An exhibition at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei starting today is to feature four proposed designs to revamp Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Park, moving it away from its autocratic roots to be more in line with transitional justice, the Transitional Justice Commission said.
Since the idea to repurpose the memorial park gained traction in September last year, multiple discussions and forums have made it clear that any repurposing should go beyond removing the central statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and renaming the area, the commission said.
Only through a complete spatial redesign can the memorial park’s “unfriendly and closed-off atmosphere, which preserves and even commemorates an autocratic ruler,” be changed, it said.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
ArchiBlur Lab submitted a design for the four-day event titled: “The Meeting Building Collective — A cultural surface combining the skies, the land and history,” which would introduce “mountains” to the park in Zhongzheng District (中正) alongside children’s areas and places where people can experience agriculture.
The terrain and building clusters would “break apart” the previously uniaxial orientation of the park, remaking it into a “collective” where different possibilities would meet and spark new ingenuity, ArchiBlur Lab said.
Scale Design Co’s design is named “Shameful Conscience,” which would create new visitor flows and axial orientation, grow more trees, move the Chiang statue, and repurpose the space to include exhibition halls and research facilities.
“We hope to make the memorial park a public space that can truly allow its visitors to become introspective and reflect upon themselves, history or other things,” Scale Design said.
The Urbanists Collective’s design, named “Youthtopia,” places emphasis on “the spatial needs of the younger generation.”
Its plan would repurpose the space to allow creative music studios, a debate center and an area that would allow graffiti, hoping to make the memorial park “a place where young people would spend time to learn and create.”
A proposal by Sun Chi-jung Architectural Firm named “The Stare of Autocracy and the Subjective Consciousness” rehauls the design completely.
It would remove the perimeter walls to make the memorial park more accessible to the public, while placing an “autocracy museum” and the headquarters of Taiwanese non-governmental organizations beside the main building.
With its location in central Taipei, hopefully the memorial park’s new design would return the space to the people, while serving as a reminder of history, the commission said.
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