Thyrdrail … if you’re another incarnation of Dan Bloom, please piss off and leave us all alone. Else go while away your days away in the death star shopping mall, where i’m sure you’ll feel at home. If you spend enough time time there, you’ll probably keel over and die and get a free cremation courtesy of the management and their buddies with unusually fat wallets at the Taipei City fire department. Or am I just in a bad mood because England lost to those cheating Brazilian bastards?
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Originally posted by wolf_reinhold: Parchute journalism is offensive to those of us who actually live here and know a thing or two. [img]images/smiles/icon_mad.gif[/img]
Doesn’t offend me in the slightest. I’d much rather read Wolfendale’s take on Taipei than, say, Monique Chu or heaven forbid, Nancy Lu.
Hey, Wolfendale’s piece made me laugh out loud – twice – and while I’ll admit that I’ve often laughed at Nancy’s verbal diarrohea, its not quite the same kind of laughing, if you know what I mean.
I haven’t been truly entertained by a journalist here since the days of Peter Perves, so I’m all for a bit of variety.
Anyway, its not as if he’s writing an in-depth analysis of government corruption or anything, is it? Its only a bit of fluff, albeit well-written and pretty damned funny, in parts.
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Originally posted by *monkey*: Thyrdrail ... if you're another incarnation of Dan Bloom, please piss off and leave us all alone. Else go while away your days away in the death star shopping mall, where i'm sure you'll feel at home. If you spend enough time time there, you'll probably keel over and die and get a free cremation courtesy of the management and their buddies with unusually fat wallets at the Taipei City fire department. Or am I just in a bad mood because England lost to those cheating Brazilian bastards?
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Originally posted by *monkey*: Thyrdrail ... if you're another incarnation of Dan Bloom, please piss off and leave us all alone. Else go while away your days away in the death star shopping mall, where i'm sure you'll feel at home. If you spend enough time time there, you'll probably keel over and die and get a free cremation courtesy of the management and their buddies with unusually fat wallets at the Taipei City fire department. Or am I just in a bad mood because England lost to those cheating Brazilian bastards?
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Who is Dan Bloom??
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If I ever go to Taiwan to visit, the Death Star will be up near the top of my list!!! I still say it’s an awesome looking mall, despite what Sandman says about it!!
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Regarding your bad mood, naaaah…you just sound like a crabby old Englishman . I don’t think the soccer game has anything to do with it. GOOOOOO BRAZIL!!!
I agree with Sandman, Wolf. Point is, if you wade through shit on a daily basis, as all three of us have been doing since the mid/late 80s, you forget how much it stinks. Nothing wrong with an outsider’s impressions. One thing that puzzles though, I see the Wolfendale piece is copyrighted 2000. But something about its flavor seems to date from a much earlier time. Of course his piece is full of mistakes – where the hell is Tinhua Rd? – and misperceptions – Shihta bars are cool? Not since 1988 – and simple stupidity – I would bet Taipei against Hong Kong in the restaurant stakes any day of the week – but some of what he says is illuminating; he is, for example, the first writer I have seen in a long time to mention the fact that Taiwan, for all people here whinge massively, actually has pretty good traffic flow. A fresh pair of eyes never hurts.
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Originally posted by Lol: One thing that puzzles though, I see the Wolfendale piece is copyrighted 2000. But something about its flavor seems to date from a much earlier time.
Funny you should mention that, Lol. There’s a reference in his story – “Taipei is a young keen city with a smudge on its face and dust on its shoes” – that I could have sworn I’ve read someplace else. Did a Google on it, but nothing came up.
Maybe the piece has been published previously in some airline mag or something? Or maybe he just picked it out of his files and dusted it off a bit.
The reason the buildings are ugly is not because of the design but rather the residents who live in them. With cages, wires, mismatched windows, tacky billboards, and all kinds of other shite hanging from the exterior, how can the place possibly look appealing. The inside isn’t much better - dust and mold everywhere, tennis racket sized cobwebs in every corner, roaches racing up and down the walls.
It doesn’t matter who designed it. Once the locals move in and the building committee begins the task of maintenance the facade is transformed into something resembling Chung King Mansion.
Daaamn, Chung. You sure painted a pretty picture, didn’t you? NOT!! After that description and everybody else’s, who the hell wants to go visit? Even for a business trip. I really wanted to go this year, but now I think I’ll just head to Maui!! LOL.
I don’t understand why you all persist to live there if you are so miserable. At least you sound miserable. If it stank when you got there, why stay at all? I don’t think I can stay at a place I have too many complaints about.
Anyway, I was planning to spend most of my time in the country side and mountain regions and avoid big cities. I hear it’s really beautiful in those areas. I saw on net a website of a new hotel opened on an island in Sun Moon Lake which was also featured in Taiwan GQ. Forgot the name tho…Luna or something. Looks quite nice.
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Originally posted by chung: The inside isn't much better - dust and mold everywhere, tennis racket sized cobwebs in every corner, roaches racing up and down the walls.
Yeah, right Chung, like Gillian wouldn’t have your BALLS if your place looked like that!
This may be a bit of a lagging post, but I just joined and so am spreading thoughts wherever I see a topic of interest…
anyway, I think most of the problems with architecture in Taiwan can be attributed to 4 main factors:
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As some have complained about in other forums here, Taiwanese corporations seem to lack appreciation for quality product. There is an old Chinese saying about “Zwo (4th tone) ren (2nd tone)”, literally meaning “being a person” but referring to the cultivation of all of one’s social/business/political relationships, being more important than “zwo (4th tone) gong (1st tone)” or “work”. I think that saying is definitely still very applicable to both Taiwan and China today.
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Taiwanese companies are not as willing to pay for top-quality consultants. Or, at least in building and design, if they do, they often limit the scope of work so that they can get the work done for cheap. Unfortunately, that means that the work is often unfinished.
I think this may be what happened to some extent with the Core Pacific Mall. From what I understand (and as I posted in the Mall forum), Jerde contracted only for initial conceptual designs and not to help make sure that those concepts would be properly executed in the final product. Though, I believe Chris Yao’s firm, Artech, finished the work, and they are one of Taiwan’s best practices, they cannot be expected to carry out someone else’s vision to the T. I would also not be surprised if Core Pacific proved not only to be a cantankerous client but also squeezed Artech and all the other consultants on the service fees, as they have been bleeding money on this project for over a decade. For whatever reasons, the CP Mall is definitely not amongst Artech’s better works.
- Taiwanese clients tend to view architects not as professionals who are expert in their field but as draftspeople and technicians. Thus, their input on aesthetics and design decisions are not highly valued.
The above three factors lead to a host of problems that contribute to the horrible architecture here. In large-scale commercial buildings, every little decision and problem that needs to be solved has the potential to snowball into issues big enough to derail concepts and ideas critical to the asethetics of a project. If there is not enough inertia of concern for those concepts and ideas to begin with, and the consultants are not being paid for or are not being paid well enough, and the clients do not value their consultants’ input, well, then you get a lot of bad architecture.
There is a 4th critical factor that has to do with the nature of Taiwan’s real estate industry in general. In most developed countries, commercial real estate interests develop, hold, and manage properties as long-term interests. Profit comes from the rental incomes generated by these properties. Until about 4 or 5 years ago, Taiwan had been in a huge building boom. It was so easy to sell real estate that many projects wouldn’t even start construction until they were 100% sold. This is almost unheard of. The result was that no one needed to worry about waiting to get money from rental income because everyone could make immediate cash from building and selling quickly. And since everyone was only interested in selling, no one needed to worry about what these buildings would eventually look like. Who cared if these were great buildings or not if the people who built them had no intention of keeping them, anyway? Add this attitude to the 3 above factors, and you get more bad architecture.
Obviously, the climate has changed dramatically. The downturn has altered the trends and practices of many of the main players in the industry and could end up being a very positive force in the island’s architectural development.
On a final note, a friend of mine just asked today for an architectural tour of Taipei. I couldn’t think of anything to show her, anything that is “wow”. Anybody have any thoughts?
Have you ever noticed, while traveling on an elevated highway or the MRT, that when you look into people’s apartments you find that they very often have nothing on the walls. The Buddha bench is usually there with its red light, but no pictures or anything adorn the walls. Clinical? Drab? Prison-like? or just odd?
quote:Yeah, and no books, either. But there's always a 37" TV with the "It's a Sony" sticker proudly left in place. Priorities, I guess. [img]images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]
Originally posted by wolf_reinhold: Have you ever noticed that people's apartments very often have nothing on the walls. The Buddha bench is usually there with its red light, but no pictures or anything adorn the walls. Clinical? Drab? Prison-like? or just odd?
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Originally posted by abekonge: I couldn't think of anything to show her, anything that is "wow". Anybody have any thoughts?
Poagao,
not exactly what i was thinking…pretty wow, tho…
Abekonge, some of your reasons may be valid, but you forgot one other important facet, and that is every culture has their own particular aesthetic tastes. What’s unattractive to you may not be unattractive to the Taiwanese. I personally hate those infamous bathroom tiles, and I asked a Taiwanese friend one time why it’s so prevalent in their architecture. And he actually told me many people think it’s attractive. He pointed out that just like NYers prefer to build their buildings with brown bricks, which in my opinion is also very ugly and NYC has tons of them, they like theirs covered with small white tiles. And I thought he made a very valid and reasonable point.
And as everyone may know, I like Core Pacific, and yeah, I know I’m in the minority. But I frequent several architectural/skyscraper forums where the topic of Core Pacific came up and pictures were posted, and most of the people gave very positive reviews.
Well, I think it probably IS true that the Taiwanese buildings and infratsructure are sooo bad because this place was for a while seen as only temporary. At least, this seems to be part of the explanation.
(For the same reason, Taiwan is really still export-mad and doesn’t seem too keen on encouraging a domestic consumer economy.)
In addition, whereas its true to say that ancient civilisations were fond of building nice architecture… that’s not possible any more. Think of the cost! It was even more expensive in the past, of course, but then you could always whip and kosh a few thousand slaves or imperial subjects into building a pyramid or a wall.
Taiwan, by comparison, has been built on a shoe-string budget.
A lot of the money, of course, is syphoned off into politicians’ pockets… which then then use to buy nice-looking buildings in Bel-Air.
Finally, I like the sawn-off Zebra and the plastic red chickeny-knifey-looking thing on Tunhwa and Minsheng. Show’s a sense of humour. Let’s have more nonesense sculptures - I’ll do a coupl myself if you like.