Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine October 2013 | Page 126

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Travel | Taipei

Travel | Taipei
Courtesy of Taipei Cinema Park

© Andy Beirne

Finnish architect Marco Casagrande, who was hired to
develop a master plan for the area, espoused a concept of
‘urban acupuncture’ in which large-scale development is
replaced by local, community-based and organic change –
pointed interventions into the pressure points of the
modern city. From 2007 to 2010, Treasure Hill’s housing
stock was restored; by that point, many of the original
residents had left, but 20 families remained, and they were
joined by the artists that call Treasure Hill home today.

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Urban acupuncture has proved popular enough to be
adopted as an official strategy by the Taipei government,
which has launched a series of Urban Regeneration Stations
(URS) that link arts and culture with residents in Taipei’s
oldest neighbourhoods. Since 2010, seven URSs have been
opened around the city, mostly in Dadaocheng, a historic
trading district near the Danshui River.
“It was very busy 40 years ago, but business shifted to the
east part of Taipei and it decayed,” says Lin Yu-hsiu, who
oversees URS projects. Housed in historic buildings donated
by their owners, each URS has a distinct character: Cooking
Together focuses on food culture, Story House presents
exhibitions on local history and Film Range specialises in
independent film projects.
One project, Creative Incubator, consists of design studios
and a café housed in a former liquor warehouse, with public
events every week. “It was abandoned for over ten years,
and young people went inside to do drugs, and there were
so many street dogs and cats,” says Lin. “URS is about a
renewal of thought. The neighbours originally hoped
[the warehouse] would be replaced by an office building,
but we want people to think about other possibilities for
space. Now we’re seeing more and more interaction with
the neighbours.”
That’s one of the goals of City Yeast, a Treasure Hill-based
organisation that runs community-based art and design
activities. In one case, it asked designers to create public
furniture for various sites around Treasure Hill; some of the
results included fortune cookie-shaped chairs and a seat
that moulded to the roof of a village house. Another project
mapped 100 things that could be bought from the decadesold dry-goods shops of Dadaocheng, including dried
seahorses and roselle flowers.
“We just want to make the city better,” says City Yeast
designer Jolie Chang, who presides over the group’s Treasure
Hill headquarters, where visitors can drink fair-trade coffee
while looking through City Yeast’s latest work.

We just want to make the city better, says
City Yeast designer Jolie Chang, who presides
over the group’s Treasure Hill headquarters,
where visitors can drink fair-trade coffee
while looking through City Yeast’s latest work.

Coffee is also brewing at Jian Dou – ‘Tadpole Point’ – which
serves as Treasure Hill’s de facto social club. With a menu of
locally grown food, including produce grown at Treasure
Hill itself, it’s the place that best captures the village’s spirit.
“I want it to feel like somebody’s home,” says Lin X