Work will begin this year to renovate an extensive area of shikumen houses in downtown Shanghai to return them to the way they looked 70 years ago, a senior official said yesterday.
So far, most of the more than 1,000 families living along the 17,400-square-meter lane called Jianyeli have already been relocated to make way for the project.
"We will conserve the exterior of the lane while making appropriate adjustments to the lane’s inside structure," Wang Anshi, head of the renovation and management department of the Shanghai Housing and Land Resource Administrative Bureau, said yesterday.
He said after the remaining families were relocated, the government will open bidding for foreign and domestic companies interested in conducting the face-lift on Jianyeli - which is a very typical example of the city’s shikumen homes.
"Hopefully, we will activate our international bidding right after the Spring Festival," Wang said.
Built in the early 1930s, Jianyeli has 22 rows including 260 connected two-story houses on Jianguo Road W.
Preparation for the project, such as relocating residents, started in August, 2003. Currently, about 70 families are still living along the lane.
The lane was designed to house up to 260 families, but by 2003 it was packed with more than 1,000 families plus 36 companies, causing severe damage to its structure, both interior and exterior.
Because too many people were packed into the homes, the kitchens were sometimes transformed into a separate room and some residents even broke down walls to turn their homes into small stores.
"Shikumen houses are the ’living fossils’ of the city," said Zheng Shiling, a renowned expert on architecture at Tongji University.
"If the city doesn’t protect its old shikumen houses in time, they will eventually disappear within the next decade," he added.
According to officials with Xuhui District, after Jianyeli is renovated, it will be either sold or rented out with the original residents having first chance to buy the new homes.
Also in Xuhui District, a storage-house-like construction on Hengshan Road will be replaced by a more "relevant building" with its neighboring Gothic houses and garden villas.
