Taipei has an ugly beauty to it. Individually, the typical concrete, tiled covered buildings, are ugly, but cram them together, throw up some neon lights, a tiny park with a Daoist temple crammed in the mix, add a few street vendors and the bustle of people and its downright charming.
Cities in Japan are much better put together, but I prefer the chaotic, gritty feeling of Taipei, and Treasure Hill is an interesting segment of that.
Taipei a little too grimy more often than not for my taste, takes time for the charm to shine through compared to JP. But it's certainly there. Wouldn't hurt to have their conscripts do a few days of pressure washing if water wasn't so scarce.
I actually used to live in a rented "house" in the place the article is about, probably around 1994-1995. Most of my neighbors were very old veterans, with a handful of NTU students who were rarely seen.
Talking with my veteran neighbors was fascinating for me. Most of them had stories of the Civil War and some had fought in WWII. They were from all over China and I had great difficulty understanding a lot of them. Even my wife, who grew up in Taiwan had trouble - I distinctly remember one neighbor, "Uncle Bo", who had suffered a stroke and was basically abandoned there by his family, who pronounced the number 9 like, "kyu" (like Japanese), among many other pronunciation quirks. I found out later that this is common in some dialect in mainland China, but I forgot where/which dialect.
The living conditions were pretty ... not great, with eroding concrete, scorching hot in the summer, and constant issues with moisture leaking in, but I think our rent started out at NT$2500 ($80 USD?), which was even cheap at that time. Our landlord later raised the rent to $3k and we "abandoned our post."
I still have a weird fondness for that time and place, though. It's conceivable that I am one of the last people some of those veterans told their stories too. People in Taiwan at that time were not terribly interested in stories old people told, so maybe I was even the _only_ person some of them ever told their stories too, but I went back there in 2019 and was happy to see all the work that had been done to record the stories and memories of my former neighbors in the artist village that is there now. I think there was even a little plaque for Uncle Bo, IIRC.
Call me crazy but I really find cities like the one in Taipei really charming. I grew up in one, and there's something very human about this aesthetic.
> Unfortunately, there was still a problem–the city couldn’t overlook the building codes. But Casagrande found a loophole: He declared that since the houses had been handmade, they were a form of art. “The city commissioned me to make a public artwork, and Treasure Hill is the artwork. That’s where [people] live now,” he said. “That’s how they rationalized it.”
This is a controversial take. As an example, compare apartment buildings in the US, (2 stairwells required for exit in case of fire) vice in Europe.
The tradeoff: The US apartments are theoretically easier to evacuate in case of fire. They are also consequently poorly laid out of use, with ugly central hallways, and only one side of windows on most apartments.
Good to see a Hacker is now being a bureaucrat reading books of city codes over Neuromancer.
These are peoples homes, the danger is probably less than many US ghettos or homeless encampments, how about we start bulldozing those which are unsafe and ugly if people homes have no meaning.
There's no reason you cant make communities not up to spec with current building codes safe. This is normal for historic buildings which have exceptions.
The Ghost Ship fire was a concert, I don't believe any killed were residents.
> This city of the future sounds like nothing I want a part of.
Nothing like never leaving the safety of the suburban home I guess, the new hacker ethos.
Sounds like it’s all masonry construction, isn’t that fireproof?
Not to be flip: I too wouldn’t want to live in a society where improvisation were the construction norm. But it’s not clear to me that all code requirements are life- or safety-critical.
It sounds like Treasure Hill was in fact emptied and “renovated” in the course of this “artist village” process [0]. One imagines that such a process may have addressed the life-critical deficiencies even if it couldn’t meet the more nitpicky code requirements that might apply to normal development.
The bunker is weirdly positioned in the title of this piece, it seems highly incidental to the actual substance. The bunker figures in the history of Treasure Hill, but it doesn't seem relevant to its present state or what's ecological or forward-looking about it.
I'd go even further and say the heresy that "urban living" is not the future, so making it sustainable is like scaling horse-riding to 10 billion riders.
makeitshine|2 years ago
Cities in Japan are much better put together, but I prefer the chaotic, gritty feeling of Taipei, and Treasure Hill is an interesting segment of that.
maxglute|2 years ago
cbilson|2 years ago
I actually used to live in a rented "house" in the place the article is about, probably around 1994-1995. Most of my neighbors were very old veterans, with a handful of NTU students who were rarely seen.
Talking with my veteran neighbors was fascinating for me. Most of them had stories of the Civil War and some had fought in WWII. They were from all over China and I had great difficulty understanding a lot of them. Even my wife, who grew up in Taiwan had trouble - I distinctly remember one neighbor, "Uncle Bo", who had suffered a stroke and was basically abandoned there by his family, who pronounced the number 9 like, "kyu" (like Japanese), among many other pronunciation quirks. I found out later that this is common in some dialect in mainland China, but I forgot where/which dialect.
The living conditions were pretty ... not great, with eroding concrete, scorching hot in the summer, and constant issues with moisture leaking in, but I think our rent started out at NT$2500 ($80 USD?), which was even cheap at that time. Our landlord later raised the rent to $3k and we "abandoned our post."
I still have a weird fondness for that time and place, though. It's conceivable that I am one of the last people some of those veterans told their stories too. People in Taiwan at that time were not terribly interested in stories old people told, so maybe I was even the _only_ person some of them ever told their stories too, but I went back there in 2019 and was happy to see all the work that had been done to record the stories and memories of my former neighbors in the artist village that is there now. I think there was even a little plaque for Uncle Bo, IIRC.
qingcharles|2 years ago
throwuwu|2 years ago
dappermanneke|2 years ago
raziel2p|2 years ago
Looks cool though, and has a nice backstory.
annabyrd|2 years ago
Apocryphon|2 years ago
atleastoptimal|2 years ago
Abandoned town (overgrown): :O
konschubert|2 years ago
Especially during sunny days, when no storage is needed, it will be extremely cheap to air condition and desalinate seawater.
darkhorse13|2 years ago
yellow_lead|2 years ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC|2 years ago
That ignores the purpose of the building codes even artists can die in fires (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Ship_warehouse_fire). This is especially worse when you have families and children living there.
This city of the future sounds like nothing I want a part of.
tdeck|2 years ago
the__alchemist|2 years ago
The tradeoff: The US apartments are theoretically easier to evacuate in case of fire. They are also consequently poorly laid out of use, with ugly central hallways, and only one side of windows on most apartments.
aaron695|2 years ago
These are peoples homes, the danger is probably less than many US ghettos or homeless encampments, how about we start bulldozing those which are unsafe and ugly if people homes have no meaning.
There's no reason you cant make communities not up to spec with current building codes safe. This is normal for historic buildings which have exceptions.
The Ghost Ship fire was a concert, I don't believe any killed were residents.
> This city of the future sounds like nothing I want a part of.
Nothing like never leaving the safety of the suburban home I guess, the new hacker ethos.
alwa|2 years ago
Not to be flip: I too wouldn’t want to live in a society where improvisation were the construction norm. But it’s not clear to me that all code requirements are life- or safety-critical.
It sounds like Treasure Hill was in fact emptied and “renovated” in the course of this “artist village” process [0]. One imagines that such a process may have addressed the life-critical deficiencies even if it couldn’t meet the more nitpicky code requirements that might apply to normal development.
[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/treasure-hill-taipei
airstrike|2 years ago
Title should be "One architect's idea of the \"city of the future\" looks like a bunker"
crabmusket|2 years ago
akomtu|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
thsksbd|2 years ago
Sounds about right.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]