Taiwan Today

Taiwan’s many Chinese, Japanese, local and Western-style buildings reflect the island’s cultural diversity.

Taiwan was a colony of the Empire of Japan between 1895 and 1945. During this period, many of the buildings erected by the colonizers were in either the Japanese or Western style. At the same time, a multitude of structures in the southern Fujianese style built during Chinese Qing court rule (1684–1895) remained.

Noted architect and educator Han Pao-teh points out that the Japanese influence at the time was felt primarily by the ruling classes. It did not really extend to average people who continued to lead a lifestyle similar to that under the Qing dynasty. Moreover, the Japanese left most of the existing Qing structures intact. Han is one of a number of renowned scholars who serves as a senior adviser to President Ma Ying-jeou.

Of the Qing structures remaining today, Han says, most are either elaborately designed temples or family mansions. Both types of buildings feature the southern Fujianese style brought to Taiwan by early immigrants from mainland China and are distinguished by red roof tiles, red brick walls, a symmetrical layout around a central courtyard, colorful paintwork, stone or wooden carvings and for temples, highly decorated roof ridges.

Han singles out Tainan, which is located in southern Taiwan and is the oldest city on the island, as holding an impressive collection of such temples and other historical buildings. These include Datianhou Temple, which is devoted to Mazu, the Goddess of the Sea; Wufei Temple, also known as the Temple of the Five Concubines; Confucius Temple and the Eternal Golden Castle, an early fortress.

Money to Build

As for classic private residences, the Lin Family Mansion and Garden in Banqiao, New Taipei City in the north and a second family mansion also built for a family surnamed Lin in Wufeng, Taichung City in central Taiwan are good examples. Exquisite structures such as these were usually built by wealthy businessmen or Qing court officials, Han explains, and had the dual purpose of being a place to entertain business partners or dignitaries, while also symbolizing a family’s status and wealth.

A few two-story townhouses built during the Qing dynasty also remain in the business districts of several major cities on the island. The most representative examples, Han says, can be found in Lugang Old Street in Changhua County, central Taiwan.

During the Japanese colonial period, numerous houses were built for ranking Japanese officials. Thus, many are located near government agencies or state-run enterprises. The traditional Japanese-style houses are one-story structures of refined design and décor. Their characteristics include black-tiled roofs, red brick surrounding walls, wooden floors, tatami mats and sliding paper doors.

A typical design also sees a garden graced by stone lanterns, a small pond, big trees and a lawn, which adds a certain charm to the city landscape. In a sense, Japanese houses represent the original “green” buildings in their use of large windows and wooden construction, with the emphasis on natural light and ventilation, as well as the extensive presence of plants. As a concession to Taiwan’s climatic conditions of high humidity and rainy season downpours, however, a few modifications were made, including the design of “rain boards”—weatherboard siding to keep out the rain—and an elevated floor up to 60 centimeters off the ground.

At the same time, Japan was undergoing a period of rapid modernization and Westernization known as the Meiji Restoration Era (1868–1912). Many Japanese architects, scholars and politicians were sent to study Western advances and technology in Europe and North America. Consequently, the Japanese constructed several official and public buildings in the Western classical style in Taiwan during their rule, including the current Office of the President, Taipei Guest House and the National Taiwan Museum.

Also during the period of Japanese rule, many wealthy local businessmen built townhouses in the Baroque style, featuring extravagant ornamentation and imported construction materials. Famous historic areas in this style preserved to date include Dihua Street in Taipei City and Sanxia in New Taipei City, along with northern Taiwan’s Daxi, Taoyuan County and Hukou, Hsinchu County.

With the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945, the Japanese-style wooden houses were largely used by officials of the new Nationalist administration, while most civilian families still lived in san he yuan or si he yuan, three- or four-sided compounds arranged around a central courtyard.

Architect Han Pao-teh’s 1985 work, the Institute of Ethnology at
Academia Sinica, features pagoda-like roofs in the southern Fujianese
style. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

From the 1960s on, Taiwan’s economy started to pick up. The Republic of China government began to promote public housing following examples from similar projects in Europe. Hence, those modern buildings were mostly Western-style apartments that emphasized economic efficiency, and they changed the way that people in Taiwan live. Since then, high-rise buildings have sprung up throughout the island and apartment living is now the norm for most Taiwanese. In the process, the rise of capitalism made architecture, or more correctly real estate, a speculative tool that continues to make great fortunes for many investors, Han Pao-teh says.

Han has been acclaimed as the initiator of modern architecture in Taiwan. He believes architecture should be about simplicity and practicality, in addition to aesthetics. People use buildings as residences, for work and as places of entertainment—and they should be designed with those functions in mind, Han says.

The architect has designed a number of structures that have earned him a place in Taiwan’s architectural history. Representative buildings include the Tianxiang Youth Activity Center, completed in 1978 near the top of Taroko Gorge in Hualien County; Changhua County’s Cultural Center, completed in 1981; the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica in 1985 and Tainan National University of the Arts in 1996.

Many of his projects are characterized by modernist geometric design and the adoption of avant-garde design techniques such as asymmetry and the grouping of elements into new combinations. One example of this is the Tianxiang Youth Activity Center, which was cited as the best-designed building of 1980 by Taiwan Architect Magazine.

Han also incorporated elements of the southern Fujianese style into otherwise modern architectural designs to create what has been called a truly Taiwanese architecture. One such example was the project he completed for Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s leading national research center. His design included a traditional Chinese rectangular courtyard and a front wall topped with red tiles such as those used in traditional Taiwanese villages. Further back, pagoda-like roofs are used on the main structure.

In addition, Han worked on the restoration of several historical sites and relics including the Confucius and Longshan temples in Lugang. “In restoring historic structures, I sought to preserve the original building materials and decorative elements whenever possible, while at the same time attending to structural safety,” he says. “What most needed to be preserved was the form of the traditional structure, rather than traditional building techniques.”

The senior architect says the government promulgated the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act back in 1982 to protect historic buildings. He points out that most of the structures classified as a significant cultural asset under the act—and thus subject to conservation—were built during the period of Japanese rule. None of the modern buildings completed during the last five decades has been included in the conservation plan thus far, but Han says innovative structures such as the Luce Memorial Chapel at Tunghai University in Taichung, central Taiwan are worth preserving, too. Han is joined by Li Chian-lang, a professor at the Graduate Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning at Chinese Culture University, who lists the chapel as one of the significant buildings constructed on the island since the Kuomintang government relocated to Taiwan in 1949.

Named after Henry Luce, an American missionary of the late 19th century, the Christian chapel was designed by Taiwanese architect and artist Chen Chi-kwan in collaboration with the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei and completed in November 1963. The chapel is set on an irregular hexagonal base, with a tent-like structure of curved planes flowing inward and an exterior covered by glazed diamond-shaped tiles. The building employs complex technology, advanced engineering and modern building materials to achieve its aesthetic expression. Ribs reinforce the curved surfaces and the pyramidal form provides earthquake stability.

Other outstanding contemporary structures in Taiwan that show breakthroughs in architectural design, Li says, include Taipei’s National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall by Wang Dahong; Taipei Fine Arts Museum by Kao Erh-pan and Taipei 101 by C. Y. Lee; the Administration Building of National Chung Cheng University in Chiayi County, also by Lee; along with the Taiwan High Speed Rail Hsinchu Station in Hsinchu County and the Lanyang Museum in Yilan County by Kris Yao.

Li also gives Han Pao-teh credit for innovations in fusing traditional Chinese and modern architectural styles in his design work, as well as for addressing the typical concerns of design such as economy, utility, durability and comfort. Apart from their unique form and aesthetic value, those buildings, he adds, were well-designed spaces optimized for the use of 
local residents.

Freedom to Innovate

“Being a free society, Taiwan has absorbed a variety of architectural ideas and state-of-the-art technologies from the United States, Europe and Japan, and incorporated them into its design projects. As such, here in Taiwan one can find almost any style of building that has become popular somewhere in the world,” Li says. “As a result, over the years Taiwan’s architectural ideas and techniques have fallen in line with world practices.”

The architecture professor says that the government has done a good job in launching numerous public housing projects for lower to middle income citizens. At the same time, thanks to the enactment of the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, clusters of historic buildings along old streets like the ones in Lugang, Sanxia and Daxi have been successfully conserved, he says.

Currently the many schools of thought in architecture across the globe represent diverse approaches to the built environment and thus the field as a whole can appear a bit confusing, Li continues. Nevertheless, one commonly held principle for most members of the general public is so-called green construction, which emphasizes energy savings and the reduction of a building’s carbon footprint. Architects who do not follow this trend, he adds, will eventually find their designs losing their appeal.

Li thinks that in recent years, Taiwan has been doing fairly well in creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient. The areas in which it falls short are in developing new ideas about how to incorporate renewable energy and systems for water reuse into building design, as well as the critical review of green structures. Li calls on more scholars to engage in these tasks, adding that doing so will motivate architects to create better green projects.

Similarly, Han perceives green construction as an important direction for architecture in Taiwan and hopes that more can be done to include the concept into the curriculum of university architecture and urban planning departments. “In the current high-tech era, buildings seem to be getting higher and higher. And we’re seeing the launch of so many luxury residences that boast large floor space and lavish interiors,” Han says. “But architectural design should be based on rational thought.”

Still, Han notes that green construction is only one of the important criteria in judging the quality of an architectural work. “A fine piece of architecture should minimize its impact on the environment by utilizing fewer resources and be designed with efficiency in mind,” Han says. “Equally important, though, it ought to touch people’s hearts and meet their practical needs.”                                   

Write to Kelly Her at kelly@mail.gio.gov.tw