Architecture sans buildings

Displaying architectural designs in a gallery context has not been easy. There's always something about buildings that photos and models of them cannot adequately convey. To get the concept behind architectural design across to the public, the curators of the Exhibition of Far Eastern Architecture Design Award, (遠東建築獎特展) which opened yesterday at Taipei Fine Arts Museum, decided not to showcase the buildings but the concepts behind them.

The exhibits include videos, two-dimensional artworks and interactive devices related to architectural projects. The organizers allotted each past winner of the Far Eastern Architecture Design Award a metal shelf on each they freely showcase their works. Architecture has thus become the background against which they stage their creative use of gallery space.

"Showing our works in a metal frame is very similar to actual architectural design -- there is idea verses reality. The gallery space may not be great, but it's the architect's job to solve the problems of space," said Chien Hsuei-yi (簡學義), whose design of the Taipei County Yingko Museum of Ceramic Art (台北縣鶯歌陶瓷博物館) is on show, along with 15 other past winners.

The Far Eastern Memorial Foundation (徐元智先生紀念基金會) launched the award in 1999 offering the highest-paying prize in Taiwan of NT$1 million. The next year's award coincided with the first anniversary of the 921 earthquake. The foundation therefore set up the Sept. 21 Earthquake Campus Reconstruction Special Award. Inspired by worldwide trends, the organizer set up the International Digital Architecture Design Award the same year, encouraging architects worldwide to apply computer technology to their designs.

Visitors not acquainted with architecture may also find the various creative musing about architecture highly inspiring.

The Story of Four Trees shows how Wang Wei-jen (王維仁) and Chen Chin-chung (陳勤忠) developed their design of the Chung Keng Primary School (中坑國小) in Taichung. It won last year's Sept. 21 Earthquake Campus Reconstruction Special Award. Centering their design on the existing four old trees on the site, the building is designed in the traditional Hakka style.

"Many people think that following the Hakka residence style is too retro and a bit tacky. Our idea was that a primary school building is to be experienced, not reasoned. We leave it to people living there to create its own story," Wang said.

Winner of the Outstanding Architecture Design Award last year, Lu Li-huang's (呂理煌) Interbreeding Field at the National College of Arts in Tainan puts atmosphere above shape and style. On two TV monitors showing Lu and his students at work, viewers can see that they "first went to the site not to think up what shape we wanted the buildings to be but to feel the ambience, the whole surroundings," said Huang yi-chi (黃亦智), one of Lu's students.