First generation city was the human settlement in straight connection with nature and dependent on nature. The fertile and rich Taipei basin provided a fruitful environment for such a settlement. The rivers were full of fish and good for transportation and the mountains protected the farmed plains from the straightest hits of the frequent typhoons.
The second generation city is the industrial city.
Industrialism granted the citizens independence from nature–a mechanical
environment could provide everything needed for humans. Nature was seen as
something unnecessary or as something hostile–it was walled away from the
mechanical reality.
Third Generation City is the organic ruin of the industrial city. The community gardens of Taipei are fragments of the third generation urbanism when they exist together with the industrial surroundings. Local Knowledge is present in the city and this is where Ruin Academy focuses its research. Among the urban gardeners are the local knowledge professors of Taipei. Third Generation City is true when the city recognizes its local knowledge and allows itself to be part of nature.
 |
| Bug Dome by the WEAK! in Shenzhen built together with migrating workers from rural Guanxi following their Local Knowledge of bamboo structures with nature as co-architect. Bug Dome is an un-official social club for a camp of migrating workers and a lounge for the SZHK Biennial. |
The weak signals of the un-official collective conscious should be
recognized as the futures emerging issues; futures that are already present in
Taipei. The official city should learn how to enjoy acupuncture, how to give up
industrial control in order to let nature to step in. The local knowledge based
transformation layer of Taipei is happening from inside the city and it is
happening through self organized punctual interventions. These interventions
are driven by small scale businesses and alternative economies benefiting from
the fertile land of the Taipei Basin and of leaching from the material and
energy streams of the official city. This acupuncture is making the city
weaker, softer and readier for a larger change.
RUIN ACADEMY
The Ruin Academy (Taipei
2010- ) is set to re-think the industrial city and the relationship between the
modern man and nature in the urbanized Taipei Basin. It is looking from the
local knowledge for the seeds of the Third Generation City.
Ruin is when man-made has become
part of nature.
This is the subconscious desire of the industrial city and the collective
trauma of the modern man. Taipei is currently presenting the most advanced
industrial co-existence of a modern city and uncontrollable organic anarchy;
nature, including human nature, is pushing through the industrial surface and
turning the city towards the organic according to a post-human design and ecological sensibility. To understand this force, the
reinforced and divided academic disciplines are of no use. Neither is centralized politics providing any
tools. Communication needs to find another way.
 |
| Ruin Academy, section. |
Ruin Academy has focused its research on the unofficial life-providing
systems within the official mechanical city. These spontaneous and
citizen-generated systems are constantly ruining the official Taipei. These are
systems that are, through punctual interventions, fermenting and composting the
city. From the organic top-soil produced by these composts will emerge the
Third Generation City, the organic ruin of the industrial city, an organic
machine. In Erik Swyngedouw's
terms: "Nature and society are
in this
way combined to form an urban political ecology, a hybrid, an urban
cyborg that combines the powers of nature with those of class, gender, and
ethnic relations.”
The smelliest parts of unofficial Taipei
contain the highest level of energy and life still in connection with nature;
at the same time, the official industrialism aims for a sterile and fully
controlled condition. This brings to mind Andrei Tarkovsky’s maxim in Stalker:
“When a tree is growing, it's
tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength
are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness
of being. Because what has hardened will never win.” These urban
composts are the corners that are maintaining the essence of the Local
Knowledge, a constructive interaction of nature and human nature in the built
human environment. This local knowledge is suggesting the ways of the ruining
processes for Taipei towards the Third Generation City.
Different disciplines of art and science are meeting in the Ruin Academy
following the multidisciplinary research + design methodology of the Aalto
University’s SGT Sustainable Global Technologies centre. Cross-disciplinary
knowledge building has proven vital on the research of the Third Generation
City. Ruin Academy co-operates with the architecture department of the Tamkang
University, sociology department of the National Taiwan University and with the
SGT centre of the Aalto University. Besides these, teams and individuals have
been joining the work from various different backgrounds. Ruin Academy is unofficial, pliant, and weak,
in contrast to academic strength and hardness. The Ruin Academy is a basic
shelter for academic squatting, stripped down from disciplinary focusing and
institutional strength. Most important is the connection to the Local
Knowledge, the site-specific wisdom of sustainable human presence in the Taipei
Basin. This knowledge seems to be in straight connection with the collective
memory of the First Generation City, when the built human environment was
dependent on nature and dominated by nature. The Local Knowledge is the driving
force for the organic penetrations through the industrial layer of the Taipei
Basin today. Local Knowledge is the force tuning the city towards the organic.
Our communication center is the public sauna on the 5th floor of the Ruin
Academy building.
We are looking for the seeds of the Third Generation City:
What are the processes
that are ruining the industrial Taipei turning it towards the organic third
generation city?
What are the systems
that are bringing life into the modern machine?
What is the life-force
/ Chi that keeps the city alive and how can this Chi be negotiated with by
means of Urban Acupuncture?
THE ELEMENTS OF THE THIRD GENERATION TAIPEI
1. Urban Acupuncture
Urban acupuncture is characterized by punctual interventions through the
official surface of the city which aim to establish contact between the urban
collective conscious and the life-providing systems of nature, including human
nature. The networks of illegal community gardens and urban farms of Taipei
present a fine example of urban acupuncture. These gardens are the urban
acupuncture needles that manipulate and manifest the collective underlying
organic Chi of the industrial city and turn the mechanical city towards an
organic machine. The spontaneous, unofficial and self-organized community
gardens are strong representations of anarchy through gardening. The collective
gardens are reflections of life world vs. the surrounding city as the system world.
2.Illegal Architecture
The Instant Taipei is self-made
architecture using the official city as a growing platform and energy
source,attaching itself like a parasite in order to leach electricity and
water. The illegal architecture is so widespread and deep rooted as a culture
in the Taiwanese cityscape that we could almost speak about another city on top
of the “official” Taipei, a parallel city–or a Para-City. This DIY built human
environment is tied directly to human nature and motivated by basic human
instinct and mandated only by desire and availability. Paradoxically, the
illegal settlements such as Treasure Hill are living in a more balanced
relationship with the natural environment.
3. Urban Nomad
The urban nomad is the antithesis of Walter Benjamin’s flâneur, who is numb and absent in the
capital-driven urban surroundings. The urban nomad is on the move, harvesting
and trapping in a city that he views as a landscape wherein seasons and energy
concentrations are constantly changing. The urban nomad can operate alone or in
larger camp-like concentrations, such as the night markets. He is faster and
lighter than the official control mechanism of the city, which tries to prevent
him from operating. Besides trading, the urban nomads are also harvesting the
city of its trash and left-over goods for recycling. This hit-and-run
unofficial economy is leaching on the steady material streams of the structural
city and is presenting a form of street-level anarchy through business
exchange. A series of activities are on the move or popping up and disappearing
in Taipei, these include the night markets, under-bridge activities, street
vendors, spontaneous karaoke, gambling, puppet theatre, massage, barber, monks,
beetle-nut booths, and even moving gods–all very sensitive to the urban energy
flows and hot-spots of urban acupuncture.
4. River Urbanism
Taipei (1G) exists because of the river and the fertile flood plains. The
industrial city (2G) claimed independence from nature and turned the river into
an industrial sewage site. A reinforced concrete wall 12 meters high was
constructed in-between the built human environment and the river nature. Third
Generation City aims to re-uninite the river and city through the natural
restoration of the river environment. The river shall run as an ecological
corridor through a city that is pulsating together with its hydraulics. The
city will be re-developed from the view point of the river. Local knowledge
still remembers the time when the water of the rivers was drinkable and people
washed themselves in the rivers. Every family had a rowing boat and the river
was full of harvest. This is still a living memory for some in Taipei, but for
the industrial generations the river has become a fiction.
 |
| Taipei City with the dividing wall from river nature. |
5. Ultra-Ruin
Ruin is when man-made has become part of nature. The ruining processes
of Taipei are keeping the city alive. A weed will root into a crack in the
asphalt and eventually ruin the city. The crack is the acupuncture point and
the weed is the needle. The mechanical surface of Taipei is dotted with ruins
and holes reflecting a larger vision of an organic machine, the organic ruin of
the industrial city. People are constantly ruining the totalitarian control
architecture of the industrial mind, which they subconsciously feel as a threat
to the human nature. To understand the dynamics of the ruining processes of a
city is essential for the growing of the Third Generation built human
environment. Treasure Hill is a
high-density ruin, a fragment of the Third Generation City. In the settlement,
the same space is shared by people and jungle and the complex three-dimensional
power balances between the different species, including humans, is delicately
changing day by day. Treasure Hill also lives on a flood bank and does not view
the river as a threat. It is inhabited by urban nomads who are harvesting the
surrounding city. The whole settlement is an urban acupuncture needle for
Taipei.
 |
| Treasure Hill in 2003 |
BIOURBAN ACUPUNCTURE
Urban acupuncture is an urban environmentalism theory
which combines urban design with traditional Chinese medical theory of
acupuncture. This process uses small-scale interventions to transform the
larger urban context. Sites are selected through an aggregate analysis of
social, economic, and ecological factors, and developed through a dialogue
between designers and the community. Acupuncture relieves stress in the body,
urban acupuncture relieves stress in the environment. Urban acupuncture
produces small-scale but socially catalytic interventions into the urban
fabric.
 |
| Illegal community gardens and urban farms performing biourban acupuncture on industrial Taipei. Image: Ruin Academy, 2010. |
Originally
coined by Barcelonan architect and urbanist, Manuel de Sola Morales the term
has been recently championed and developed further by Finnish architect and
social theorist Marco Casagrande, this school of thought eschews massive urban
renewal projects in favour a of more localised and community approach that, in
an era of constrained budgets and limited resources, could democratically and
cheaply offer a respite to urban dwellers. Casagrande views cities as complex
energy organisms in which different overlapping layers of energy flows are
determining the actions of the citizens as well as the development of the city.
By mixing environmentalism and urban design Casagrande is developing methods of
punctual manipulation of the urban energy flows in order to create an ecologically
sustainable urban development towards the so-called 3rd Generation City
(postindustrial city). The theory is developed in the Tamkang University of
Taiwan and at independent multidisciplinary research center Ruin Academy. With
focus on environmentalism and urban design, Casagrande defines urban
acupuncture as a design tool where punctual manipulations contribute to
creating sustainable urban development, such as the community gardens and urban
farms in Taipei.
Casagrande describes urban
acupuncture as:
[a] cross-over architectural
manipulation of the collective sensuous intellect of a city. City is viewed as
multi-dimensional sensitive energy-organism, a living environment. Urban
acupuncture aims into a touch with this nature.
And: Sensitivity to understand
the energy flows of the collective chi beneath the visual city and reacting on
the hot-spots of this chi. Architecture is in the position to produce the
acupuncture needles for the urban chi.
And: A weed will root into the
smallest crack in the asphalt and eventually break the city. Urban acupuncture
is the weed and the acupuncture point is the crack. The possibility of the
impact is total, connecting human nature as part of nature.
Casagrande
utilized the tenets of acupuncture: treat the points of blockage and let relief
ripple throughout the body. More immediate and sensitive to community needs
than traditional institutional forms of large scale urban renewal interventions
would not only respond to localized needs, but do so with a knowledge of how
city-wide systems operated and converged at that single node. Release pressure
at strategic points, release pressure for the whole city.
The theory of
urban acupuncture opens the door for uncontrolled creativity and freedom. Each
citizen is enabled to join the creative participatory planning process, feel
free to use city space for any purpose and develop his environment according to
his will. This “new” post-industrialized city Casagrande dubs the 3rd
Generation City, characterized by its sensitive citizens who feel the calling
of a sustainable co-operation with the rest of the nature, sensitive citizen
who are aware of the destruction that the insensitive modem machine is causing
to nature including human nature. In a larger context a site of urban acupuncture
can be viewed as communicating to the city outside like a natural sign of life
in a city programmed to subsume it.
Urban
acupuncture focuses on local resources rather than capital-intensive municipal
programs and promotes the idea of citizens installing and caring for
interventions. These small changes, proponents claim, will boost community
morale and catalyze revitalization. Boiled down to a simple statement, “urban
acupuncture” means focusing on small, subtle, bottom-up interventions that
harness and direct community energy in positive ways to heal urban blight and
improve the cityscape. It is meant as an alternative to large, top-down,
mega-interventions that typically require heavy investments of municipal funds
(which many cities at the moment simply don’t have) and the navigation of yards
of bureaucratic red tape. The micro-scale interventions targeted by “urban
acupuncture” appeal to both citizen-activists and cash-strapped communities.
 |
| The "101 Community Garden" in front of the Taipei World Trade Center (pink building). This is the most expensive land in Taipei City fought over by three banks for over decades, without any of the three getting to develop the land. Meanwhile: anarchist grannies are farming. |
Jaime Lerner,
the former mayor of Curitiba, suggests urban acupuncture as the future solution
for contemporary urban issues; by focusing on very narrow pressure points in
cities, who can initiate positive ripple effects for the greater society. Urban
acupuncture reclaims the ownership of land to the public and emphasizes the
importance of community development through small interventions in design of
cities. It involves pinpointed interventions that can be accomplished quickly
to release energy and create a positive ripple effect.
He described in 2007: “I believe that some medicinal
“magic” can and should be applied to cities, as many are sick and some nearly
terminal. As with the medicine needed in the interaction between doctor and
patient, in urban planning it is also necessary to make the city react; to poke
an area in such a way that it is able to help heal, improve, and create
positive chain reactions. It is indispensable in revitalizing interventions to
make the organism work in a different way.”
Taiwanese
architect and academic Ti-Nan Chi is looking with micro urbanism at the
vulnerable and insignificant side of contemporary cities around the world
identified as micro-zones, points for recovery in which micro-projects have
been carefully proposed to involve the public on different levels, aiming to
resolve conflicts among property owners, villagers, and the general public.
A loosely
affiliated team of architects Marco Casagrande, Hsieh Ying-chun and
Roan Ching-yueh (sometimes called WEAK! Architecture) are describing the
unofficial Instant City, or Instant Taipei, as architecture that uses the
Official City as a growing platform and energy source, where to attach itself
like a parasite and from where to leach the electricity and water… [The Instant
City's] illegal urban farms or night markets is so widespread and deep rooted
in the Taiwanese culture and cityscape that we could almost speak of another
city on top of the “official” Taipei, a parallel city – or a para-city. WEAK!
is calling urban acupuncture depending on the context as Illegal Architecture,
Orchid Architecture, the People’s Architecture, or Weak Architecture. The
theory of urban acupuncture suggests that scores of small-scale, less costly
and localized projects is what cities need in order to recover and renew
themselves.
References
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