Instant Taipei

CITY MUST BE A COMPOST

The Instant Taipei proposal is an organic construction matrix celebrating the original nature of the Taiwanese citizens using the city as an open living room. The desing is inspired by the straight forward humanistic ad-hoc architectural interventions realized by the Taiwanese citizens as the human layer on top of the official city. The Instant Taipei aims to give a face for the independent Taiwanese will of light weight and nomadic structures that form the unofficial identity of Taipei.


The Instant Taipei is a three dimensional collage of Taiwan. The open form and easily modified structure will be given for the citizens as a three dimensional park or public space as a platform for their various public-private activities to take place. The proposed design is at the same time a construction site and a ruin trusting that the city must be a compost.


The construction site - ruin axis gives the Instant Taipei proposal the needed possibility to meet the socio - ecological state of the Taiwanese cities of today in their post industrial condition and to work as an urban laboratory in finding a new balance between the modern man and nature. New cultivated and wild urban nature is introduced backed up with localzed high environmental technology (Mechanical Biological Treatment).


Nothing has been removed from the competition area and nothing heavy has been introduced but instead a new layer has been added overlapping the existing urban context - a human layer. This can be viewed as urban acupuncture reacting on the hidden energy flows (Chi) of Taipei. The acupuncture point is the Wanhua 406 competition site and the acupuncture needle is the Instant Taipei -design. This is a light weight touch on the city organism of Taipei but will effect on a constructive and positive way on the total common subconscious Chi of the city.

Treasure Hill

I became the cleaner man in Treasure Hill. There was no garbage bins and the small snaking allies were full of filth. The people were hiding behind their windows but I saw that they were old. In the foot of the hill some three stories of houses had been demolished, bulldozed away and instead of the houses there was green grass. A lawn instead of a settlement because officially now this was a park zone. For nature lawn is the same as concentration camp. It is nothing. It produces a shameful amount of oxygen and is merely the roof of a worm.

Missis Chen - the matriarchal leader of Treasure Hill community of urban farmers.

And these people had been living there for some 50 years and these people were gardeners, I saw the fragments everywhere – village people, growing their own food. City had stepped in and the village people had to go. Same old story.

Tresure Hill badge worn by the urban restoration taskforce C-Laboratory, mainly consisting of volunteers and architecture students from Tamkang and National Taiwan universities.

So I became the cleaner man. The first day the people were hiding and I started to clean and transport trash from their streets down of the hill to be picked up. The next day the same. On the third day there were already some buckets waiting for me and on the fourth day the people were cleaning themselves too. Together with me was also an increasing amount of architecture students from Tamkang University and National Taiwan University.


Soon the little settlement of Treasure Hill was cleaned from the garbage and I started to build up stairs to connect the remained stairways of the torn down houses. By that time Treasure Hill was a dead end and I needed to create a loop for circular movement.

The upper part of the staircase system linking together the existing steps in the ruins of the demolished houses.

In the end of 3 weeks I had 200 students working with me and architect Shieih Yin-Jun had come down from the mountains too.


With Shieih every morning we met and agreed who builds where. I don’t know what language we spoke. In the end the steps were built and even a small parade took place. Treasure Hill could stay and the bulldozing was stopped. In the place of the lawn where once the houses had stood was now a vegetable garden, food and the inhabitants were eager to cultivate the land.


City learned to appreciate this small sustainable settlement – a small urban poem. It helped that the poet Liao was in the charge of the Department of the Cultural Affairs.
Restored vegetable garden, bamboo shade and steps.

Treasure Hill was important for me maybe because I felt that the place was so real and the city around it was so fictive. So many external powers in the city dominating the humanistic energy and in Treasure Hill none.

On the other hand a fire-place in a ruin; on the other hand a high-way bridge above a polluted river.

Now after a couple of years I am happy to see that Treasure Hill still survives. I survived the heat and the construction process partly due Missis Chen, the matriarch of the settlement, who gave me Chinese medicines and feed me fish and a lot of beer.

The gardening is going well of course, since these people know what to do if given a chance.


There is still a lot of lawn, a useless layer of artificial nature which should be a garden too. It is good that the city is injecting new energy to the place by some artists working there but I also felt the danger of the real settlement becoming a background for art pieces. Now when I go there most of the junk laying around the mango trees and water streams are from art works – light stands, posters, pieces or worthless installations etc. If art becomes the junk of Treasure Hill, what is that? People don't have to exploit Treasure Hill or use it for anything, people should just appreciate it. What comes to art or action in a place like Treasure Hill – build another one. Build a new Treasure Hill, the Ultra Village in the hearts of Taipei.

link: ORGANIC LAYER

Human Layer

The Human Layer_Taipei is based on the ideas and methods of the Urban Acupuncture and Fritz Lang's maxim in the movie Metropolis: "The Mediator between the Head and the Hands must be the Heart."

Taipei City, an urbanized river basin of 7 million people.

C-Laboratory Taipei was set up by C-LAB Helsinki personnel Marco Casagrande, Martin Ross and Kerby McGhee in September 2004 in co-operation with the Tamkang University's Department of Architecture and reinforced by Tuomas Makkonen in November. The C-LAB moved to China with one motorcycle and one car.

With a design force of 10 operators the first step of the urban acupuncture in order to understand the energy flows and patterns in the case of Taipei was taken. This initial intelligence was analyzed and 8 basic strategic ways of the energies (Chi for the energy in classical Chinese) could be determined.

Mayor Ma Ying-jeou, now President of Taiwan, reading the Trojan Rocking Horse messages.

The symbolic Head of Taipei is Mayor Ma Ying-jeou. (Ma = Horse in Chinese) The Hands are the citizens. We needed to create the Mediator, the Heart. The result was to build up 8 Trojan Rocking Horses out of steel and move them following the 8 Chi channels collecting all the time data from the citizens to be brought to Mayor Ma. The citizens were asked to write down their dreams, memories, wishes of other comments about Taipei and put these letters inside the Trojan Rocking Horses that were working as mobile mail boxes.

After five days of marching the army of the Trojan Rocking Horses surrounded the Taipei City Hall and eventually forced Mayor Ma to step out. The cavalry was lined up for his inspection and the keys of the city were presented to him. The horses were locked with the citizen data inside. Mayor Ma opened the horses and started to read the letters to the media. After some time we agreed that C-LAB will document and analyze the data and base designs of urban planning and architecture in combination with other disciplines of art, science and humanism on this information and present him the results.

The Dictatorship of Sensitivity has begun: Mayor Ma in C-LAB's public interrogation.

C-Laboratory realized 8 reactions for the citizen data resulting to some important ways of possible urban future planning. This is now taken further during the Spring and Summer 2005. The main goal is now focused on the ecological rehabilitation of the Taipei City.

C-LAB for Human Layer_Taipei: architect Marco Casagrande, industrial artist Martin Ross, painter Kerby McGhee, station manager Tuomas Makkonen, operator Ai, operator Point, operator Neil, operator Bruce, operator Emily, operator Shinu Shin Jr., operator Daniel and operator Luo. The Trojan Rocking Horse action was kindly sponsored by Taipei City Government Department of Cultural Affairs for Taipei on the Move –exhibition curated by Jo Hsiao. The C-LAB exodus to China was kindly sponsored by Halti, Harley Davidson Finland, Wärtsilä and Jussi Salonoja.

C-Laboratory Taiwan: Tamkang University Department of Architecture students, Marco Casagrande, Martin Ross and Tuomas Makkonen.