1933 Lao Chang Fang

1933 Lao Chang Fang is a former slaughterhouse established in the old Shanghai, "1933" represents the year the construction was completed, the building now is open to the public as a complex of shops and offices in Hongkou district, where appeals to the young as its architecture is an ideal background to make their photos looking unique and cool.

The extraordinary structure was designed in 1931 under the request from the Municipal Council of the concession zone, to establish a slaughterhouse that was going to practice standardized procedures to handle livestock slaughtering works. It was an attempt to introduce the concept of production-line to ensure working efficiency and quality control.

"The premises feature an elaborately designed slaughterhouse - a four-storey concrete structure with an intricate vertical and horizontal circulation system to separate humans and cattle and also live animals and hanging carcasses…"

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"The two structures consequently formed two internal courts, with a series of bridges at different levels connecting the animal stalls to the slaughter halls and with further bridges to transport carcasses, connect the slaughter halls to the central core, the inspector's room and finally the chilling rooms in the west wing of the rectangular building. Thus, the mechanised process of the animal disassembling line was explicitly expressed in the spatial configuration of the abattoir design (He 2011; He and Zhu 2012; Wang and Pendlebury 2016; Zhu et al. 2016) and each element of the building carefully designed for maximum efficiency. For example, the bridges were given various sizes in response to the different types and sizes of animals, with widths narrow enough to prevent animals from turning around and side walls high enough to avoid them looking outwards. ..."

Reference: Wang, Yi-Wen & Pendlebury, John. (2016). The modern abattoir as a machine for killing: The municipal abattoir of the Shanghai International Settlement, 1933. Architectural Research Quarterly. 20. 131-144. 10.1017/S1359135516000294.