安那其建築園丁 Dominate the no-man's land
廢墟建築學院香港 ‧ 深圳城市建築雙年展特報
19
– operations on the body removing, changing or maintaining parts – or
The community gardens are taking over abandoned construction sites and
even plastic surgery. (Oh, Shanghai has bigger tits than Taipei.) The body
ruined housing areas, empty city-blocks waiting for development, flood
is not necessarily seen as one big organism.
banks of the rivers and even grave-yards out of fashion. In many cases the gardens are flourishing on spots of land where the land-owner issues
In this rough editing process the anarchist gardeners seem to act as
are unsettle or complicated. Sometimes the garden will stay in the spot
micro-editors, parasites benefiting of the slow circles of the big-scale
for only a couple of years, as in the cases of soon to be developed areas
development. They occupy the not so sexy areas of the city and they jump
and sometimes the urban farming has decades long traditions as with the
in the more sleepy parts of the development cycle. For example – the
river flood plains or on the island in-between Zhongxiao and Zhongshing
developer buys a whole city block with originally many land-owners. The
bridges. The smaller urban farms are flexible and eager to overtake the
process is slow because he has to negotiate with all of them. While the
empty spots of the city, eager to dominate the no-man's land.
process is dragging behind the urban farmers step in and start farming the area. The developer doesn't want to cause any more fuss and let it
One of the more famous urban farming communities of Taipei was the
happen. It takes 3-5 years before the developer has got all the area to his
Treasure Hill settlement, originally an illegal community of KMT veterans.
possession and those same years the site acts as the community garden.
During its legitimating process Treasure Hill became so famous that
When the actual construction starts the gardeners have already occupied
eventually the original community was kicked away by the city government
a next vacant spot in the city.
and the houses were taken over by artists and art related organizations. All the farms were destroyed on the process. Sounds like urban warfare against urban acupuncture. Treasure Hill was powerful and self-sustained
Third Generation City
when it was illegal. The community built its own houses and its own
First generation city was the human settlement in straight connection
farms and it made its own rules. The official city wanted to eliminate this
with nature and dependent on nature. The fertile and rich Taipei basing
unofficial organic rival. NGOs found the issue sexy and stepped in to
provided a fruitful environment for such a settlement. The rivers were full
protect and legitimize the settlement. In the end the NGOs and artists took
of fish and good for transportation and the mountains protected the farmed
over the now-famous community and hooked up with the city government.
plains from the straightest hits of the frequent typhoons.
The original urban farmers didn't fit the picture anymore and had to leave. Now you can listen gansta-rap in a yellow plastic tent where the gardens
The second generation city is the industrial city. Industrialism claimed
used to be. Local knowledge died.
the citizens independence from nature – a mechanical environment could provide human everything needed. Nature was seen as something
But Treasure Hill is not alone. Urban farming happens through different
un-necessary or as something hostile – it was walled away from the
social classes and through out the city. The socially disordered citizens are
mechanical reality.
ready to occupy land and start the community farms over and over again. Some acupuncture spots get hot and benefit the surrounding urban tissue
Third Generation City is the organic ruin of the industrial city. The
while others fade away. The industrial surface of the city keeps constantly
community gardens of Taipei are fragments of the third generation
being broken up and herbs and vegetables are planted into the cracks.
urbanism when they exist together with the industrial surroundings.
People are ruining the industrial city. Ruin is when man-made has become
Local Knowledge is present in the city and this is where Ruin Academy
part of nature.
focuses its research. Among the urban gardeners are the local knowledge
Urban Editors
professors of Taipei. Third Generation City is true when the city recognizes its local knowledge and allows itself to be part of nature.
Compared to Western cities Taipei plays in quite different rules. The aesthetics of the city is dominated by the functionality of a big collective machine and the urban mechanism is constantly being edited and rendered as with changing the micro-chips or other parts of a supercomputer into more powerful ones. The urban data is people and this is what the machine needs to process. Mostly it goes smoothly, but also people get viruses – they get together to spontaneous demonstrations, they do tai-chi in improvised city-corners, they launch ad-hoc night markets or under-bridge sales on temporarily occupied streets or city corners. And they do farms – they are squeezing organic material into the machine like a creeper crawling into an air-conditioning box. Why they do this? Why does the nature want to break the machine? Developers are the true urban editors. They are linked with the city authorities and necessary political powers and they make the urban editing. Architects are in a secondary role – something like the hyenas after the lions have made the kill. Money is a good consultant and the generating force of the developer run urban editing process. This is not urban acupuncture though; it is more like a western style medical practice
Urban garden near Taipei 101 Photo by 余宜家·王榆鈞