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Control Yuan to open its doors

The 89-year-old Control Yuan building, designed by Japanese architect Moriyama Matsunosuke, will be opened to the public sometime after the Lunar New Year holiday. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CONTROL YUAN

Following the example of the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan, the 89-year-old Control Yuan will open its doors to the public for tours after the Lunar New Year, a senior official of the watchdog body said last week.

"The Control Yuan will be regularly open to the public soon, after we complete a multimedia exhibition room and set regulations for public tours," said Control Yuan Secretary-General Tu Shang-liang (杜善良).

The Control Yuan had restricted access to researchers or domestic and foreign dignitaries. Even couples who wanted to take wedding pictures in the European-style compound had to make advance reservations.

Tu said that opening the majestic compound to the public would allow people to learn about the building's history.

"We also hope to educate people on how the supervisory system works to protect their civil liberties through their visits to the ombudsmen's offices," he said.

The Control Yuan is opposite the Executive Yuan, another historic government compound built by the Japanese during their 50 years of occupation. It is located on the intersection of Zhongxiao East Road and Zhongshan South Road, where Japanese rulers built a three-lane highway, the widest on the island.

Designed by Japanese architect Moriyama Matsunosuke, one of the main designers of Taiwan's offices under Japanese colonial rule, the two-story building of steel, concrete and brick was completed in 1915.

Japanese colonists first used the building as the Taipei Prefecture Office, the headquarters for the northern counties of Taipei, Keelung and Ilan.

Between 1945 and 1947, it was the office of the provincial administrator of Taiwan after Taiwan's "retrocession."

The building later became the office of educational functionaries and hygienists under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government. Control Yuan members moved into the building in 1958, when the KMT government decided to make it the permanent office for its ombudsmen.

The building has housed nine Control Yuan presidents since then, including Yu You-jen (于右任), who left a couplet in one corner of the compound that visitors can see during tours.

Using techniques from English architect Josiah Conder, Moriyama represented the generation of Jap-anese architects who modeled their style on Western architectonics.

The young Japanese architect put a three-floor high Byzantine copper dome in the facade. The eight-column corridor in the main entrance gives the naturally lighted entrance hall a solemn atmosphere.

There are four sets of Tuscan-style columns surrounding the entrance hall, which has an 18m-high ceiling and is connected by a M-shaped staircase to two hallways with arched doors.

Moriyama also applied French-style mansard roofs on the two wings of the main building and covered them with copper sheets. Visitors will be able to explore most areas of the Control Yuan, including the extremely narrow passageway under the mansard roofs, Tu said.

The secretary-general said that a refurbishment project lasting several years had made the Control Yuan the best preserved building of all the remaining post-Renaissance buildings in Taiwan.

In 1998, the Ministry of the Interior declared that the Control Yuan was a historical monument and should be managed in accordance with rules for national heritage conservation.

The extra restrictions made the refurbishment work challenging, Tu said.

"We had to make sure every repair was true to the original design. That posed dozens of challenges for the architects during the refurbishment. Searching for the new roof tiles was one example," he said.

The roof tiles used by Moriyama were used by Chinese royal palaces and require 60 days of firing and drying to make them moisture-proof and solid.

The architects in charge of the refurbishment eventually found a kiln in China that still made this kind of tile. The order for 50,000 took hundreds of the villagers more than six months to fulfill.

Restoring the bricks on the pillars in the two corridors extending from the entrance hall was another challenge, since the brick had been covered with paint and dust over several decades.

When asked which part of the building was his favorite, Tu said that every part of the Control Yuan deserved a mention.

Tu also has visions for the building to house the planned National Human Rights Museum proposed by the Presidential Office to mark the ombudsmen's utmost duty of safeguarding people's rights.

A new office building next to the aging building to accommodate Control Yuan personnel reveals a contrast between old and new in the ways the Control Yuan monitors the government, Tu said.
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