URBAN REGENERATION
There are currently seven URSs in Taipei
The Urban Regeneration Stations al low Taipei residents to see old buildings in a new light
The former Police Married Quarters in Hong Kong have been reborn as a design hub featuring studios, shops, restaurants, a library, a rooftop garden and exhibition space
Urban Regeneration Stations, Taipei
Location: Taipei Date: 2010–ongoing Architects: Various
PMQ Location: Hong Kong Date: 2014 Architects: Architectural Services Department (Hong Kong)
Saved from redevelopment by neighbourhood activists, Hong Kong’s former Central Police Married Quarters posed a challenge for the government. Built in 1951 as a dormitory for police officers and their families, it was an imposing modernist structure typical of Hong Kong’s postwar living conditions, with two parallel blocks of small living units that opened onto wide communal balconies with shared kitchens. It wasn’t the most easily adaptable structure, but then came a solution: convert the former flats into shops and studios for local designers. The rebranded PMQ is now a lively
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design hub with a mix of retail, workspaces, bars and restaurants. “The key word is community,” says architect Billy Tam, who consulted the NGO that runs the complex, which opened in mid 2014. Tenants are free to make use of the balconies that connect each unit, while a new multi- functional space was created by bridging the two blocks with a glass-walled cube that has a roof garden on top. A number of historic elements were preserved, including Victorian-era stone walls and the foundations of a 19th century school that occupied the site until it was destroyed by bombing in World War II.
The decline of Taipei’s industrial economy, along with the eastward push of development, left the Taiwanese capital with an aging stock of shophouses and factories on the historic western side of town. To protect them from redevelopment, the city launched an Urban Regeneration Office in 2010 that sought to revitalise neglected structures in creative ways. There are now seven Urban Regeneration Stations scattered across the city, including shophouses converted into workshops for artists and filmmakers and a former liquor warehouse that now houses studios for creative enterprises. Former URO coordinator Lin Yu-Hsiu describes
the stations as provoking “a renewal of thought” that allows Taipei residents to see old buildings in a new light. While other historic preservation projects in Taipei have taken a more commercial approach, the Urban Regeneration Stations are more community-orientated, with programmes that are meant to draw in people from the surrounding neighbourhood. Buildings are donated by their owners, who are then compensated with a site of equivalent size in another part of Taipei.
CLAD mag 2015 ISSUE 2
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