Tunghai University’s Luce Memorial Chapel and Taichung City Hall are to be listed as national historical buildings by the Ministry of Culture, the Taichung Department of Cultural Heritage said.
Applications to review the designations of the buildings were filed by the university and the Taichung City Government.
However, the university’s request that its bell tower be listed as a national historical building was rejected, the department said.
Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times
The ministry is to publish its decision in the next few days, it said.
Completed in 1963, Luce Chapel was designed by architects I.M. Pei (貝聿銘) and Chen Chi-kwan (陳其寬), the department said.
With structural engineer Feng Hou-san (鳳後三) and construction manager Wu Ken-tsung (吳艮宗), they completed a classic work of post-World War II architecture that perfectly blended global trends in design with the local environment, the department said.
During the post-war recovery, when materials were scarce, the chapel offered an exciting yet subdued interpretation of Modernism, it said.
Taichung City Hall was one of five major prefectural halls constructed during the Japanese colonial era. It was the work of architect Matsunosuke Moriyama, as were the halls in Taipei and Tainan, which are now the Control Yuan building and the National Museum of Taiwan Literature respectively, it said.
The office of the then-Taiwan governor-general’s civil affairs department oversaw construction of Taichung City Hall, which was built in stages from 1913 to 1934, the department said.
The building contains elements of Neoclassicism, as well as architectural styles from the German empire, it said.
It features triangular gables on its towers, a mansard roof, roof windows in various styles and many decorations on its facade, it said.
Luce Chapel and Taichung City Hall are to become Taichung’s third and fourth national monuments, after the classifications of the Wufeng Lin Family Mansion and Garden and Taichung Railway Station, the department said.
Restoration of the chapel is to be completed in line with Bureau of Cultural Heritage regulations, which require at least 5 percent of funding for such projects to be provided by the owner, user or manager of a privately held national monument, it said.
The bureau can provide the remainder, it said.
Subsidized by the ministry, restoration and repurposing of Taichung City Hall is already under way, it said.
After the work is completed, the city could ask the ministry for up to 65 percent of the funding required to manage and maintain the building, it said.
Subsidies from the central government would facilitate not only the preservation and maintenance of the newly designated national monuments, but also their transformation into important cultural sites in the city, it added.
EVA Airways today confirmed the death of a flight attendant on Saturday upon their return to Taiwan and said an internal investigation has been launched, as criticism mounted over a social media post accusing the airline of failing to offer sufficient employee protections. According to the post, the flight attendant complained of feeling sick on board a flight, but was unable to take sick leave or access medical care. The crew member allegedly did not receive assistance from the chief purser, who failed to heed their requests for medical attention or call an ambulance once the flight landed, the post said. As sick
A drunk woman was sexually assaulted inside a crowded concourse of Taipei Railway Station on Thursday last week before a foreign tourist notified police, leading to calls for better education on bystander intervention and review of security infrastructure. The man, surnamed Chiu (邱), was taken into custody on charges of sexual assault, taking advantage of the woman’s condition and public indecency. Police discovered that Chiu was a fugitive with prior convictions for vehicle theft. He has been taken into custody and is to complete his unserved six-month sentence, police said. On Thursday last week, Chiu was seen wearing a white
The Taichung District Court yesterday confirmed its final ruling that the marriage between teenage heir Lai (賴) and a man surnamed Hsia (夏) was legally invalid, preventing Hsia from inheriting Lai’s NT$500 million (US$16.37 million) estate. The court confirmed that Hsia chose not to appeal the civil judgement after the court handed down its ruling in June, making the decision final. In the June ruling, the court said that Lai, 18, and Hsia, 26, showed “no mutual admiration before the marriage” and that their interactions were “distant and unfamiliar.” The judge concluded that the couple lacked the “true intention of
EVA Airways, one of the leading international carriers in Taiwan, yesterday said that it was investigating reports that a cabin crew manager had ignored the condition of a sick flight attendant, who died on Saturday. The airline made the statement in response to a post circulating on social media that said that the flight attendant on an outbound flight was feeling sick and notified the cabin crew manager. Although the flight attendant grew increasingly ill on the return flight, the manager did not contact Medlink — a system that connects the aircraft to doctors on the ground for treatment advice during medical
RSS