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The Hungarian Consulate in Shanghai and the Ministry of Education and Culture worked together with Shanghai's local government bodies to organise a programme of events that started in January 2008 to commemorate the 115th anniversary of Hudec's death and the 50th anniversary of his death.
The exhibition of photographs of Hudec's most important works opened in the recently renovated Grand Theatre, designed by Hudec. Built in 1933, the theatre was long Asia's most modern: Hudec included air conditioning, fire safety measures well ahead of the time, and earphones for simultaneous interpretation of films. Hudec designed more than a hundred buildings in Shanghai, among them the Park Hotel and the former American Club.
Hungarian Chief Consul in Shanghai Tamás Hajba, Tongji University Deputy Rector Wu Jiang and Deke Erh spoke at the exhibition opening which was attended by a cross-section of the city's elite.
Deke Erh has put together more than 15 albums about Shanghai with the American expatriate writer and researcher Tess Johnston. Since August 2008, Deke Erh has travelled to Hungary twice, with the support of the Ministry of Education and Culture and the National Culture Fund, to photograph Hungarian architecture that may have inspired Hudec as well as some of the country's cultural heritage.
The Hudec Year programme featured presentations, seminars and tours about every month. One of the highlights of the year was an exhibition organised by the Shanghai City Planning Commission, the Shanghai City Planning Archive and the Tongji University that opened in the American Club building in June 2008.
The events on the programme drew tens of thousands of people. The programme was supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Balassi Institute and the National Development and Economy Ministry, with the cooperation of the Shanghai City Planning Office, the City Building Archive, Tongji University and the family of László Hudec.
Hudec was born in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, in 1893, when the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied architecture in Budapest from 1911 until 1914, then enlisted at the beginning of WWI. Hudec was captured by the Russians in 1916 and sent to a prison camp in Siberia. On his way to the camp he jumped from a train near the Chinese border and made his way to Shanghai, where he put his architectural training to work, first for an American firm, then for his own.
