Since the post-industrial era, the development of city has been cornered by the consumptive events. The appearance of Arcade in 20th century Paris could be the fountainhead of privatization of urban space which shows the different degree of exclusivity to people according to their consuming ability. Moreover, the phenomenon of blurring boundary between museums and malls announce death to authentic public space in the modern city. Our obedience to “Symbol” makes us become the voluntary prisoner to the consumptive space who might find it impossible to be a Flâneur without the purchase of products and service. We are all consumer whether consciously or not nowadays.
Global Architecture & Design Awards 2018
Third Award | Category: Cultural (Concept)
Architects: Yu-lin Lee
Country: Taiwan
In the proposal, I intended to retrieve the right to identify public spaces by reviving “Materiality” in replace of “Symbol” in the city and reconstruct space index in consumptive spaces. The design installs a cloth-recycling factory in Xin-Yi district of Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, along with 15 sky bridge-connected malls, aiming to unveil the materiality lies under all kinds of symbol through breaking down and reusing the eliminated clothes result from over accelerated product lifecycle.
In the process of re-dying, a considerable amount of hot wasted water and steam generates and serves as an ambiguous medium after exchanging heat with the thermal bath. People would immerse themselves in a series of water with different temperature and all symbol they wear is removed. Along with museum and mall on the upper part of the building, consumptive activities in Xin-Yi district are prolonged to be sequences of urban events and those once homeothermic spaces are now in temperature gradient due to the mix of cold air from air-con and hot steam from below. The Arcade in Paris was used as a shelter to block body experience away. However, I translate and deform it into an element that houses and amplifies environmental condition. People would be connected to the real world again and relocate themselves by the index of temperature in consumptive space.
At the time that museum and mall share almost the same program and building type, I take the 15 malls in Xin-Yi district as a group of “Urban museum” while “Consumptive museum “should be a vertical guidebook for them. It records the process of de-symbolization with its changing physical environment in the transforming arcade. People who step out of here would clearly aware of the well-maintained state of control that capitalist tried to construct and begin to question the boundary of urban space which has been implied by the symbol for a long time.
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