The Ruin Academy “An abandoned Shell for cross-disciplinary exchanges”
By Marco Casagrande
 Judit Lastres Aguilera Irene de Miguel López INTRODUCTION
Ruin Academy, by Marco Casagrande and C-Lab, is an unusual public space and experimental, independent and free platform situated in Taipei, Taiwan. An educational space for multi-disciplinary activities that focuses on local knowledge, people and stories. It is located in the interior of an abandoned five storey apartment building, the architect has used the exterior wrapping of the old building but he has removed the interior walls and the windows and has added holes to the ceilings and walls, all of it to allow vegetation to grow from the inside out. But the heart of the project is that it is an open appeal to think of the urban environment to understand the ruining processes in Taipei. That is why it is a simultaneous construction site and ruin, and of course it has surrendered in order to let nature step into the ruin. The project is used with a purpose, to help Casagrande to achieve his goals following his main ideas.
2
Judit Lastres Aguilera Irene de Miguel López
KEY WORDS
-Anarchist garden (local people-dominated community gardens) -Urban Compost (industrial building material)
detritus
as
a
potentially
useful
-Third generation city (become the organic ruin of the industrial cities) -Urban acupuncture (small scale interventions in the fabric of the city) -River urbanism (recover the river’s edge to its former ecosystem)
COSMOPOLITICAL CONTEXT Demography The Ruin Academy is located in Taipei, Taiwan, in a marginal and deteriorated neighbourhood close to the riverside and the border of the city. In a 500m2 plot (20x5 meters) there is a five storey damaged building that was abandoned long ago. The area is mostly inhabited by people who has been living there all their lives, with a modest lifestyle. Some of them were fishermen or farmers, people without a proper high education, but a great local knowledge. Issues The live in Taipei has its origin by the river, and it is because of its history that the city has not become a total industrial fiction just yet.
3
Judit Lastres Aguilera Irene de Miguel López For the people of Taipei the river has always been the main source of life. The situation changed with the flood walls made to “protect” the area, that separated it from its natural environment. Because of the problems that this situation has caused, the architect Marco Casagrande decided to intervene in the area, “to design shelters in nature for honest people.” Implicated population For that reason, the population implicated in his project must be sentient citizens who feel the duty of a sustainable joint effort along with nature. We can find that role model in locals, students, gardeners... ultimately, free thinkers from all over the world. Those are the people who may realise that the aim of making the city of Taipei a clean environment is a mistake. It is creating a barrier between human and nature, or even human nature, preventing people from farming on the Xindian River banks. This barrier is a government strategy to keep control of the streets, because when human gets close to nature, it approaches danger. We could define the Ruin Academy’s project as social-based architecture, because it is a claim of the situation in the Urban Core of Taipei that needs an intervention in order to be changed. Agents involved The agents involved in this project are both human and non-human. We will find, on the one hand, citizens who are aware of the deterioration that the insensitive modern industrial machine is causing to nature, therefore to human nature, such as students or anarchist gardeners. On the other hand, the city itself is an agent of the project, including the buildings,the urban fabric and even the ruins, reminder of the failure of industry and economy. Nature is an essential instrument to achieve the goals that this project pursues. The river plays an important role in the life of the area, as we have mentioned, while vegetation growing wildly inside the constructions is one of the main methods of invasion of the ruin.
4
Judit Lastres Aguilera Irene de Miguel López The Ruin Academy is operating outside the conventional academic disciplines and freely mixing the gifts of architecture, urban design, environmental art, horticulture, sociology and local knowledge.
HISTORIOGRAPHY The whole project was developed through a series of workshops to determine the qualities of the Third Generation City, an alternative for aggressive urban development of industrial cities, that is the ruin of the industrial city. It means new models of living, new narratives, new “urban rumors” with the potential to erode the productivist mentality of industrial cities. Order of events First of all, according to the idea of urban compost, an abandoned five storey Taipei apartment building was emptied by constructors and gardeners from various Taiwanese universities and professionals. All the interior walls and the windows were removed in order to grow bamboo and vegetables inside it, as an anarchist garden. The building was penetrated with 6 inch holes in order to let “rain inside”. That invitation for nature to step in breaks the human control, becoming “the dominating force of architecture”.
Once the first step was completed, research and mapping of the illegal community gardens and urban farms of Taipei was made, because they were turning the city towards the organic. The next phase was the multidisciplinary to bring back the river nature to the city. this re-union, the natural river restoration flooding and urban mangrove. The research
research and design As a consequence of will occur, as free methodology on the 5
Judit Lastres Aguilera Irene de Miguel López liquid quality of the Taipei urbanism and social activity will also be relevant. As a conclusion of these workshops, we could say that structures have to respond to nature, be designed with local materials and be built with local building practices.
Strategies Therefore, the strategies that Marco Casagrande followed to achieve those goals were related to what he calls urban acupuncture, academic squatting, anarchists gardens and the use of the local knowledge. The main strategy for the development of the project was to empty an old abandoned apartment building, leaving only a shell. Removing the windows to create gaps that confuse the interior environment with the exterior and even making 6 inch holes in the walls to increase this effect. This measure even lets the nature step into the building introducing the next strategy. Anarchist gardens will be as well a determinant factor in this case study, letting nature step into our ruins, giving up the progress of the machine. Not to destroy the ruin, but to make it organic. “Without his ruin, man is just a common ape.” In this case for example plants can grow directly from the ground because lower slab was removed and replaced just by a footbridge that allows vegetation to grow freely.
6
Judit Lastres Aguilera Irene de Miguel López The Ruin Academy is the beginning of the many Urban acupuncture interventions that will take place in this Taipei neighbourhood. This term refers to a combination of small-scale but socially active interventions into the urban fabric. These subliminal powerful actions connect to the common subconscious of the colony. The result of this assault to the city through illegal settlements was their legalization as a permanent work of environmental art. The Ruin Academy creates a public environment between different universities and academic disciplines. It operates outside institutions and city government hierarchies. The strategy that proves the Ruin Academy to be different from other academic spaces is providing a living space for people to interact while their researches are taking place. Casagrande calls this concept Academic Squatting. If we want to achieve the purposes of the Third Generation City we should focus on un-official sources and local knowledge, which will be the decisive factor turning the industrial machine organic. The Ruin Academy will be a place made for experts in this topic. “In grandmothers we trust.” By this we want to stand out one of the principal and most innovative strategies of the project: letting the real experienced people show the students the reality of the place through the knowledge they acquired during their lives.
Difficulties Regarding the difficulties the architect faced during the project, we could say that the understanding of River Urbanism, to let the river become again the lifeline of the city and its nerve system, was the most challenging task. The city must be design to live in straight dialog with the river nature.
7
 Judit Lastres Aguilera Irene de Miguel López As we have previously explained, the current situation of Taipei is due to the collective knowledge and memory of what it used to be, stories and traditions from past generations. However, it needs new interventions, new memories to succeed as an environment worth living in.
8
 Judit Lastres Aguilera Irene de Miguel López
CONCLUSION In the end, local knowledge means understanding of nature. It carries the essence of surviving and being productive in the Taipei river valley. Urban planning has long been determined by the disposition of human activities, which has proved to be harmful in a long term, for both humans and the city itself. That is the reason why a posthuman view is required. Citizens are becoming increasingly aware that they live in ecosystems inhabited by non-humans as well. Urban environment needs to be thought on. The people and the nature need to work together to get the spaces the Ruin Academy is looking for. The project aim is to re-think the industrial city, to give up the human control. Ultimately, a ruin is a man-made construction that has become part of nature. Understanding the ruining processes in Taipei is the key to keep the city alive by using urban compost as a container to create new realities. We consider this case study especially relevant because it makes clear the existing problematic of today’s industrial cities, besides it is one of the first steps for them to change into Third Generation Cities.
9