Bedtime Architectural Stories

“ Just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth. But it is harder to understand why this form of arrested mental development should be passed on intact to succeeding generations of planners and designers”  - Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The Garden City and the Radiant City ideals are truly eighteenth century urban planning romanticism, with their rejections of urbanised society, excessive and unnecessary romanticism about the nobility and simplicity of ‘natural’ or primitive man. Everything should operate in a rational, regimented and harmonious way. This zone is for work, that zone is for live; it follows by inconsiderate insertion of civic space and large footprint of park and vertical towers that accommodate cars. Those grandeur urban renewal schemes replaces ‘slums’.  They make sense until we discover that they are at an expanse of city diversity of street vitality. They are go...

  Long time ago there is a small country which has been infused with Confucius ethos and Westernized system. It is a curious mixture and it is fascinating how it opereate. As soon as you stepped onto this land, immediately you are connected to the vitality of the street life and the warm welcoming attitude from its citizens. Streets are congested, however paradoxically they are made up of low density dwellings, that's especially the case with cities outside of the capital city Taipei. You would find that they are primarily composed of  two or three level units and usually the first level is used as shop or parlor.  As Jane Jacob points out in her book 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities, if a city's streets look interesting, the city looks interesting, if they look dull, the city look dull. Usually big congested city leaves you an unpleasant impression, however, the cities in Taiwan offer you an aperture into the peaceful ordinary lives that fade into the backgro...

Many many years ago, when I was very young, I was curious about clubbing. But my friend was reluctant to go with me. So I encouraged her: why don’t you carry a book with you? Of course, I received a mockery look and comment. After many many years, I started to challenge myself with the question: why can’t you read in a club? Imagine a situation where nothing is definitive and everything is malleable. Club space becomes reading space becomes public space becomes office space and club space again. It allows for any shift, modification, replacement or substitution. At its most intense, it can even hold a coexistence of activities. I.e. to read and to club at the same time. Through their mutual interference is a chain reaction of new, unprecedented event. Architecture is no longer about the creation of object but the occurrence of event. The concept of programmatic indeterminacy was elaborated by Rem Koolhaas in his monograph ‘Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large’ Paris France Ho...

Long time ago there is one man who is very wealthy, he studied mathematics and computer science but made his fortune though implementing a gambling system. Then he started to collect art. His collections are quite massive to the extent that there is no place to store them. He was thinking of why not design a museum to store the collections? This is the story behind the birth of MONA - Museum of Old and New. Over the years, MONA has been received with popularity, in spite of its relatively remote location. It becomes not only a container for art, but also an event space for wedding functions.                        Architectural strategies employed in MONA - Spatial organisation. Three storey void transforms the space and our sensations drastically. This creation of ‘nothingness’ is a perceptual bombardment to us. Sometimes it is not about the presence, but the absence.  - Materiality. MONA is an amalgam of sandstone and pr...

  Long time ago there is a small city covered in jungle, it is so small to the extent that it will perish without further development. Then the nation started to make adjustments, old buildings torn down, private lands are expropriated to construct for a better future, the entire city becomes a laboratory for modernist ideologies. United Nation are also involved in the planning of the city. The success of its development, this modernist development in an Asian world, shocked the Western world. They cannot believe that an Asian city has achieved all the modernist ideals that once seems impossible to operate. However, this flourish is at a cost of losing identity. Old colonial heritages are not preserved because the ‘makers’ of the city seeks for a complete new start. This ambiguity of identity is also articulated in the diversity of language spoken across the nation. The intelligentsias are upset with this tabula rasa and bulldozing and they hope that the people will align with them...