Albert Speer gazes through the panorama window of the Executive Club on the 37th floor of the Four Seasons hotel and admires the Shanghai skyline. 'Look over there,' he exclaims. 'The Jin Mao Tower, isn't it fantastic? It's really a classic.' Decades of experience, it seems, have not dimmed the German architect's enthusiasm for his work.
The chances of the state-funded building Speer is admiring ever generating enough revenue to pay for itself directly are slim. But, as a symbol of modern China, Speer thinks it is working very well and will attract people to Pudong, Shanghai's financial and commercial hub.
'These seemingly 'irrational' projects can be a pretty good idea,' says Speer. 'The French are doing the same, with every great president from [Charles] de Gaulle to [Francois] Mitterrand building on a grand scale. Only the Germans are too dumb [to do the same],' he says with a laugh.
The opportunity to build on a grand scale is part of the reason the 72-year-old urban planner is on
the mainland. Since his Frankfurt-based firm, Albert Speer & Partner (AS&P), entered the Chinese market in 1994 it has become one of the largest foreign players, designing not only individual buildings but entire cities. Speer is also one of the first architects to establish a wholly foreign-owned company on the mainland, AS&P Architects and Planners Shanghai.
With Anting New Town - a city for more than 50,000 inhabitants close to Shanghai - now virtually complete, Speer is on his way to Changchun, in the northeast Jilin province, to finalise an even larger
deal. The Chinese government hopes Changchun will grow into a 'Chinese Detroit', becoming