Walking along the channel
The group walked whole way along the channel from the river bench to the former militar area. We were facing many surprises during the walk especially in the beginning of the channel where the cleaning pools should have been located.
Some surprises
- closed(active) military area blockin some part of the channel.
- topographical difficulties causing extra pumping – hill on the way
-+ smelly cow farm on a way
+ - new university building on construction just where we should have had a pool
++ river park maybe possible to use for water cleaning purposes
++ possible to connect river biking ways into the city along the channel – water gate to the
flood wall
++ wonderful, multi-usable and architecturally valuable old military halls into the former military area
Observations of the social environment in Taipei
The general social environment of Taipei feels totally different compared to Finnish one. Some of the basic factors effecting lifestyles of citizens as political situation, historical relations and climate conditions differ from ours. Differences are very visible in sociaty.
Even the Taiwanese government is strong authority governing public issues, people are considerable free to show their existance as a part of the city. The whole city is full of small scale visible transformations carried out by citizens. By transformations I mean for example gardens filling the unbuilt areas, signs and small shops everywhere and parasite building parts fastened randomly to facades. Even colourfull umbrellas hanging from a fence are signal of this local activity. The whole city environment is a collage of these small scale transformations, which together form the Taipei city. This remarkable small scale social potential must be considered in Leokong channel planning process.
People’s notable non-govermental activity grows from the fact that they are considerably less banded to municipal system than Finnish people. Finland has a very precise system of regulations, how to live correctly in the sociaty. Also city planning system is very controlled. Finnish system is controlled in flexible way so that people have some kind of possibilities to effect their own lifes trought the system. In Taiwan, the municipal system and sociaty are strictly separated. Municipal system takes care of the skeleton of the sociaty and citizens are forced to do the rest – or sometimes allowed to do the rest.
How to plan a city whose strenght is unplanned randomness?
The design we are creating is about bringing water to people - constructing a purely physical and artificial constructed water way into Taipei city. Could this physical design be transforming parametrically by the life of surrounding city? As European designers we may shouldn’t try to guess, how the local knowledge could be used as a part of our plan but rather just let the local knowledge use our plan as it wants and let the design live with it.
In Taipei, people don’t need to be activated to do gardening or other kind of urban activities, because in Taiwanese social system they do it by nature. This urban activity obviously transforms the environment. Our design must be done so, that it transforms by this random local activity and especially don’t destroy the possibilities to practice it. If the city spaces become too controlled, there is a risk that local activity disappears. Many urban activities such as gardening are done by relatively poor and old people and controlled systems use to need funding.
From Finnish viewpoint, it was amazing to see how Taipei people used all the free space for their own ideas and even plants were growing out from concrete using all the possible space in very dence city. All we have to offer by our urban design is that small gap in the concrete wall the plant grows from or alternatively the small space in the city urban culture can grow from.
Another local parameter transforming the channel area is time. Nowadays the city is continuously growing upward. The lowest buildings are the oldest and newest are the highest. The old and low buildings are continuously replaced by new and high ones. Large contruction companies buy old houses to collapse them and to build new instead. How this urban development would be related to the channel? How would the LeoKong channel transform when the surrounding housing areas are step by step reborn?
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