UM_URBAN MARGIN

Exhibitor

Sheng-Chieh KO

Exhibition Team

Tunghai University Department of Architecture

Team Member

Min-Hsu TSAI,
Meng-Ju CHUANG

In the Name of Governance

Changhua, a historic city in central Taiwan, has been a key transportation hub since the 19th century. Its development, shaped by commerce, governance, and faith, was further influenced by Japanese colonial reforms in the 20th century, creating a more efficient road system. Today, the city blends the straight avenues from the Japanese era with the winding alleys and open spaces from the Qing period, preserving a unique urban character despite its slower growth compared to Taichung.

In any case, Changhua, and many of Taiwan’s historic cities, have repeatedly undergone a kind of top-down “correction” in the name of “governance” to become the cities we see in Taiwan. “Governance” has in a sense become an important thing in our material world. The main reason for this is that for a long time in the past, we have always separated the world of people from the world of things, believing that things are used by people, and that what is important is “function” and must be able to be “managed”. This is true for buildings, and it is also true for cities. However, apart from ‘management’, is there not a more ‘gentle’ way to treat our cities? In the past, due to the need to “manage” the city, in the name of understanding the structure of the city, we put it on the autopsy table, and used rational analysis like a scalpel to dissect, analyze, and suture the city; the city in our hands is just a dead, numbered object of analysis. We must admit that this is an effective method, but we have also forgotten that the city is also a vibrant “living organism”.

Anthropomorphic Urbanismwan Intelligens of Precarity

If a city were a person, how would we treat her? This exhibition presents the concept of “Anthropomorphic Urbanism,” inviting us to imagine Changhua as a living being. Through this approach, we aim to engage with her as we would a new friend—discovering her unique personality and exploring ways to make her a better place.

Inspired by animism, the belief that all things— whether animals, plants, objects, or even words— possess a spiritual essence, this concept challenges modernist ideas that separate nature from culture, or body from soul. Instead of viewing the environment as something distinct from human life, animism encourages us to see the world as interconnected and alive.

To treat the city with greater care & understanding, we must move beyond modernist assumptions and reconnect with the city’s essence. By forming a deeper connection with Changhua, we can rethink our relationship with urban spaces and find more harmonious, compassionate ways to live together.

Ways of Recognizing

In this design process, we firstly rejected the “map” to identify Changhua’s urban composition, and instead, we actually walked into the city to recognize Changhua through the “path” in a nonomniscient situation; therefore, what we learned is the living Changhua through the connection with the body’s senses. We also tried to understand Changhua through methods other than “maps”, such as “literature”, so we learned that it is a living Changhua through the connection of emotional memories. In the process, we found an interesting site: the Da-Ximen Fude Shrine. The facade, which is not parallel to the project road, leaves an urban margin which is the evidence of the conflict between “governance” and “life”; the existence of the Fude Shrine reflects the deepest memory of Changhua City in Lai-Ho and others’ writings: the city wall. Therefore, we started the project.

Symbol Map and Links to Nearby Temples

Tudigong ( The God of the Earth)

The most important thing to consider in this design is the existence of the Shrine of the Tudigong. the Tudigong is the closest thing to daily life in Taiwan’s folk beliefs. In the past, in agricultural societies, Tudigong was a deity that guarded the land and crops, and the location of the temple often marked the boundaries of different owners’ farmland. Nowadays, in the urban society, Tudigong still protects our daily life. At the Da-Ximen Fude Shrine, we can see that when the residents pass by the Tudigong, they casually pay respect to him, as if they were greeting an old friend. Our proposal t focuses on a small open space next to the DaXimen Fude Shrine, and tries to create a modern open space in city to start a dialog with the Shrine.

Fire and Life

In Taiwanese folk beliefs, “burning joss paper” is an important ritual; we believe that “serving the dead is like serving the living”, and that through fire, we can convey respect to the gods or ghosts. One of the challenges in this project was to deal with the stove for burning joss paper, which brought the issue of “fire” back into the architectural discussion. We thought about how to transform “fire of ritual” into “fire of daily life”, and the answer we came up with was “heat”. How can this heat from the fire be applied to the activities that happen in our daily lives and how can it further help us create new public spaces?

Fu

Police Station +Grilled Groundnut Stall + Residents’ Open Space

In the Chinese world, “Fu” is a tool used by man to communicate with the mystical world, and its original meaning also implies an artifact used for trust. In other words, “Fu” is a tool for creating understanding. In the past, in architecture, we used “Fu” or “symbols”, to create an understanding of the physical world, as well as an emotional connection. However, modern architecture has gradually faded away from symbols, even fearing them. This proposal attempts to re-discuss the symbols in architecture. We extracted our impressions of Changhua from social media, extracted the symbols from many images, and organized our proposal by further visualizing and spatializing them. On the other hand, regarding the fire, we use the heat it generates to roast the groundnuts. The joss paper stove in the center of the building is a scene for ceremonies on one side, and a scene for daily life on the other side; and the open and friendly police station, like the Tudigong, solves the residents’ daily chores.

Flower & Fire

Flower Shop + Café + Residents’ Open Space

In the ancient Oriental concept, the world is composed of gold, wood, water, fire and earth;and fire produces earth and earth produces gold.Dealing with fire is also dealing with “architecture” and “nature”. We have observed that in the worship rituals of Taiwanese folk beliefs, apart from burning joss sticks, the offering of fruits and flowers is also a common way of expressing respect; and flowers require earth. In the space formed by the earth in the proposal, the heat from the fire on the outside will accelerate the drying of the flowers and bring about immortality, while the earth that extends to the upper part of the space will nurture the flowers due to the sunlight, air and water of Changhua. In contrast to this original space made of earth, the modern earth=concrete space is a selling space. The space of fire and earth is further organized by gold = metal scaffolding into a building that appears to be unified, but each element is juxtaposed together in an incomplete coordination, responding to our observation of Taiwan’s cities.

Urban Margin

Rethinking urban renewal in the name of governance, we look for opportunities and values of “invisible development” in daily life in the care of a good city.