Lecture - 1st April 2017
Body and Landscape as Ways of Seeing | Eric Chen
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The talk presented by Eric Chen in conjunction with The Body and Landscape as Ways of Seeing. Most of his works are well known for the detailed that happened within micro living, connections between humans and buildings or buildings and buildings. In the talk, Eric Chen defined his body and landscape genealogy of urban living as followed: spontaneous renewal of intervening body on the site and construction, surveys of landscape resources, drawing of moving maps from internality and redefining the relationship of boundary between Urban and Village.
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He called his works as Urban Archipelago projects, with sequences from 1 to 10. Made as drifting platforms that can fill urban space, the “Urban Archipelago projects” trying to develop a new architectural scale that is able to drift and change between body , the city, and landscape, transform different areas into theatres, school zones and stages, Built with a combination of tectonic elements and formal conditions, the designs investigate the capacity of people to engage with evolving urban morphologies and different methods of making art.
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Archipelago 1 – Time machine
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Eric Chen described Archipelago 1 as *Time machine which function as connection between boundary of each urban. There are two part of it, looked like a section cut of a normal housing, on left, it is used to take portrait ; on right, to produce and send images. He talked about, the main idea to creating this modular structure which can move around the city , was to create the awareness for the people to remind them the old places where they are so often gathering but getting disappear in the vast development of urban context. The process was actually like a collage, people who took the photo imagine where they stand on, and the photographer will collage the portrait together with the old place as background. It reminded them where they used to be and a sense of belonging for the place though the same spot may not have the same feeling as before again. With this archipelago, people are using their own mind as sense or imagination back to their old times.
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*Time machine – a modular camera like structure , or Eric described it as a ‘car’ when dealing for permit to cross around the city from the government of Taiwan.
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Archipelago 2 – Family House
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The Family House was built as he thought that old people in Taiwan used to gather at their back alley for gathering as a culture during their old days, but it is no longer happened in nowadays. With Family House he built, it is like an amenity for people to rest or utilize. He placed it around the MRT ,hospital and public places in Taiwan, for old people to rest or just for them to gathering.
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Archipelago 3 – Station Hall
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*Station Hall, it is designed to place the artworks with high roof view, as viewer looking up the artworks, a respect posture is created. It is also a moving architecture, which function to connect the context of different spots in the urban. The idea behind it moving at selective public spots, was to allow public to expose themselves to the familiar places where they often pass by but not knowing what happened around them. He said that, people who willing to walk in, may have a chance to explore the places even deeper. Eric described it as “ You open a door, you create a memory lane”. It happened when people gather and sharing to each other about their stories/historic that happened within their places. Reorganization of historical archives, oral interviews, writing , material research , old photo restoration , documentary , community context and landscape texture survey, in urban and rural exhibition space, showing the collection of the context can be seen relationship between the visible and invisible, but also to continue the creative practice, based on the link to the land, linking between the relationship between vertical and horizontal multi-level development.
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*Station hall – a moving structure, that display artwork to reflect the micro living that happened around urban citizen.
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Before the talk end, Eric Chen gave a precious talk to the students, he said that “Architecture is not about whatever your lecturers tell or teach you, it is about what you discover about it. It might be right or wrong, things that happened only you the one who experienced it. Every architecture has its own stories. That’s architecture!” He also explained why he called his studio Archiblur Lab, to him , something ‘blur’ is the most beautiful part. ( He said, for example when a couple falling in love, the start of it always blur and that’s what make it the most beautiful part). Lastly, Eric advices students to rethinking architecture in a way not waiting the problem to come through, but to think the problem may facing in future.
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