Lecture by Eric Chen
The lecture with the title “Body & Landscape as Ways of Seeing” was conducted by the visiting professor of UCSI, Eric Chen Xuan Chen(陳宣誠), who is a Taiwanese architect and the director of Archiblur lab. Archiblur lab is founded in October 2015 via actual artistic practices. The studio explores relationship between architects and “empathy” of body and landscape.
“It is called a lab instead of an architectural firm as most of the works we did are more experimentation project and discovering new ways of how architecture communicate with the people.”
In his projects, they are separated into two stages, which is first, collecting, and secondly, reworking on the archives.
“Taiwan has a lot of old house, and remark them”—that’s the process of collecting and it is genealogy of Taiwan.
“You collect something, renew the body, and the body is renewed by bringing it into the landscape.”
Through the process of collecting, the relationship of boundary between Urban and village is redefined.
Eric Chen major works concentrate on the urban archipelago projects, where it is a drifting platforms tot fill the urban spaces. New architectural scale is developed to drift and change between the body, the city and the landscape, transforming different areas into theatres, community spaces and stages.
His projects and installations are always designed with aims, either to revitalise the forgotten space, to create a space for community engagement, or to stimulate society sensitivity of a history or memory.
In 2016, 10 “cars” are designed and created.
Car is used to describe them as they are cabin-like structures with wheels at the bottom.
“The government actually collects parking fees for these “cars”..”
They are also known as the moving architecture or the urban floating islands.
The first three floating islands namely the time machine, the memory house and also the exhibition hall. These three islands mainly play the roles to revitalize the forgotten and neglected corners in the street,
Potential locations are studied and marked out in the area and the cabins are located there for different purpose. For instance, the aim at one of the location is to bind the government area and the village which are clearly separated by a invisible boundary.
The time machine capture and produce image. A photography artist, a friend of Eric will be there in the weekend to help the passerby who want to photoshoot and the photo will be produced straight after that. During the low peak day, where there is less passerby, the car is used to display the photos of the museum volunteer (People volunteer to greet the visitors at museum in Taiwan).
Besides having activities within the cabin itself, the activities engaged the community by incorporating what people is familiar with, for example the popular delicacy in Taiwan.
“When we talk about design, what comes first?”
“It’s the identity card, the logo in the public space“
He broke out a joke in the lecture saying, “not to mention, Taiwan actually have an ugly identity card design.”
He created the Identity card design competition and logo design competition for the 大肠包小肠 and 青蛙下蛋 (direct translate from Mandarin: Small sausage in big sausage and frog laying eggs --[names of the Taiwan snacks]) at the cabin.
Next, I would discuss on his 4th urban floating island located at the Zhu Bei river in Taiwan. Rapid developments along the rivers have slowly overtaking the river, meaning reclamation works on the river have replaced the river. Eric’s intention on this island is to make something invisible visible. Seems the river is now invisible, covered by developments, he brought in the water from the river to his cabin, to make people conscious about the existence of the river again.
The river water is pumped manually by the traditional water pump to sustain the vegetation on the roof. The installation located near a school engaged the students with the vegetation plantation, where students will queue up during the break time to pump the water to ensure that the vegetation are growing well.
Another “car” project which caught my attention is the Moving Garden, incorporated into a hospital at 鹿港镇, Lu Gang town. Eric mentioned that the elderly has occupied 20% of the population in Taiwan, and it is not a good news to boast around. Hence, the demand on the hospital also increases with the upsurge of elderly people in Taiwan.
“We always think that, only sick people goes to hospital. Despite, when we look back to the original meaning of the term “hospital”, it is not just about sickness or disease, it means taking care too, meaning healthy people could go to hospital too, maybe for relaxation”
The cabin, named Moving Garden are separated into three compartments, first, garden area, second, the rooms and lastly the big table area.
“Nature is the medicine. The greens around us actually cures diseases”
The first compartment is the data collecting area, where the greens which can be used cure diseases (for example, diabetes and sinus) are planted, the rooms are used for doctor consultation and the last compartments are where discussion and conversation started between the people.
All the moving architectures are discussed in the lecture and the same characteristic of them are they are designed for a purpose according to different sites and locations. Some of the cabins are relocated and its function is changed and adapted to the new site.
The 10 cabins are later gathered and relocated at a sugar factory where it was a village where 3000 people was killed by the Japanese during the world war time. Each cabin is then reassigned with a new function.
After series of collecting progress, Archiblur lab later rework with the archives, the data collected. Historical archives, oral interviews, writing, material research, old photo restoration, documentary, community context landscape texture survey, and collection of rural and urban context are reorganised in this process.
Instead of making the conventional kind of site model, Eric turns the archive into an artwork and get the people to experience it.
“Lecturer don’t tell you what architecture is, you define it,” Eric mentioned. This quote triggers my memory on what one of my lecturer always tell us, “Don’t ask me if your design can or not. It is your design.” Students should define their own style of architecture instead of waiting the lecturer to spoon-feed you and tell you what to design.
When Eric is asked if he is interested to do the same thing as what he did in Taiwan in this multi-cultural country, Malaysia, he shows his interest to do so and he mentioned another example, which is one of his ongoing project in Jerusalem. He is to bring back the memory of the people about the tragedy happened during the world war in the Church of Jerusalem, the first Church in the world.
“I love to explore the place and show the identity of it through architecture.”
I think that the quote above best represent Eric’s approach on every design where he makes use of architecture to show the identity of the place and always engage the community and allow interaction with his architecture.
“It is not about why we must make/built architecture, it is about why should architecture exist?” Eric mentioned. I think Eric Chen has make the existence of architecture more meaningful through his kind of architecture.
Eric ended the lecture by explaining the forest concept of the floating mountain installations at EduCity, in Nusajaya, Johor, to the students involved in the Publikart workshop before this in November 2016. It is my honour to join and witness this hands on installations in Johor, not only improving our practical skills, but also learned to look at architecture in another perspectives.
