2021年1月31日至4月18日，城市交集将呈现建筑师童寯的摄影展“也是风景，也是居屋——一位建筑师的上海胶片日记1930”。这是童寯先生的第一个摄影作品展，共有21幅胶片作品，聚焦于上世纪三十年代的上海。其中有很多珍贵的图像是首次与公众见面。通过童寯的镜头，我们能回望那个正处于黄金建设期的新上海。

上海，这座国际化的城市，既孵化了都市景观，也接纳了出于各种原因而居于此地的人们。“在梦幻中，城市有时是风景，有时是居屋。”激增的人口数量和良好的经济环境，让三十年代的上海迎来了黄金建设期，不断涌现的新建筑使得这座城市“现代之都”的称号毋庸置疑。

童寯先生我国著名建筑学家、建筑教育家，中国第一代杰出建筑师，中国近代造园理论和西方现代建筑研究的开拓者。他是中国首批留学美国宾夕法尼亚大学的建筑师之一，早年曾于北平清华学堂高等科学习。1932年童寯来到上海，加入赵深、陈植在上海正在组建的“华盖建筑师事务所”，在上世纪30-40年代完成了大量建筑设计作品。1938年，童寯因战争前往西南地区发展业务。从1931年到1938年，童寯刚好见证了一个正在被建设成为国际都市的上海。

From January 31st to April 18th, 2021, URRBANCROSS Gallery will present the exhibition "Now a Landscape, Now a Room: An Architect’s Photographic Diary of Shanghai in the 1930s". The new exhibition will show 21 photographs by architect Tung Chuin. Some of the images were released for the first time. Through Tung Chuin's lens, we can see the urbanization process of Shanghai in the 1930s.

Shanghai, the metropolis, not only incubated the urban landscape but also accommodated people who moved here for various reasons. “Now a landscape, now a room.” The surging population and favorable economic environment in the 1930s led to a golden period for construction. The continuous emergence of new buildings made the title “modern city” unquestionable.

The artist Tung Chuin was a well-known architect and architectural educator in China, one of the first-generation architects in China, and a pioneer in the theories of Chinese gardening and modern Western architecture. Tung was one of the first Chinese architects to study at the University of Pennsylvania after he graduated from Tsinghua College in Beijing. Tung came to Shanghai in 1932, joined Chao Shen and Benjamin Chen. Together, they founded the Allied Architects in Shanghai and completed a large number of buildings in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1938, Tung left Shanghai and stayed in southwest China during the Sino-Japanese war. From 1931 to 1938, Tung witnessed Shanghai under construction.

As an architect, Tung used to walk around the city with a camera and shoot the buildings that worth learning or examining. He would put the focus on a building and raise the camera high enough to get a whole picture of it. He would deliberately avoid pedestrians and vehicles. He would also climb high and get an aerial view of the city, just like an architect overlooking a city model. 

In Tung's photos, Shanghai was not as hustle and bustle, but quiet, even a bit lonely. It seems that when he pressed the shutter, the play called "City" was suspended, and so he could look critically at the stage setting of the "Shanghai, the metropolis".

Among the 21 photographs presented in this exhibition, there are 18 architectural portraits. These buildings were almost all completed in the 1930s, and some of them were reconstruction or restoration projects. In these photos, some buildings still show traces of construction work. Each photo could tell a story that reflects the on-going urbanization in Shanghai. In addition to the photographic works, we also present some of Tung Chuin's written books, including his papers on gardens and researches on Western modern architecture. Reading these works can help us understand his criteria for taking photos. We can also learn more about the architecture in the photos after understanding his design concepts.