Dear Friends,
2020 has been a challenging year. We hope you and your loved ones are staying safe and healthy during these trying times. This year we took a step back from all international work and focused on developing meaningful work in Taiwan.
We started out the year with the completion of a private family home in Yilan, Taiwan, a collaborative effort with interior design firm HHNL. This four-story house sits on the beautiful Pacific coast and stands out with its striking black exterior and grass-roof terrace.
We then received the commission to design a series of projects in Puli, Nantou, a breathtakingly beautiful part of central Taiwan. We are enthusiastically applying circular economy principles here, as the client encourages us to incorporate, as much as possible, a wide range of reclaimed construction material from demolition sites throughout Taiwan, including all kinds of artisanal bricks, telegraph poles, railway sleepers, boulders, gravel, terrazzo tiles, etc. These projects include an eco-centric neighborhood with around 200 housing units, and a boutique hotel nearby with 84 rooms and stunning views at the top of a hill. It will feature amenities that promote healthy and mindful living, with food sourced from local farms, and wine and whiskey from famous breweries in the region.
We are also working on a marketplace that features four small courtyards. Each will be a venue for a different type of local product: flowers, fruits and vegetables, woodwork, and tea and alcohol. A central multistory courtyard, inspired by Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London, will be a circular performance area. The market is the backdrop for this newsletter’s featured image.
Just west of these projects, in Taichung, we are designing two new buildings for a private high school. The first is an academic building with classrooms, laboratories, offices, and exhibition spaces. The second is an arts hub with a unique art bank. Corporate visitors will have a chance to peruse student work and collaborate with the school to take long term loans. It will be supported by a student run café, and a public event space. This year we worked on two healthcare projects. The first, pictured below, was a competition in Varna, Bulgaria for disabled children that mixes daycare program with facilities for mental and physical recuperation. We learned a lot about European standards of healthcare, which we applied to our second project in Chiayi, Taiwan, for an elderly long-term care home. In four phases, it will be a centralized home for about 450 residents. It was also a good opportunity to develop ideas about what it means to create shared living spaces during a time when social distancing is a key issue.
Towards the end of the year, we won a competition together with HHNL & Xiv.Dixdesign to build a sales center + bookstore, which will showcase the upcoming most exciting residential address in the heart of Kaohsiung, the capital of southern Taiwan.
We look forward to a better year ahead, and would love to hear from you again in 2021. Happy holidays!
