The third reason is that over the last ten years, I have lived on Jin Hu Road, less than 100 meters from Winsing AIT. I have seen Winsing AIT built up from scratch. During the advertising campaign, there was a huge black-and-white portrait of Charles Moore hanging near the gate of the community where I reside, and this brought back a lot of memories from 20 years ago when I was both a student and an employee with Charles Moore. THE LEGACY OF CHARLES MOORE Charles Moore (1925–1993) was a great architect who absorbed many different historical, architectural, and cultural trends into his work and life—including the hippie culture of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, which heavily influenced his lively and uninhibited thoughts and tastes. Charles was always very friendly and talked wisely and amiably with everyone. Once when I visited him at his house (which was designed by him) in northern California he had just came back from lunch with several friends and I asked him “What did you eat for lunch?” He replied, “I ate too much,” in a very simple and playful manner. On another occasion some time later, when we participated in the international design competition for National Dong Hwa University’s new campus, Charles Moore and John Ruble came to Taiwan for an interview with the Director of the Preparatory Office, Zong-Can Mou. When Director Mou asked, “You do not have any experiences on overall campus design and planning, so how are you able to execute this task?” Charles responded, “I had never been a dean of any university department before I became the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, but I still managed it well and did a great job.” His reply was very direct and straightforward, and MRY was assigned the project.
Top: Charles Moore; Bottom: Condominium 1, Sea Ranch, California, USA (1965)
Charles Moore founded MRY with Buzz and John in 1977. The architecture firm is located in the coastal city of Santa Monica, part of the greater Los Angeles area. Known for its beautiful beaches, wonderful climate, and progressive politics, the city has been jokingly referred to as the “People’s Republic of Santa Monica” because of its longtime, strict Rental Control Act, which protects the rights of less-affluent renters. One result of this unique Act is the growth of diverse and incredibly creative communities. The campus of the famed Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) was located here for many years. Architect Frank Gehry’s home and firm are also located here, as well as many other architects besides MRY. Based on my personal observation, Buzz’s and John’s unique thoughts, humanistic philosophies and personal styles are representative of this diverse milieu of creativity and liberalism. Charles Moore had a profound grasp of the nature and history of architecture, and he devoted a major part of his life to teaching and publishing. As an architect, Charles became quite famous in the wave of Post-Modernism of the 1970s and 1980s. His early masterpieces in this period are full of transformational symbols derived from classical architectural elements. However, his architectural achievements were not limited to incorporating the formal aspects of the architectural vocabularies, and we can see more clearly the depth and sense of exploration in his later works. The history of this de-formalization can be found throughout the transformation that MRY has experienced over the past 37 years on their projects. If we put this kind of creative exploration and spirit into an international, architectural design business point of view, we can easily understand how MRY differs from most other firms, in terms of presenting their curiosity and experimental attitudes toward the specific local geography and cultural characteristics of the site. For example, if
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