Events

Jointly organized by Asia Research Institute, and Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Mike Douglass, Asia Research Institute, and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

With the ceasing of Martial Law in 1987, Taiwan embarked on a path towards building democratic institutions including multi-party national elections as well as civil society experiments in cultural and community affairs. In the culture sphere, due to the intertwined nature of national identities, these complications were particularly acute in the contestations for the interpretation rights to heritage planning. In this presentation, three particularly difficult cases will be discussed to show the current predicament that is still testing the will of the pubic and the ability of public institutions in meeting the challenges ahead. The Treasure Hill village is a self-built cluster of 250 dwellings on a hillside by a river in Taipei city. It is a representative type of informal housing prevalent in the urban areas of Taiwan during the post-WWII era of large numbers of mainland soldiers who had been conscripted by the KMT army and brought to Taiwan. Fifteen years after the settlement has been declared a historic site, the rights to dwelling continue to be in contention. The Losheng Leprosorium embodies the medicallegacy of the Japanese colonial rule, where lepers, once incarcerated in the facility, will never leave it. The controversy surrounds the public policy to demolish this facility, to remove the traces of this negative history, and to turn the site over to a rapid transit storage and repair facility. Designated as heritage site five years ago, however, the construction of the transit facility is still moving ahead causing serious conflicts between transit development, and the remaining leprosy patients. The Kuchapugan village is the only indigenous tribal settlement designated as heritage in Taiwan. Public policy to restore the village and to develop its tourism potential have met with skepticism and opposition from the tribal people. The current controversy is whether the tribe has the rights to do the restoration work or whether the government, through public tender for contractors, should do the work of restoration.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

John K.C. Liu is the chairman of Building and Planning Research Foundation at National Taiwan University. Dr Liu attended the Rhode Island School of Design from 1963-1965, and received a BS from the Cooper Union in New York in 1968. He received MArch from University of Washington, Seattle, 1969; and PhD in architecture from Architecture Institute, University of California, Berkeley, 1980. Dr Liu’s current research interests are in the sustainable development and environment planning, ecological design and planning, participative design method and theory, community design and planning, historical space renovation architecture design. Dr Liu had held teaching and research positions at the National Taiwan University, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, University of California, Berkeley, Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan, and Pennsylvania State University. He is currently the OSM Distinguished Visiting Professor in Architecture at the National University Singapore. Dr Liu’s contributions to sustainable development and environment planning have been recognized by numerous honors and awards. The honors and awards include: 16th Taipei Culture Award; Taiwan Architects Association Annual Awards, First Prize, I-lan County Performing Arts Center; California Asian American Association of Engineers award for design excellence; State of California Affordable Housing Award; US National Science Foundation Public Service Science Residency award; Progressive Architecture Awards Citation in Applied Research.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you click on the “Register” button above to RSVP.