Treasure Hill
Encyclopedia
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
veterans in the end of 1940's and served originally as an anti aircraft position.
After co-operating with NGO GAPP (Global Artivists Participation Project) the Taipei City Government developed the area into an example of environmentally sustainable urban community. With the policy of preservation and revitalization, the old settlement unfolded a new vision of an artivist
Artivist
Artivist is a portmanteau word combining "art" and "activist". Frank Berganza states..."When one pushes for change, , by utilizing their creative ability to communicate in ways of their artistic activity, that is known as Artivism". Artivism developed in recent years while the anti-globalization...
compound which would respect the existing fabric of the community while fulfilling the regeneration concept of "symbiosis" to incorporate production and ecology in communal living and ushering in the program of an international youth hostel and creative ideas of art to further cultural exchanges with broader international communities.
The community has been featured in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
as one of Taiwan's must-see destinations.
Treasure Hill is the attic of Taipei carrying the memories, stories and traditions of the past generations. In some way it is a reflection of the Taipei mind that the industrial city is not able to reflect. For the stories to surface the industrial city must be turned over: the city must be a compost.
Police closed the area in 2007 in order to guarantee safety for restoration work.
Urban Farming
The Treasure Hill community is located by the Xindian River, which was an important life-line for the settlement providing drinking water, fish and gravel for construction work before the river got polluted. The community used to have extensive urban farms between the settlement and the river."The pollution comes from the up-stream." - Missis Chen, the leader of the Treasure Hill original community.
Urban Acupuncture
The restoration process of Treasure Hill can be viewed as an Urban AcupunctureUrban Acupuncture
Urban Acupuncture is an urban environmentalism theory which combines urban design with traditional Chinese medical theory of acupuncture. This strategy views cities as living, breathing organisms and pinpoints areas in need of repair...
where the energy of the settlement had been turned negative and had to be redirected positively towards construction,
“like turning over the compost that has been the smelly part of the farm just to become the most fertile top soil. I was careful to manipulate these hidden energy flows and the small elements that I introduced to Treasure Hill can be compared to the needles in acupuncture.”
External links
- Urban Acupuncture Marco Casagrande, Taiwan Architect, 2006
- EGGO: Treasure Hill
- Altered Space: Squatting and Legitimizing Treasure Hill, Taipei Min Jay Kang, Cultural Development Network’s Forum, 2006
- World Architecture: Treasure Hill
- Architecture of the WEAK! Robin Peckham, Kunsthalle Kowloon, 2009
- Architizer
- E-Architect: Treasure Hill Taiwan
- Taipei from the River International Society of Biourbanism, 2011