Negotiating Self; Domestic Architecture of the Shanghai Foreign Concession Districts

This thesis will consider the role domestic architecture played in the negotiation of identity, class, and culture in Shanghai. By building upon the work in the field of critical studies the images, symbols, and metaphors of domestic architecture can be explored. In turn, Shanghai villas built between in 1920’s and 1930’s provide case studies that can be deconstructed as text. The visual understanding of domestic spaces that responded to varied ideas about culture, class, and identity lay rooted as much in an easily translatable visual and stylistic vocabulary as in the willingness of the viewer to accept the interpretation laid before them.