HB: Bio-architecture Formosana (BaF) is one of the leading sustainable design practices in Taiwan. What led you to this field? Did you always aspire to be a sustainability leader? CHC: When I studied for my Master’s at UPenn in the United States, it was just after the 1979 energy crisis, and they had a class on passive building design. It was really interesting to me, and at the time it was a big issue for design to deal with. When we started the company, we were designing this way without using the terminology of ‘Green building’. One of our projects was the Bei-Tou Library, a small community library we designed for the government. At the time, Taiwan was starting to promote their Green building guide called EEWH, similar to LEED in the USA, and they asked us to try it for the library. We were awarded the first Diamond rating in Taiwan. We thought it would be interesting to pursue this, to approach design through Green design thinking. So, we did it piece by piece, and started to allocate some of our project budgets to integrate features like green roofs, solar panels and wood construction.
HB: So, your focus on sustainable design has been very serendipitous, a sort of happy accident that you picked up and carried forward. As you did this, did you find clients and contractors receptive to your ideas, or was it a challenge to push forward? CHC: Yes, at the beginning it was just fun to find a creative way to design sustainably, but we also realised we needed to have a more scientific basis, so we started to run simulations and persuade our clients this way. After we did the library, we got a lot of positive responses and everyone started to be interested in Green architecture. We got calls from people asking if we could show them how to build a Green building. Since we can’t help everyone, we started to promote Green ideas in the media and speeches, to help promote understanding. After a couple of years, people started calling us ‘the Green architects’. We just found that it’s interesting, and also very important—even after 40 years, we still have an energy crisis.
HB: In 1999 you founded BaF with Ying Chao Kuo. What motivated you to start your own company together? CHC: I worked in the United States for almost five years after my Master’s degree, then I decided to come back home. I find that the thinking for architectural design is cultivated from your cultural background, so I couldn’t stay more in a country I’m not from. When I came back, I had my own personal practice, but I felt like I needed a partner to discuss or quarrel with. I also wanted to have a company that belongs to everyone in the company, so that everyone works for the company and themselves, rather than working for me. Everyone participates and makes the effort together—we share the successes and mistakes as well. That’s our goal for BaF.
I was introduced to Ying Chao, and realised we had a similar vision for the future, and a sustainable approach to architecture. So we founded the company and we use the Chinese character ‘9’ in our logo, as a reference to 1999—it makes it easier to remember which year we started the company, and which values to focus on.
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