Saturday Saturday
10AM - 6PM
Exhibition
Hello, Human!
One year project – Outing
Phantoms－Timoteus Anggawan Kusno
Semiotics of the Home
EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS
2023 / 02 / 11 Sat.
2023 / 04 / 23 Sun.
10:00 - 18:00
Curator
Chun-Hsiung WANG
Artists
Ming-Liang TSAI
Yi-En CHEN
Aaron NIEH
Kuo-Liang CHIANG
Sheng-Feng LIN
Chung-Han YAO
Sheng-Yuan HUANG
Fieldoffice Architects
This exhibition features diverse landscape produced by seven artists through their respective encounter, collaboration, and even collision with the architecture designed by Fieldoffice Architects via different routes and in dissimilar spatial-temporal context. As an invitation, the exhibition engages the audience to contemplate the following question through their gaze: what is architecture, and what is its purpose in the contemporary world?
The term for “architecture” in Mandarin “建築” used today was introduced into Taiwan during the period of Japanese rule, which signals the context of colonial modernization. During Japan’s Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century, “architecture” was translated as “建筑” in Japanese kanji. In the West, “architecture” has been used since the ancient Greek period. At that time, architecture was considered the top of all arts, and an architect was someone who led and brought together professionals of various crafts. Over more than two thousand years, this term which was invented from a production point of view has informed the sacred understanding that the Western architecture circle has tried to maintain within itself throughout several waves of architectural revivals. In the context of colonial modernization, a similar professionalism and understanding of “architecture” has also been established in Taiwan.
However, for ordinary people who are not of the architecture profession, the word “architecture” simply denotes the object in life. Moreover, like many manmade objects in everyday life, architecture as a manmade object not only possesses a material meaning in terms of its function and use, but also expresses who we are, and even to the point of shaping our identity. From a symbolic point of view, a living object can possibly be interpreted in many ways. The same object in life can have different meanings to different people; reversely, the same meaning can be symbolized in various ways with dissimilar objects. Based on this viewpoint, neutral architecture does not exist—people’s understanding and knowledge of architecture is not unified, singular, or solitary. Therefore, architecture can be defined by those outside of the architecture profession, and the concept of architecture only suggests a mystified profession.
It is worth noticing that creation is never out of thin air. The production of meanings or symbols is always based on the modification of existing ones; that is, new meanings are born from the reconstruction of existing meanings. So, the idea of architecture, which is conceived from the viewpoint of production, is not created out of nothing, but part of this cycle of construction and reconstruction of meaning. However, architecture is only a part of this process of endless understanding and open interpretation, which is never permanent and always ongoing—one does not know what the meaning will be. Through space, the construction and reconstruction of the meaning of architecture is no longer something to be perceived conceptually, but a full sensory experience of aesthetics that is affective, distinctive, and can be realistically felt. Consequently, architecture denotes a process of constructing meaning in various ways, through which people have continued to change architecture based on their understanding and imagination; and architecture, in the same way, has consistently altered people’s perception of themselves and their identity as well. Architecture conjures up an intersecting field of reality and imagination, where multiple meanings can be included—it is a site where the self and others can communicate openly, and ideas can be exchanged, adjusted and reshaped.
Fieldoffice Architects is founded by architect Sheng-Yuan HUANG in Yilan. They aim to create an architectural practice which can be integrated with and into the local lifestyle and environment and employs multiple open approaches to connect with professionals of different discipline to join their creative life. The artists featured in this exhibition have all engaged in dissimilar forms of intervention in the works of Fieldoffice Architects. Thus, this exhibition is itself a mini architecture. Through the interpretations of the works of Fieldoffice Architects, the exhibition serves as an open invitation to not just the artists but also all the audience to partake in this site of interweaving and transforming ideas to create meanings and understand others; and the worlds that were separate previously can become interconnected, and their relations can be mended and reshaped. Beyond Architecture is the node that links different worlds.
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An architectural critic and curator, Chun-Hsiung WANG specializes in architectural representations of modernity and ideological deconstruction, as he extends from the development of design techniques to explore the sociocultural origins of architecture. He has collaborated extensively with like-minded Taiwanese and international curators, construction specialists, developers, architects, and artists, and has also established specialized groups. WANG has taken part in several public space planning and consulting projects, seeking to discover his civil purpose and to open up possibilities for freedom and aestheticism to flourish from a stagnant system.
Some of the papers WANG has published include中華民國與建築：百年發展歷程 Zhōnghuá mínguó yǔ jiànzhú: Bǎinián fāzhǎn lìchéng [The Republic of China and architecture: A century of development]; The Reciprocity between Architects and Social Change: Taiwan Experience after the 1990s; and The Craftsmanship of Fieldoffice, and he has also worked on several books, including Fieldoffice Incomplete Works, 1994- (as editor-in-chief); Rustic & Poetic——An Emerging Generation of Architecture in Postwar Taiwan (co-written with Ming-Song SHYU); Romantic Reality: Exhibition of Postwar Lanyang Architecture》(co-written with Tseng-Yung WANG); and Taipei Unveiled (co-written with Shu CHANG). Wang’s architectural critiques are also published in architecture magazines.
WANG has also curated many exhibitions, and in 2012 he founded the International Exhibition of Architecture Graduation Design, which has since been organized annually; other exhibitions he has worked on include OPTOGO Taiwan Pavilion for Milan World Expo (2015); IN-theWhere • Fieldoffice at work (co-curated with Tseng-Yung WANG, 2013); Fieldoffice Europe Touring Exhibition (co-curated with Juhani PALLASMAA, 2016-2021); SOS Brutalism—Save the Concrete Monsters! (co-curated with Oliver ELSER, 2020); Taiwan Acts!: Architecture in Social Dialogue (co-curated with Chen-Yu CHIU); Taiwan Exhibition, Living with Sky, Water and Mountain: Making Places in Yilan, at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale; and Living in Place, Enabling the Coming-Together at the 2021Venice Architecture Biennale.
Chun-Hsiung WANG is the current dean of the Department of Architecture at Shih Chien University and also the editor-in-chief of the quarterly magazine, Architecture + Tectonics Taiwan (a+tec).
A film and theater director, Ming-Liang TSAI first began working creatively in Taiwan in the 1980s, where he gradually developed his own unique cinematic style in a social and cultural environment under martial law and then transitioned into the post-martial law era. He was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival in 1994 for the film, Vive L'Amour, which solidified his international status, and his subsequent films have all garnered great attention. A retrospective of TSAI’s oeuvre was organized in October 2022 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), followed by A Quest, an art installation exhibition and retrospective of TSAI’s filmography, presented at the Centre Pompidou, France. TSAI began collaborating with the Fieldoffice Architects in 2017 and curated the four-year exhibition, Walker, at the Zhuangwei Township in Yilan, Taiwan. In 2019, the Fieldoffice Architects collaborated with TSAI again at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, with two films by TSAI interpreting the works of the Fieldoffice Architects screened at the exhibition.
Documentary director Kuo-Liang CHIANG started his career at the film studio of director Ming-Chuan HUANG and was involved in the making of the documentaries on Te-Cheng LIAO and Wen-Chih WANG. Kuo-Liang CHIANG began documenting the Fieldoffice Architects in 2008 after he received a grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation. Since then, he has been documenting the team’s everyday activities and creative endeavors for close to 14 years and has gotten to know nearly everyone who has ever been a part of the Fieldoffice Architects. CHIANG released the documentary, Sheng-Yuan HUANG in the Fields, in 2011, which has been screened at many film festivals. Since 2015, the Fieldoffice Architects has been actively exhibiting internationally and has received many awards, and CHIANG has closely documented the team’s journey along the way. CHIANG’s cinematic style is simple and refined, and through his quiet gaze where words are unnecessary, he documents the local political and cultural context creatively explored by the Fieldoffice Architects and highlights the unique relationship between the Fieldoffice Architects’ way of life and creative work.
An architect and curator, Sheng-Feng LIN generated great attention for his outdoor installation land art, The Memory of 80’s, presented at the Taitung Art Museum in 2014. In 2018, he received the Taiwan Landscape Architecture Award’s Outstanding Prize for the Blessed Plaza in Hsinchu, followed by Japan’s Good Design Award for Hsinchu Nanliao Fishing Harbor in 2022. The spaces designed by LIN often project a “prototypical” poetic ambiance, with different materials effortlessly incorporated. LIN was invited by the Fieldoffice Architects in 2015 to collaborate on the space design of a Fieldoffice Architects exhibition, which has led to several other exhibition collaborations. In 2021, the Fieldoffice Architects invited LIN and Ming-Liang TSAI to collaborate on the exhibition, Living in Place, Enabling the Coming-Together, presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
LIN is currently an associate professor at the Department of Architecture, Shih Chien University, and he is also the founder of Atelier Or.
An architect and the founder of Fieldoffice Architects, Sheng-Yuan HUANG was born in Taipei and relocated to Yilan in 1994, where he started his independent architecture practice. Winner of the 1997 Taiwan Architecture Award for the Jiaoxi Lin Residence, HUANG’s work has continued to garner great attention. He was presented with the Yosizaka Takamasa Award in 2017, making him the first recipient of the award outside of Japan, and he also became a laureate of Taiwan’s National Award for Arts in 2018. HUANG firmly believes in the root of architecture lies deeply within life itself, and life’s truest form is not one of static and tangible qualities but is ephemeral and constantly in change. HUANG and the team at the Fieldoffice Architects learn from each other and approach task delegation and engage in interaction in organic ways. Collectively, they have developed a unique creative philosophy and methodology, which points towards conditions that are ambiguous or transient via an acute self-awareness, seeking to replace history with memories without internally dictating the embodied meaning, allowing it to openly and continuously generate and develop.
A visual designer and the founder of Aaron NIEH Workshop, Aaron NIEH’s eclectic work spans art and commercialism, and he is constantly challenging existing norms and creating a wide range of possibilities with visual design. Elements of social engagement are incorporated in NIEH’s designs, showing ways of interaction and a metatextual vibe that are unique to the Internet Age. NIEH began collaborating with the Fieldoffice Architects in 2016 and designed the book, Fieldoffice Architects, which was published in 2017. In 2018, the Fieldoffice Architects represented Taiwan at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and NIEH was in charge of the exhibition’s key visual and graphic design of the exhibition space. NIEH worked with the Fieldoffice Architects again on Fieldoffice Incomplete Works, 1994-, a book that took 13 years of planning and was published in 2021. NIEH designed the book cover and advised the team at the Fieldoffice Architects on the book’s typography and layout.
An artist, music composer, and DJ, Chung-Han YAO studied architecture in college, and he began his creative career seeking to “feel the space”, which led to his first noise artwork in 2005. Since then, YAO has been exploring lighting, deconstructed sound art, and structural music production, as he creates artworks in a proscenium setting, as well as incorporating spatial dimensions in his creative thinking. Through the correspondences and contrasts between light and sound, he attempts to prompt the audience to imaginatively experience their own somatosensory. Winner of the 2008 Digital Art Festival Taipei’s Sound Art Prize, he was also presented with the 2017 Taipei Art Awards’ Honorable Mention Award and the ADA Awards for Emerging Architects in 2022. YAO has been invited to exhibit or perform at many international events and has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei and BERLIN tamtamART. In 2020, he presented the exhibition, Feel, Site, Monster, at the Luodong Cultural Working House which is designed by the Fieldoffice Architects.
YAO is currently an associate professor at the Department of Architecture, Shih Chien University. He initiated the Loudly Lightning Studio in 2017, and besides YAO, the studio’s other two members are Jui-Pin TSENG and Ling-Wei CHANG.
A dancer, performer, and choreographer, Yi-En CHEN was an American Dance Festival (ADF) scholarship recipient. He also received a grant through the “Next Choreography Project” and has also gained support from other platforms that support emerging artists. In 2014, with support from the National Culture and Arts Foundation’s “Young Star, New Vision” program, he collaborated with Les Petites Choses Production on the production, Days. In 2018, he participated in a residency in Paris with support from the Ministry of Culture and was awarded in competitions held in Poland and Japan. During his time dancing for Cloud Gate 2, he was selected by the Cloud Gate Culture and Arts Foundation for its “Art Makers Project” and has performed in Beckoning, 13 Tongues, and Spring Riot choreographed by Tsung-Lung CHENG. CHEN was born and grew up in Yilan, Taiwan. When the Cloud Gate Dance Theater, which is designed by the Fieldoffice Architects, was inaugurated in 2015, CHEN was among the first group of dancers to perform in the venue. Determined to express life’s exquisite emotions through his body, CHEN aims to preserve profound feelings in his creative work and is also passionate about interdisciplinary collaborations and creative endeavors.
“I hope everyone has a chance to strive for the beauty of his or her own hometowns.”
Based in Yilan, Taiwan, the Fieldoffice Architects began with a group of young architects who were working alongside Sheng-Yuan HUANG in Yilan, which has since evolved into a group of over a hundred members over the past 20 years, with steady growth and gradual development leading to the formation of an alliance driven by their determination. The members are both local residents and specialists, and breaking free from any limitations, they have embarked on a journey in life to explore and work, creatively. The Fieldoffice Architects’ imaginative ways of considering space have sprawled across cities, towns, and countryside like growing vines, and without establishing a space that is considered the center or the core, they are also not in a rush to limit future development with definitive answers. With sufficient sustenance, more imaginations can extend, connect, grow into different branches, and open up more opportunities in different spaces. A solo exhibition of the Fieldoffice Architects was organized in Gallery Ma, Tokyo in 2015, and a touring exhibition was organized from 2016 to 2021 in Europe, at a total of eight locations in seven countries.
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