leading feature of Shanghai houses, not that exacting in sculpture but that quarrying the simple style. The houses with multi-doors became with single door. So the Shi Ku Door style with the mingling of Sino-West style came with the tide of fashion, and this construction has been largely absorbed the folk house styles in Jiangnan (areas south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River). The doorframes of this construction are made of the stone materials and its door leaves are solid slab painted black, and so this construction style got the name-"Shi Ku Door".

The distinctive character of the lanes and the houses of the Shi Ku Door style is the mingling of Sino-West style. The Shi Ku Door with the traditional two-story san-ho-yuan (three-section compound) or szu-ho-yuan(four-section compound)style of Jiannan (areas south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River). A patio in your sight, when crossing the threshold of the construction of the Shi Ku Door style, and stepping across the patio is the fore room where another patio connects with it, that is the back patio. After walking across the back patio you will reach a hearth and step through a back door. Both sides of the patios and the fore room are the left wing-rooms and the right wing-rooms. Above the hearth of the first floor is a garret (a small, dark back room over a kitchen), and walking up the garret is a flat roof (for drying clothes, etc.).As a whole, the "row house" layout was originated from Europe, the picture details on the exterior walls with the carved patterns of the occidental constructions. The triangle or round-arc sopraportas above the doors are usually the occidental patterns. The Shi Ku Door architectural style has become the most distinctive feature of the folk house construction in Shanghai.

Most of these constructions distributed in Huangpu district and Xuhui district. Not only did the primitively simple and shibui characteristics made the Shanghailanders feel infatuatedly but caught the eyes of the people across the world. Nowadays, many a Shi Ku Door construction is vested with fashion elements and the houses of this style have become the popular meeting places of the literati and faddists.