narratives
on
the
remnants
Training as an architect at university and in practice for the past eight years, I am deeply intrigued by the captivity of ambience. To extract the meaning of things from endless phenomena, to reveal the lurking dynamics and to possess tangible realities through the formation of narratives are consistently my primary concerns. There is a layer of consciousness running alongside my work, drawn from the surrounding contexts. Taiwan, my native land, represents a paradoxical situation in both political and historical terms. Cultural elements of the bygone era have been eradicated and suppressed with the alternation of regimes. Geographical features have evolved in the constant urbanisation and industrialisation. The isle has undergone drastic wrestling and conflicts between forces, hence it is now replete with noise, fragments, fading lustre and failed aspirations. Yet these remnants of a time complete the portrait of both the physical and social landscape in Taiwan. ‘History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.’ Can veracity only remain in a state of suspense? I would rather argue that it lingers in a state of perception. The collective perception extracted from the fragmentary remnants.
The quest for veracity, a naive intention perhaps, has driven me to further decipher the extracts. What tantalise me are their provisional states, which are often located on the verge of collision, on the spectrum of dynamic grey rather than the two ends of black and white. Before the reconquest of perceptions, I believe that we, as either architects or artists, would have to strive for an accurate description of the reality, to my interpretation, the disclosure of dynamics among the contextual extracts. ‘Both forms of production, artistic and architectonic, are fundamentally determined by a vague set of causes which consequently lead to a rather imprecise set of effects.’ In the era of reflections and introspection, prompted by fragmentary, scattered yet peculiar landscape, the three selected projects were constructed in an attempt to balance conceptual immediacy and materialised expressions.
However white a white may be, it never is a true white. In a white without a single bit of cloudiness, invisibly miniscule black is lurking, and that is always its constitution itself. A white does not regard a black with hostility, but rather it is understood to contain a black, because a white by its nature fosters black. At the very moment of coming into existence, a white is already beginning to move toward a black. But in its long process toward a black, however many gradations of gray it passes through, a white does not cease to be white until the very moment it is totally black. Even when it is infiltrated by what are not thought to be attributes of white such as, for example, shadows, dullness, or absorption of light, a white is gleaming behind a mask of gray. A white dies in a flash. In that instant a white disperses, leaving no traces, and a total black rises up. But —
—Shuntaro Tanikawa, A Personal View of Gray
Index Extract: Reveal: Possess:
2015
Synecdoche, Unseens : paradox : authentic—duplicate : spectrum: from romantic artificial to clinical nature
2017-18
Forest Big : frame : bucolic—primitive : adaptations: the circuit, the shelter, the hut
2015-18
Dune Art Museum : transition : concealment—openness : cluster: cells and shells
synecdoche
[s]
[,u]
,unseens
synecdoche
[s]
s,u 02/03 conceptual collage: the unseens
s,u 04/05 taichung harbour site analysis
s,u 06/07 on-site image: the walls
s,u 08/09 on-site image: siltation
s,u 10/11 on-site image: out of scale
s,u 12 artistic reference
s,u 13 taichung harbour birdview
s,u 14 artistic reference
s,u 15 typology study
s,u 16/17 scenery/scenario study
s,u 18/19 scenery/scenario study
s,u 20/21 scenery/scenario study
1
2
3
s,u 24/25 dynamic study
s,u 26 north siltation area
s,u 27 manifesto & masterplan
s,u 28/29 index
s,u 30-35 interventions no 1 - no 6
s,u 36 artistic reference
s,u 37 collective collage
s,u 38/39 scenario variation
s,u 40/41 scenario variation
s,u 42/43 scenario variation
s,u 44/45 site/intervention models
1
2
3
s,u 46/47 collage
s,u 48 model details
s,u 22/23 scenery/scenario study 4
,unseens
[,u ]
s,u 02/03 I believe that a metaphor is like a mirror, reflecting truth and connecting conceptual world with the material one. Through the formation of narratives among those fragmented metaphors, we could interpret the intangible behind phenomenon fractures. Just as the way we use duplicates to approach the invisible or undesirable authentic.
The project is about reconstructing perceptual narratives across the visible barriers to reach the intangible seascape in the North Siltation Area of Taichung Harbour. With six orchestrated landscape interventions, integrating time and corporeal experiences into a dynamic spatial structure, I intend to trace the unseen relativity of existing elements on site as well as to depict the image that we all live on the blurred boundaries between natural and artificial scenery.
s,u 02/03 04/05 06/07 08/09 10/11 Being an enormous man made organism, Taichung Harbour hence faces relentless counter forces from nature threatening to fail its functioning tissue. The North Siltation Area, lies to the north of the harbour’s main gateway, has been left idle as passive resistance to silted sand brought by the current and strong monsoon. For the past few decades, that had led to successive construction of wind walls and afforestation. Multiple layers of extensive walls—physical barriers and experiential fractures— interrupt consistent waterfront narratives and therefore create a confusing paradox of unseen waterscape on the coast.
s,u 12 Artistic reference: Michael Heizer, Double Negative, 1969-70
s,u 13 Taichung Harbour: enormous earthwork—as aggressive occupation and passive resistance to nature—to shape the waterway, to reclaim the land and to afforest the shore.
s,u 14 Artistic reference: Ruth van Beek, Untitled, The Arrangement, 2012
s,u 15 The study of earthwork typology: removal, filling, forestation and siltation. Are we so used of the way we arrange—remove and displace few thousand tons of earth, afforest few thousand square meters of land, reclaim, retreat and relinquish—enormous infrastructure resembling how we arrange houseplants?
s,u 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 The study of scenery: 16/ A tiled pool containing tide. 18/ Some negative volume of sea water and some positive volume
of earth. 20/ A piece of displaced sands and another piece of silted sands. 22/ An archeology museum in disguise. The study of scenario: 17/ Jump into the sea, it’s just a pool. 19/ Put more love and more earth in, it’s a plant pot. 21/ Free your body, it’s a beach resort. 23/ Look, a wetland, is it really?
s,u 24/25 The study of dynamics: tide, siltation, shape and characteristics.
s,u 26/27 28/29 I extract four substantial landscape elements on site—the displaced or afforested land, the gradually failing walls, the introduced pools and the fragmented sea—to initiate my design.
The land, a great volume of earth displaced to form the waterway, perpetually expands as a consequence of siltation. The walls, a set of passive resistance to siltation, create a confusing paradox of invisible waterscape on the coast. The pools, pleasant duplicates of rough water, represent the conquest of metaphoric fragments and corporeal experience. The sea, the undesirable nature, is made visible by six interventions of landscape, made tangible by the formation of narratives.
In order to reveal the existing relativity between each of them, the elements were assembled in pairs. Six conjunctures emerged, scattered over the North Siltation Area into six peculiar positions along the three gigantic walls.
s,u 30/31 32/33 34/35 Conjuncture: the intervention of scenery, the implication of scenario and the integration of dynamics. no 1 no 2 no 3 no 4 no 5 no 6
Land-Wall Land-Pool Land-Sea Wall-Pool Wall-Sea Pool-Sea
s,u 36 Artistic reference: Gordon Matta Clark, Circus, 1978
s,u 37 With these scattered interventions, I try to put together a striking image that we, human beings in the post-industrialised world, are inclined to tame the rough nature into clever frames of scenery, and retrieve the tangible encounters—our adorable close-to-nature escapade—through the duplicate, the negotiable version of nature, shaped by the artificial.
s,u 38/39 40/41 42/43 ‘The controlled makes way for the uncontrolled; the conscious withdraws behind the unconscious; intention is combined with chance.’
Through the integration of improvisatory elements such as siltation and tide, these counter forces from nature would be reversed into the shaping process of the artificial interventions. Laid in a dynamic time and spatial structure, the project would consequently escape from a sole narrative and extend countless perceptual possibilities for each experiencing individual.
s,u 44/45 Six on-site interventions / 100 x 100 x 0-15 m above sea level Six presentational models ( scale 1/200 ) / 50 x 50 x 20 cm, six pieces North Siltation Area of Taichung Harbour / over 700 x 2000 x 15 m Site Model ( scale 1/500 ) / 140 x 320 x 20 cm
s,u 46/47 48 ‘An inkling of the measure of human life within the immensity of nature wells up inside us when we come upon the beauty of a landscape that has not been domesticated and carved down to human scale. We feel sheltered, humble and proud at once. We are in nature, in this immeasurable form that we will never understand and now, in a moment of heightened experience, no longer need to because we sense that we ourselves are part of it.’
forest
[f]
[b]
big
forest
[f]
fb 02/03 on-site image: previous
fb 04/05 on-site image: previous
fb 06/07 on-site image: previous
fb 08/09 artistic reference
fb 10/11 artistic reference
fb 12/13 masterplan
fb 14/15 outer/inner circuit
fb 16/17 inside the circuit
fb 18/19 from inner circuit
fb 20/21 from circuit to shelter
fb 22/23 approach the shelter
fb 24/25 inside the shelter
fb 26/27 water -ish
fb 28/29 re-defined roofline
fb 30/31 approach the hut
fb 32/33 inside the hut
fb 34/35 birdview
fb 36 abstract masterplan
big
[b]
Absence of wind. Water in which you see bud by bud trees clearer than the tree itself. But the forest. . . darkness’s only profile, plains: distance is a sound. I’ve laid in supplies of days, nights, quietness and noise, work and leisure, I’ve long been laying in supplies of nights, autumns, winters, springs, springs, Anyone who believes what he sees is a mystic. Walk slowly in the dark.
- Tuomas Anhava < Kuudes kirja >
â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Landscape, as both a unity experience of nature and as an aesthetic form, is produced by the human gaze out of impressions of discrete objects of nature. The life that pulsates through our perceptions tears itself away from the homogeneity of nature.â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;
fb 34/35 36 Located in the south of Shangrila Amusement Park which is currently in transition, the project was set out to be an experimental field that would interweave agricultural craftsmanship with cultural output. It incorporates various workshops and pavilions scattered over the varied landscape, that were constructed with lightweight structure commonly used for agricultural purposes. The circuit, 300 meters in length, surrounds a man-made pool, the existing aquarium and a peculiar field with a central bump while gently touching the edge of primeval forests with its outer interface. The shelter, renovated from the existing aquarium, serves as the creative centre of periodic workshops, exhibiting its complex heritage and objects gathered across the site. The hut, laid tranquilly under the shade, offers a primitive escape for meditation.
fb 02/03 04/05 06/07 Previous states: scattered landscape.
fb 08 Artistic reference: Hans Dieter Schaal, Path going from a clinical and technical environment to a romantic environment, 1970â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
fb 09 Artistic reference: Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, 1972-76
fb 10/11 Artistic reference: Sami drum
fb 12/13 Masterplan
fb 14/15 16/17 18/19 20 The circuit: metaphoric experience of walking in the forest.
fb 21 22/23 24/25 26/27 28/29 The shelter: a slice of motionless water.
fb 30/31 32/33 The hut: a parachute jump into the forest.
Vines cover the paths, trees throng the nearby valley, but the land is open to the west. Indeed there are not a few aids to my meditations. In spring I gaze upon swathes of wisteria, which hang shining in the west like the purple clouds that bear the soul to heaven. In summer I hear the song of the hototogisu, and at each call he affirms his promise to lead me over the mountain path of death. In autumn, the voice of the cricket fills my ears, a sound that seems to sorrow over a fleeting life so soon cast off. In winter, the snow fills me with pathos. The sight of it piling high only to melt and vanish is like the mounting sins that block our path to redemption, which penitence will erase.
- Kamo no Chomei < Hojoki >
dune art
[da]
[m]
museum
dune art dam 02/03 uncovered shells
dam 04 geometric plan
dam 05 roof plan
dam 06 groundfloor plan
dam 07 reflected ceiling plan
dam 08/09 studio section/isometric
dam 10/11 exhibit hall section/isometric
dam 12/13 boxes section/isometric
dam 14/15 dining hall section/isometric
dam 16/17 under construction: skylights
dam 18 under construction: skylights
dam 19 under construction
dam 20/21 under construction
dam 22 anchor points: +0.0 m
dam 23 anchor points: +0.5-2.5 m
dam 24 anchor points: +3.0-7.0 m
dam 25 anchor points: +3.0-7.0 m
dam 26 anchor points: +2.5-5.0 m
dam 27 anchor points: +2.25-2.5 m
dam 28/29 under construction
dam 30/31 detail drawings
dam 32/33 detail drawings
dam 34/35 covered up
dam 36 landscape proposal 01
[ da ]
museum
[m]
The music is a house of glass standing on a slope: rocks are flying, rocks are rolling. The rocks roll straight through the house but every pane of glass is still whole.
â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Tomas Transtromer, Allegro