Y.L with J.R (1/2)

Last weekend I had the honor to travel to Yilan with friends from J.R Architects, the firm I interned at for couple months last year. The trip focused heavily on projects of 'Fieldoffice Architects', which is a local firm in Yilan that embraces regionalism. Architect Huang Sheng-Yuan, the founder of the firm, is really shaping the city with infrastructures, and at the same time solving social and political issues.  He is also the first non-Japanese recipient of the Yoshizaka Takamasa Award, which is a prestigious architectural award in Japan. He also represents Taiwan this year for the Venice Architecture Biennale. I am going to order the list down according to the years of completion so you guys can see the progression in his work. 


Zhuangwei Zhang Residence / 1993

We stayed at one of the earliest projects of Huang Sheng-Yuan when he just got back from the U.S. Huang has designed three residential units in total and this one had been converted into a B&B. The house is a traditional Siheyuan (four-side courtyard house) with a twist. Several additional brick walls were added in to "interrupt" the floor plan and create a new sense of place with its material.

Concrete stairs that leads to the roof top terrace.

Four brick walls 'interrupt' the house to create a new sense of place.

Main entrance is at the right hand side of the picture, which connects directly to the dining table and living room.

Even though this is one of the earliest projects of Huang, we can already see his experimentations with materials, texture, site-specific feature, and the connection with nature. The left one above is his playful way of trying out new expansion joint on terrazzo floor, and the right one above is a tailor-made wooden floor for the living room that the planks did not come in the same size in purpose. 

The Zhang Residence is amazing not only for its ambience, but also its floor plan layout. He created several layers that juggle in between public and private spaces, yet visitors do not feel trapped nor confused. It is a modest house that fits with the human scale. 

Yilan Social Welfare Center and West Bank Bridge / 1995-2001

This one is in a way bigger scale compare to the Zhang Residence, yet you can see his ideas still followed through. The Yilan Social Welfare Center connects with its surrounding really well, and it considers the residents and the neighborhood. The project is not just a building per se, but expands through out the town and links with the West Bank Bridge and creates a community. 

The facde is like stacking bunch of houses on top of each other. Sort of like folding the street into a vertical village.

The building connects really well with its surrounding. The boundry between the properties is blurry.

The building is connected with the West Bank Bridge and continues to the other side. A little park is created under the infrastructure.

A pedestrain and bike friendly bridge that allows visitors to enjoy the scenery.

Jiaosi Administrative Center / 1995-2002

Jiaosi Admin. Center is another project that opens up the space to the public. The government building does not feel like a fortress, but it invites the community and nature. 

A welcoming entrance that links the street to the building.

The pond used to be a swimming pool that allowed children to come and play.

A sculptural entry point that houses an elevator.

Form follows nature! A tree chimney on top of the parking lot roof.

Shih-fang Yang Memorial Garden / 1997-2003

The Memorial Garden happened around the same time as the Admin. Center so they share similar materials and design language, like the wooden planks on the facade and the lifted up volume on top of the park garage. The project merges really well with the landscape in terms of the circulation and visibility. 

The lifted up volume sitting on top of the parking garage so the parking area is no longer dark and compressed.

Never seize to play with materials! The use of mirror creates a sense of weightlessness for the second floor.

A very dynamic way of placing benches according to contour lines. It allows the architecture to blend into the site.

Jiaosi Civic and Public Health Center / 2000-2005

For this project, we can see that similar design language from the Jiaosi Admin. Center with the organic form and sculptural structures, except this one has more freedom since the team had more experience. The project ages really well with all the greenery starting to climb up the building.

This is a rather quick building for Fieldoffice considering other ones took approximately seven or eight years, yet the building does not lack of details and surprises. 

Like a typical fieldoffice project, it lures you in from the street with a transitional plaza.

Form continuation: floor plate morphs into a drainage!

Unconventional way of doing drainage and railing.

This is the back of the building, it does not just fence off the property, instead it opens up and blurs the boundry. We saw this at the Civic Center as well. It is a great way of engaging with the community and site.

One has to examinate Huang Sheng-Yuan's architecture with multiple lenses, from how the architecture interacts with the surrounding context to how he creatively solves tectonic details, his projects are never one dimensional. I will end this part one with a Fieldoffice promotion video since we visited many of his projects and I don't want to fit them all in a single blog post. I will talk more about his public buildings and how he uses architecture to tranform a city. The video has English subtitle so do not feel discourage to watch it! I do not own the video obviously, all rights reserved to the channel.