Cardboard Shikumen is a project that documents the transformation of a traditional Shikumen neighbourhood undergoing demolition and redevelopment in downtown Shanghai in 360° panorama photos and videos.
In the summer of 2015, I documented my childhood neighbourhood in downtown Shanghai using a DIY 360° camera. The neighbourhood, consisting mainly of traditional Shikumen houses built in the late 1920s, was slated for demolition and redevelopment by the city government, and the residents were asked to move out by the end of that year.
Shikumen (in Chinese characters: 石库门, literally "stone gate houses"), is a form of architecture unique to Shanghai. Born out of necessity to accomodate an influx of Chinese refugees during the late 19th century in the British Concession of Shanghai, Shikumen houses feature a combination of Chinese and Western architectural influences. During their peak, Shikumen houses accounted for almost 60% of the total housing stock of the city. Today their numbers are dwindling due to massive urban redevelopment and gentrification campaigns spearheaded by the city government.
Upon learning its impending demolition in early 2015, I started to devise a documentation and preservation project for the neighbourhood. At that time 360° cameras were still rare and expensive. To reduce cost, I applied for NYU Shanghai's Undergraduate Research Fund and built a DIY 360° camera made out of 6 Xiaomi Yi Cameras (GoPro equivalents/knockoffs). The name "Cardboard Shikumen" is derived from Google's inexpensive VR headset the project was originally designed to work with.
In 2017, I returned to my neighbourhood, now with its residents all moved out and its demolition imminent. I took photos and videos of the empty neighbourhood and put the new footage alongside with the 2015 footage to showcase the changes happening in the intervening years.
The project was featured, in the form of an interactive installation, at the exhibition Shanghai Project - Qidian 2116.
