The Imperfect World

THE IMPERFECT WORLD I r a l a I P o n g s o n o Ta o I L a n y u I 蘭 嶼 I K ô t ô - S h o I B o t e l To b a g o I To b a c x i m a I G r o o t To b a c c o I B o t o l I B o t r o l

Timeline of events 1895 >

Timeline of contemporary events

The 5 villages of Irala are inhabited by the Tao people in addition to the nearby Batanes islands.

1895 Japan establish a police station on Irala 1903 The Benjamin Sewall sinks offshore, the survivors that arrive on Irala are turned away with some fatalities.

The American government demands retribution, carried out by Japanese police forces.

1905 Japan establishes a no-go zone around Irala.

1945 Kuomingtang ROC (Republic of China) cede control of Irala

1967 ROC allow access to Irala for outsiders.

1982 ROC announces to the Tao people construction of a fishing cannery at the southern end of the island.

Once completed the “fishing cannery” is discovered to be a nuclear waste disposal site for Taipower, the state electrical company.

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The 5 Tao villages unite with the assistance of the Presbyterian church to cease shipment of the nuclear waste to their island.

Village elders travel to Taipei for the first time in protest.

the 16 first nations people of Taiwan and International first nation peoples support the Tao anti-nuclear protests.

1992 After 10 years or protests, Taipower cease shipping nuclear waste to Irala.

97,000 barrels remain in storage on site.

The Tao continue advocating to remove all nuclear waste from the island.

1997 locals fear the nuclear waste has leached into the island’s soil.

2011 many nuclear barrels are discovered to be rusted and degraded by the harsh island’s climatic conditions and improper storage.

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Timeline of current events

Timeline of Future Events

2016 Tsai Ying-Wen, Taiwan and the ROC’s president, a Paiwan woman, pledges to remove the waste by 2023.

Nantian, a Paiwan village is chosen as a new storage site for the nuclear waste.

Bowing under public pressure, the government establishes a substantial fund to solve the problem of nuclear storage and waste on Irala. With testing revealing contamination of irradiated soil, a reluctance by Taiwanese to relocate nuclear waste to Taiwan, and a firm opposition by the Tao to move, the government directs the fund to Taipower to establish living strategies for the locals to live in this environment.

Taipower tenders an EOI to design practices for solutions.

With the client being a large company, and a heavily top-down approach, large scale designs are chosen and implemented upon the island in this procurement process.

The Tao are sceptical of any pledge as previous governments have pledged similar.

With increased public exposure, tourism has dramatically increased on the island over the years.

Tao run numerous guest houses for these tourists, but are wary of an erosion of cultural practices.

Navigating this environment and hybridising recent additions to Irala are evident throughout the island.

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Matt Caldar THE IMPEREFCT WORLD: A Dystopic Future Studio 6 Pride and Prejudice Studio leader: Heike Rahmann Bachelor of Landscape Architectural Design October 2018

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In a world hardships of extreme weather events, climate change, and the effects of an industrial landscape it is not always possible or desirable to remove or relocate communities from potential disaster areas. If objectively it’s rational to leave, it can be outweighed by the loss of identity, potential destruction of communities and displacement.

Many, especially older inhabitants with embedded belief systems are deeply connected geographically to home and these spaces cannot be replaced in their lifetime.

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Position Home is an amalgamation of things, places, and people each acting simultaneously.

A symbiosis of friendship and interactions intertwine societal relations. co-joined in participation, the formation of bonds that in number act to strengthen.

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The unknown and strangeness of the immediate surroundings are tied to geographical and spatial familiarity.

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Inclusions into the environment force relational interactions that are at once regular, orderly and assigned, as well as unexpected and spontaneous.

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This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.

What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

Mike Brill WIPP Concept

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

Nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), New Mexico, future warning inscription.

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Benchmarks of dystopic currents

Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Norway - Peter W. Søderman MNAL

Kiruna 100 year relocation Masterplan, Sweden - White Arkitekter, Ghilardi + Hellsten Arkitetker.

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Waste isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), New Mexico USA - AECOM

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Queenstown hillsides affected by contaminant leaching - Tasmania

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Covered bagged radioactive soil - Fukushima, Japan

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Tao on Irala

The island.

By author

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1959 - Ivalino township, Tadao Kano

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VillageTypology Design and Nature V

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Figure 2:

Figure 18:

Composition of human settlement [2].

Geological conditions for Yehyin (left) and for Langdau (right). hinterland

hinterland

Mountain and Forest

Mountain and Forest Old Settlement

New Farmland Settlement

Farmland

Buffer Zone Coastline

Figure 19: Figure 3:

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Ocean

(Old+New) Settlement Buffer Zone

Coastline

Ocean

Modes of transition for Yehyin (left) and Langdau (right).

Arrangement of a

Figure 4:

Three elements of a dwelling.

sand and gravel deposited living unit. by streams and rivers, which can provide an ideal storage medium for water. Consequently, people in Langdau are obliged to dig the pit deeper before constructing the main house. Figure 18 explains the

Chen, C. and Kuo, S. (2013). The influencing factors of architectural composition and the arrangement of human settlement in orchid island. International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, 8(2), pp.154-164.

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Ivalino (Yeyin)

By author

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3.2 Eco-design and social meaning The meanings of traditional dwellings are on the one hand, a good correlation Traditional Housing Typologies with the environmental conditions and on the other, the reflection of the family chronicle in space. The subterranean main houses provide an ideal shelter against

Design and Nature V

Figure 7:

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Profile of a main house [3].

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Figure 5:

Three elements of a traditional dwelling.

Contemporary Housing Typological Additions

Figure 20:

Figure 6:

Design and Nature V

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Remodelled house keeping traditional space elements [2].

Restored dwelling in 2008 (left) and old dwelling in 1920 (right).

entrance doors is proportional to the economic capacity and social status of the family. Most main buildings have three or four entrance doors.

The working houses exist in all families and represent a transitional building type. When the young commence their independence, these semi-subterranean piloti houses support their simple living needs before they construct their main house. The working house is also a place for working in the daytime and for storage.

The resting platforms are built usually on the highest place in the village. This pavilion like structure consists of wooden post-beam and thatch roof. It serves not only as a cooling and relaxing space for people, but also as an important social place for both family and guests. There is no standard height and form for the resting platform. It serves also as an observatory of the village and an ideal place for napping in the hot summer. Different forms of resting platform are shown in figures 10 and 11 [4].

4 Comparative study Two villages, Yehyin and Langdau, were selected as study cases because of their originality and intact situation regarding theofintegrity of their Figure 8: Arrangement a main house [3].settlements. This study focuses on the comparison of settlement arrangement as well as dwelling typhoons, which are the most destructive disaster to affect the island. Although type. the buildings are constructed under ground level within a pit, the efficient drainage can prevent the problem of flooding (Figure 7).

In accordance with the traditional process of construction, the pit for the main house should be observed and evaluated for several years to assure the perfect drainage function. The different depth of pits is thus defined by considering this practical experience and geological condition. At the same time, main houses signify the maturity and the riches of family for Tao people. The number of WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 138, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line)

Figure 9:

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WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 138, © 2010 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line) Figure 21:

Community church (left) and new modern dwelling (right).

Working house [3].

Chen, C. and Kuo, S. (2013). The influencing factors of architectural composition and the arrangement of human settlement in orchid island. International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, 8(2), pp.154-164.

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System of home

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Tourism

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Tao

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Industrial Practices

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Tao

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By author

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Irala Colonial Cartography

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C.-J. Wu and J.-G. Lay

Fig. 2 A section of Chart of Taiwan drawn in 1638–1640 (left). Orchid Island was labeled as Tabacxima (right). (Map source: Bibliotheque Nationale de France)

with a location fixed to the latitude of 22°N and a name Tabacoxima or Groot Tabacco, although there is no clear reason for the naming (Fig. 2). From a linguistic point of view, Tabaco was evidently not a Dutch word, but Spanish or Portuguese.

And xima is Japanese for ‘island’. Consequently, the name suggests that the Dutch might have derived the information of Orchid Island from other sources at this early phase of ruling Taiwan. In later Dutch maps and documents, another name Botol or Botrol was also used to refer to Orchid Island and was considered to stem from an indigenous language in southern Taiwan to describe the insular morphology.6 It was not until 1643, the year after the Dutch Company ousted Spanish power from northern Taiwan, that the exploration of Orchid Island was initiated. According to The Zeelandia Diaries,7 the Dutch Government-general of Taiwan dispatched surveyors to Orchid Island at least three times between 1643 and 1645 (Chiang and Milde 2000). The main intension was for security checks to safeguard Dutch power in dominating Taiwan. There were even a few plans to attack or wipe out the inhabitants on Orchid Island (Chiang and Milde 2000: 145, 201). The largest expedition in 1644, with 75 crew members sent, ended up in some conflict with the islanders, who resisted in fear. The Zeelandia Diary of 25th of February 1644 concluded that “there was not much to benefit from this island” (Chiang and Milde 2000: 239–240). The only success of this exploration was achieved by a senior sailor who circumnavigated the island and noted down the island’s topography on a map (Chiang and Milde 2000: 241). However, no authentic manuscript of the relevant map is preserved.

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According to Japanese scholars, the name describes the profile of Orchid Island like a cow’s testicle resting above the sea (Inaba and Sekawa 1931).

7 Zeelandia is the name of the Dutch fort built in southwestern Taiwan.

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1895 -Taiwan, German Map

1638 - Dutch map

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C.-J. Wu and J.-G. Lay

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C.-J. Wu and J.-G. Lay

Fig. 3 Orchid Island on the Territorial Map of Front- and Back-side of Taiwan drawn in 1878 (left). Orchid Island is marked by the name Hungtou and noted with some basic facts of the island (right). (Map source: The Territorial Maps of Taiwan, Huang 2010)

ship-building (Hsu 1983: 283). In the resultant map of Orchid Island, compared to the previous Dutch ones, the physical profile of the island was more accurate in the shape of triangle (Fig. 3). Some statistical data were annotated on the map: The coastal length is eighty to ninety li. There were seven villages and a population of around one thousand. However, descriptions about local society were few, which in fact reveals a distant view by the surveyor rather than actual contact with the islanders: “The savages escaped from encounters with foreigners… and carried no weapons….”

In the finalized territorial map of Taiwan, only the island name was given (Fig. 3). The Chinese seem to have been unaware of the earlier European sources about Orchid Island. They coined the island Hungtou according to sayings from the Han immigrants in southern Taiwan. Different interpretations were made around this odd word that literally means ‘Red-Head Island’. A common story compares Red-Head to the scenery when the island was viewed at sunrise from the eastern coast of Taiwan (Lin 1958). Another claims that the morphology of the island resembles a Chinese sailing boat called Red-Head (Chiang 1997). There was also hearsay that a tribe of red-haired savages lived in the central mountains (Dudbridge 1999: 86). However, little authentic information was obtained, since there had never been busy trade and communication between Taiwan and Orchid Island, except a number of private visits (Lin 1958; Shih et al. 2001). The name Hungtou simply imposed the observations or imaginations of external societies.

The Chinese exploration of Orchid Island did not lead to the establishment of a substantial administration on the island. In a similar view to the previous Dutch, the Chinese surveyors concluded that ‘There is no cultivable land or exploitable resource’.12 Orchid Island was therefore ‘drawn’ under the jurisdiction of Hengchun as the southernmost county of Taiwan, becoming part of Chinese territory only in a symbolic way (Shih et al. 2001: 29).

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The explanatory export appended to the atlas The Territorial Map of Taiwan was made in 1878–1979.

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1878 - Qing Dynasty map

Fig. 4 The first large-scale map of Orchid Island completed in 1897 by the Japanese explorers. The small box at the left shows the village named by the expedition leader Kikuchi and the port named by the fleet Fukui. (Map source: Archives of Government-General of Taiwan, 000002110569002001 M)

each detail (Shirahata 1892). In the resulting map of Orchid Island, the identified features include villages, hilltops, rivers and footpaths. The fist-like shape of the island is not far from reality, with only slight distortions in the south-eastern section (Fig. 5).

This is the first large-scale map ever made of Orchid Island. However, if the map was created on the basis of visual observation, how did the map-makers deal with geographic naming? In this map, 29 place names were documented, 1897 - Kikuchi ‘s map

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Colonial Powers and Geographic Naming

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Fig. 5 Torii Ryuzo’s map of Orchid Island adapted from the official version (Map source: Anthropologic illustration—Red-Head island, Taiwan, Torii 1899)

including 8 villages, 6 mountains, 5 rivers and other topographic features like reefs and rocks. Except that a hilltop was denoted by the Chinese name Hungtou, all these geographic features were named using Japanese terms. One major type borrowed the names from the expedition team such as Kikuchi Village (菊池村) and Sano Village (佐野村). Intriguingly, two mountain peaks, one at the northwestern and the other at the southeastern tip of the island, was named for the two map-makers Tajiri (田尻) and Yamada (山田) themselves. The other type gives a description derived from nature such as Kinohagawa (木の葉川), a Japanese metaphor describing tiny streams like ‘the leaf of a tree’. There was also an interesting mix such as Naritaginzan (成田銀山), which combines the family name of the expedition leader Narita and that of a silver mountain ginzan.

Whereas naming after explorers might be easily compared to European practice as a patriotic or nationalistic manifestation, Japanese thinking was practical, due to communication problems. In the expedition report, it was stated that “the crew leader Kikuchi gave suitable names for village and other toponyms because there was no way to understand the local language”.17 17

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Soutokufu (1897c).

1899 - Torii Ryuzo map

1959 - Tadao Kana and Kokichi Segawa

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1867 - James Henry Butt

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Nuclear Storage

1982, Taipower commences shipping 97,000 barrels of nuclear waste to the storage facility at the south of the island.

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2011, locals fear exposure to nuclear radiation by degraded storage conditions.

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Tao Protest Through Culture

1992, Tao effectively halt shipment of any further nuclear waste to the island. They then embark upon a movement to remove all nuclear waste.

“Where to Go” 1996 by Siijeilogilan

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Nuclear symbols and protest actions are incorporated into existing cultural motifs.

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The Imperfect World: Manufactured Futures Designed Outcomes

“It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable.”

-J.S. Mills, denouncing the government’s Irish land policy.

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MT. DASEN 480M

NUCLEAR STORAGE SITE

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MT. DASEN 480M

WEATHER STATION

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TARO FIELDS

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The Imperfect World

HELIPAD - EVACUATION AND TOURIST TRANSPORT ’S AN IW TA

Chapter 2 Manufactured Futures

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Matt Caldar

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TAO IRRADIATED ADAPTED HOUSE

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UNCONTAMINATED AGRICULTURAL BERMS

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DECONTAMINATION TOURIST ZONE

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CONTAMINATION AS TOURISM

UNCONTAMINATED AGRICULTURAL BERMS

LANDSLIDE FENCES

GENETICALLY MODIFIED GOATS - GLOW WHEN NEAR UNSAFE LEVELS OF RADIATION

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1-2000 @ A0 1-200 @ A0

A-A 1-200 @ A0

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Dystopic projects and scenrarios can be realised through the actions of designers themselves, and importantly, the procurement process.

Who the client is, and therefore who the designer is answering and shaping their designs to enormously affects the spatial and built outcomes.

When this process is applied to industrial scale solutions, the designs become industrial scaled themselves and these realities become the everyday.

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UTOPIC DYSTOPIA DYSTOPIC UTOPIA

Matt Caldar Nellie Reinhard

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Home is not defined by a building.

It is a complex set of systems that are temporal and dynamic. In the imperfect world, home is a series of integrated practices and events that respond and prepare a community for environmental hardships.

Under these hardships of extreme weather events, climate change, and the potential exposure of nuclear waste, it is not always possible or desirable to remove or relocate communities from potential disaster areas. If objectively it’s rational to leave, it can be outweighed by the loss of identity, potential destruction of communities and displacement. Many, especially older inhabitants with embedded belief systems are deeply connected geographically to home and these spaces cannot be replaced in their lifetime.

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This project exposes and hybridises entrenched living strategies with the challenges that are a result of an industrial landscape, while acknowledging the intrinsic relationship that a community have to their land. Maintaining a strong environmental sense, empowers and strengthens the idea of a Home for All as an assemblage of interconnected systems.

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Awareness 1.0 Monitor 6 Geiger schools of fish.

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Home For All Competition Entry

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Hybrid 2.0 Remote Sensor Resting Platform with siren call harmony.

Active 7.0 Sovereignty Locally owned transport.

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Layer 6.0 Membrane Decontaminated soil is separated from the contaminated.

Addition 3.0 Agriculture Raised Taro and produce bed.

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Preparation 5.0 Typhoon Turbine Harnesses yearly typhoon winds.

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Technology 4.0 Modification Genetically engineered goats. Glow when exposed to high amounts of radiation and establish geofence.

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Nuclear Storage Site

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Township Weather Station Township

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Taiwan 70

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Irala Pongso no Tao Lanyu 蘭嶼 Botel Tobago Kôtô-Sho

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