LANDSCAPE IN-BETWEEN: OBSERVATIONS ON URBAN SPACE IN TAINAN AMBIGUOUS SPACE

Ping-Sheng WU
Co-curator /
Senior Vice President, National Cheng Kung University

Island Resilience – Wisdom in the Cracks

The 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, themed “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.,” emphasizes the Latin root “gens” within “intelligens,” signifying the wisdom of human communities. Curator Carlo Ratti highlights that intelligence is not limited to artificial intelligence but also encompasses natural and collective wisdom. Taiwan’s pavilion, with its curatorial theme “NONBelief: Taiwan Intelligens of Precarity,” seeks to explore how island nations survive and develop through spatial strategies amid globalization and geopolitical conflicts, subtly revealing their inherent “wisdom.”

Since 1624, when the Dutch East India Company established a foothold in Anping, Taiwan has been at the center of international power struggles. As a hub of global trade and military strategy, Taiwan has demonstrated remarkable adaptability and resilience throughout different historical periods. The Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and the contemporary power play between the U.S. and China have placed Taiwan in a constantly shifting geopolitical landscape. However, these pressures and adaptations have also fostered Taiwan’s unique survival strategies—remaining constant amid ceaseless change.

The exhibition’s theme, “NON-Belief,” is inspired by American artist Robert Smithson’s “Non-sites” theory, emphasizing absence, displacement, and duality. It seeks to construct a “gray zone” between belief and non-belief, reflecting on the contrast between slow, organic wisdom and fast, regulated systems, the environmental and social costs of high-tech artificial intelligence, and the pursuit of collective intelligence through the dynamic interplay of “perception-movement “within cities, neighborhoods, architecture, and bodies.

For centuries, islands have relied on wisdom to navigate historical contingencies, often displaying resilience characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity—a “gray” quality that exists in a dynamic balance between order and hybridity, regulation and adaptation. This is not only evident in political and cultural dimensions but also concretely manifested in spatial development and transformation. This exhibition, using the historical depth and industrial transformation of Tainan as a case study, explores how three forms of wisdom shape spatial development in the face of limited resources and fluctuating conditions. It showcases an adaptability that transcends singular institutional constraints, navigating between public and private, compliance and transgression— continuously oscillating and swiftly adjusting, creating a “Landscape In-Between.”

The Gray Zone – Negotiation Between Public and Private

In the context of modern urban development, we often observe a type of space that is neither purely public nor entirely private, existing between formal and informal, regulation and spontaneous action—a “gray zone.” These spaces, often labeled as “vacant lots” or “future development areas” in urban planning blueprints, actually conceal rich socio-cultural significance.

“Gray spaces” are not merely temporary land uses but also reflect the flexibility of urban evolution. From vacant lots and temporary structures to undefined open spaces, they mirror the complex interactions of urban power dynamics: some emerge through government-citizen negotiations, while others result from organic, grassroots expansion of everyday life. Their ambiguous nature, situated between public and private domains, often defies single regulatory frameworks or rigid institutional control.

This ambiguity, while potentially challenging for urban governance, also nurtures diverse design and usage possibilities, even revitalizing communities. Urban life is never confined to legal texts or zoning maps. Everyday needs and cultural habits continuously infiltrate these artificially demarcated spaces. Sometimes, residents yield to policy constraints; at other times, they assert their agency through informal construction and grassroots initiatives. If these spaces are seen purely as urban problems and subjected to strict top-down regulation, it could stifle public creativity and spontaneous interactions. However, leaving them entirely unregulated may lead to unplanned chaos and risks. Thus, striking a balance between planning and freedom, and fostering a meaningful dialogue between policies and local actions, has become a crucial challenge in urban governance.

Tainan, Taiwan – An Exploration Through Time and Space

Tainan, with its rich history, industrial transformation, and diverse urban planning strategies, has developed a multilayered yet fragmented urban fabric. On one hand, its old town preserves historic street patterns from the Qing Dynasty, layered with Baroque-inspired urban interventions from the Japanese colonial period, resulting in a unique street network. Many small public corners, originally designed for passage or abandoned due to irregular lot shapes, have gained new meanings through everyday use. On the other hand, industrial parks and new town developments, fueled by the semiconductor and chip industries, have created vast spatial disparities, juxtaposing extensive farmlands with large-scale industrial complexes. Meanwhile, major infrastructure projects, such as Tainan’s ongoing railway undergrounding project, are reshaping the city’s spatial structure along an 8-kilometer linear corridor.

Focusing on three different types of transitional landscapes within Tainan, this study examines gray spaces from small to large scales, categorizing and analyzing them through spatial mapping and cadastral divisions.The starting point is the old town’s narrow alleys, where spatial characteristics reflect the duality of daily life and the overflow of private spaces into public realms. Next, the railway undergrounding corridor reveals temporal disparities and shifts in land use, highlighting urban renewal’s incomplete spatial connections. Finally, the Tainan Science Park showcases the contradictions between highly planned zoning and development rhythms within a controlled environment.These spatial phenomena are systematically analyzed across scales—from the dense textures of the old town to the expansive industrial landscape of the science park—sketching a gray map that transcends widely implemented in export processing zones and high-tech industrial parks to optimize spatial efficiency. From a developmental perspective, the Tainan Science Park bypassed the export processing and heavy industrial phases that Kaohsiung’s Nanzih District experienced, leaping directly into a high-tech industrial zone. This contrast has led to striking differences in spatial layout between the two areas.Visual documentation captures a stark juxtaposition—massive semiconductor factories, hailed as the “Silicon Shield” of Taiwan, standing beside vast cornfields. This imagery not only highlights the sharp contrast in land use but also reflects Taiwan’s ongoing geopolitical dilemma: whether to continue strengthening its semiconductor industry as a global defense asset or to embrace a return to natural landscapes—a state of perpetual hesitation and transition.

The Paradox of Transition – The Belief in “NON-Belief”

Since the 17th century, Taiwan has remained at the center of global power struggles, yet its people have continuously adapted and responded with agility, demonstrating collective wisdom in the face of constant change. From the historic fabric of the old town to the spatial restructuring of the railway undergrounding corridor, and the coexistence of high-tech industrial parks with rural landscapes, this exploration of Tainan’s historical context and spatial evolution provides insight into the perpetual negotiation and adaptation within Taiwan’s gray spaces—an ambiguous zone oscillating between public and private, state and people, order and disorder. This gray space is not merely a physical phenomenon but also a reflection of Taiwan’s geopolitical condition on the international stage. When “belief” is no longer confined to physical presence but instead manifests as a stance toward an uncertain future, the notion of “NON-Belief” emerges—a belief in navigating through ambiguity and flux, seeking stability in motion, and sustaining oneself with wisdom in an ever-shifting world.