Modernity and National Character of Shanghai Municipal Hospital Building: An Urban Anthropology Perspective in Architectural Study

The paper studies on Shanghai Municipal Hospital Building built-in 1937 through an urban anthropology perspective to discuss the intricate influence from social ideology and medical cultural transformations on the form, space even spatial implications of the hospital architecture within a certain historical era. The paper first expounds the Western Medicine Worship as the social mainstream medical consciousness in the Republic of China period and the modern characteristics of Shanghai hospital architecture in order to understand the social and architectural response under the transformation of medical culture and the development of hospital architecture design strategy. Then, the paper analyzes the hidden contradictions between the modified Chinese Renaissance Style appearance and modern functional interior space through the construction background, plan, and facade forms of the Municipal Hospital building. Finally, the study believes that under the influences of multiple factors including the Greater Shanghai Plan, the modernization of medical science, the trend of modern hospital architecture as well as the aspiration of national rejuvenation in China, the contradictory modernity and national character of the Municipal Hospital building are eventually unified in the goal of national identity, became an architectural answer of political ideals.

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ISBN
978-1-944214-31-9