ABSTRACT
Designed by Laszlo Hudec; completed 1934 Shanghai, China The Park Hotel (1934), also known as the Guoji Fandian (or the International Hotel),
was designed by Hungarian architect Laszlo Hudec (1893-1958) in Shanghai with the aid of Chinese and European architects and assistants in his firm. Since its completion in 1934, this skyscraper hotel has been a major landmark on the horizon of this enormous city. At 284 feet, the Park Hotel stood as the tallest building in Shanghai until the 1980s. Its value to the history of architecture lies in the circumstances of its origin, as witnessed by a young I.M.Pei, who cites his exposure to the hotel’s construction as the reason that he decided to become an architect. The hotel is a significant vector where the steady streams of European and American ideas and technology spreading around the world after World War I intersected with the self-conscious aspirations of certain Chinese groups to a global culture.
