Taiwan proposes that architecture can transform a place, and to represent this idea, the work of Sheng-Yuan Huang and his practice, Fieldoffice, were chosen for the Taiwan Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia in 2018, entitled Living with Sky, Water, and Mountain: Making Places in Yilan. Sheng-Yuan and Fieldoffice demonstrated that the notion of making places is more than building a physical space, but is equally about establishing a linkage between people, as well as people and their environment.
Alessandro Martinelli explores Sheng-Yuan and his colleagues at Fieldoffice as the avant-garde of a new architectural movement in his book, The City Beyond Architecture, which seeks to produce a new form of collective living through the lens of design and culture, touching on what the design culture of the majority of future urbanization could become. In the following, we will discuss Shen-Yuang's impact on Taiwanese architecture as he spearheaded the call to integrate and imagine public spaces that inhabited the capacity to structure a particular landscape to provide both social spaces and a sense of identity to its occupants.
Sheng-Yuan Huang is considered a cultural phenomenon within the architectural scene, creating architecture inspiring a new model of sustainable development. Although Taiwan is ever-changing, it continues to retain its rural identity and low-density urban development and its environment is a consequence of some lasting interaction between people and nature, threatened by decades of urbanization brought about by capitalism. On a continent like Asia and presently standing as the center of global development, a new concept of an architectural blend, a mixitè, if you will, must be adapted to support the activities of the individuals living within the space. This call for a mix-up results in a co-existence between the countryside and the city, alongside the agricultural and residential spectrum.
Fieldoffice's design is an example of a fragile, weak architectural form that does not aspire to impress by the means of domineering, pure, and forceful shapes, but rather encompassing a more subtle approach to support its goal to achieve that mixitè, resulting in the edge and boundaries of projects to be almost impossible to identify, as new architecture is fused with the pre-existing ones. They endeavor to use recycled materials and architectural fragments for both economic reasons and to strengthen the experience of time and history, and the outcome is an urban patchwork based on the implied understanding of the historical and experiential meaning of architecture.
Japan's architecture scene in the 1960s, Metabolism, was idolized by many, specifically in Far East Asia, as it broke away from the cultural predominance of the western world. This brought about realization amongst the people in Taiwan, but never a call to action. Sheng-Yuan, however, was the first to have a confident and clear idea about what architecture could really do, rather than sit back and remain as followers of perception. He was the first one to make that call for action within Taiwanese architecture, presenting the opportunity for redefinition within the country.
Sheng-Yuan's architectural decisions are partly a result of his childhood experiences, centered around strict rules and societal regulations, consequently, arising a strong desire for individuality and flexibility within this presently collective culture. His focus was to connect with the environment, including its people and nature, with his work urging us to forget preconceived ideology and any established habits of architecture from what we may already know. It is Sheng-Yuan's call for the general public to experience architectural freedom.
Amongst his various interventions, Sheng-Yuan opted to take a more sophisticated approach towards architectural abstraction and endeavored to forge a path between the figurative and the abstract in a capacity that even locals would understand. He combined these two concepts for the good end, further reflecting into his decisions for the organization of space.
Jin-Mei Pedestrian Bridge across Yilan River featured a series of decorative metallic elements that would be set alight by vehicles' headlights at dawn or night, creating an experience akin to the shimmering of tall grass in the counter-light, producing an emotional element to the design and changing the perspective of space.
Another intervention of Sheng-Yuan's, Cherry Orchard Cemetery, sits at the edge of Yilan urbanization, where the natural environment comes to the foreground and blends in seamlessly, functioning as a place for all faiths with no prejudice to class. Death is a shared family experience in Taiwan, and this structure offers a solution that skillfully integrates the architecture with the landscape, celebrating the qualities of nature, thus, life.
Sheng-Yuan never shied away from ensuring that even details as mundane as these were accounted for, in fact, each one of his projects is full of easy-to-understand details, so even when his designs are the result of abstract composition, there is always an intended effect that is easy to digest for those experiencing the space.
Fieldoffice continually endeavors to write stories about seeking freedom and being granted the opportunity to create and experience wanderlust via architecture. To achieve visual wanderlust, the aura of something and a series of traces must be evident within the present architectural structure or images exhibiting the design. Susan Sontag noted that 'there is never any understanding in a photograph, but only an invitation to fantasy and speculation.'
The City Beyond Architecture is a first attempt to frame the work of Sheng-Yuan and Fieldoffice in the notion of city-making, as well as highlight aspects of the urban design process that can offer reference to planners and architects around the world to bring ideas forward to shape new forms of urbanism.
