Taiwan locates in the key position
of the East Asian island chain, and has long been intertwined by multiple
colonial and immigration cultures. The residents have experienced many changes
in political power and cultural influences, resulting in various conflicts and
breaks in cultural and living aspects. Such diversity also bred a special
island culture for Taiwan. After the World War II, along with the governance of
KMT and the support from the US, the American culture was massively imported in
a short time. It hugely changed the life style and living habits of people in
Taiwan, which also brought out new types of living space. For more than 70
years after the war, the traces of conflicts between tradition and
modernization still can be found in rural areas where the modernization is
relatively slow. At the same time, these areas are facing certain contemporary
problems such as aging and outflow of local populations.
Blending House is a proposition of
re–vitalizing the rural settlements based on the above premise. We focus on the
neighboring relationships between the traditional houses (first–generation
house), single–family houses (second–generation house), and the community. We
propose a ‘third–generation house’ that includes the two generation houses and
their surroundings as a prototype for next generation’s living patterns. The
third–generation house opens up some of the long–term idle spaces, and fills
them with industrial, educational, and living activities for public. It
replaced the original closeness of residential spaces with more interactions
from neighborhoods, gradually forms new networks of resource sharing.
台灣地處東亞島鏈關鍵位置，長期以來由多個殖民與移民文化交織而成，居民在經歷多次文化與政權的轉變，產生各種文化與生活上的斷裂和衝突，同時也孕育多樣性的島嶼文化。二戰後，伴隨國民政府來台的美援時期，美國文化短時間強勢輸入，再次改變台灣人的生活與居住習慣，亦產生新的居住空間類型。戰後七十多年，在現代化相對緩慢的鄉村地區還可發現傳統與現代化衝突痕跡，以及人口老化與外流的當代問題。