City Acupuncture Workshop with Roan Ching

Through installation work,
Taiwanese Architect Roan Ching-Yueh frames perspectives on the convenience store being an anchor amongst the social life of Taipei’s small urban places.

October 24th, 2024

Benjamin Everitt
Photography by Julie Zhu @juliezhuu


It was a pleasure to attend the workshop and lecture presented by Artist and Architect Roan Ching this month, brilliantly organised by aksatellites. Despite all coming from different countries and cultures, we collectively share experiences of how we experience the urban environment, to the many different narrative approaches to telling stories of the city.


This article shares some group discussion topics / inanahi with Roan Ching addressing City Acupuncture : a city planning approach that looks into areas of interest within cities that, much like acupuncture, triggering the area of concern with the right amount of precision could stimulate many positive effects to the rest of the body that is the city.



Photo credit Julie Zhu.

Roan Ching, the illegal architect:

When observing the cityscape of a country like Taiwan, many moments within the city are reflective of its organic growth fueled by its periods of industrialisation, political tensions, and the social dynamics of the city’s inhabitants. Taiwan’s modern architecture and city life expand at a pace that often outstrips the reach of legislation. People’s lives and their economic livelihood cannot be restrained with bureaucratic red tape, and local inhabitants would address issues surrounding housing and employment under their own terms.


Practising within the streetscape of Taiwan’s cities, Roan Ching develops structures within underutilised spaces that fall within the legal grey area of a building. Despite its legality questioned by authorities, the installations bring to surface the opportunities that could never have been achieved by individual clients from a hefty consenting process.


As stated by Roan:


“A city with illegal architecture such as Taipei is like a multi-layered cake, where the roof of a building is not the end but a new beginning. On all the possible rooftops, new buildings pop up with the same logic but different forms, which look similar but distinct. Compared with the major constructions dominated by the government, spontaneously built cities create a much stronger connection between the natural and social environment, which is virtually the extension of human bodies and the embodiment of life.”
-Ching-Yueh Roan ‘City Awakening: A Manifesto, An Enlightenment’



Photo credit Julie Zhu.

With collaborations with architects such as Wang Shu, illegal architecture in Taiwan have been designed using tectonic components such as common timber framing, and scaffolding, to generate spaces for tea ceremonies and common public activities. 


Such interventions to activate underutilised spaces within cities have been a common practice amongst urban designers, where back home in Aotearoa New Zealand many institutions, planners, events organisers, and landscapers attempt to manicure leftover urban spaces to bring life back into the city. These interventions however, are often made to be permanent, have long timeframes for completion, and exposed to criticism about wasteful spending by ratepayers.   


What we could learn from Roan’s installations however, is that embracing a build process without having to seek the approval of a higher authority brings back a sense of autonomy and agency amongst the small neighbourhoods that would be otherwise neglected by such authorities.


As authorities commonly take upwards of 30 days to begin taking action towards these illegal structures, Roan’s approach of “Build now, and ask questions later” approach to architectural interventions allows for a rapid ideation process to take shape within the public sphere. Interventions that invite members of the public to challenge the spaces in which they inhabit allows for an environment where new urban design ideas can be tested and reviewed to be adopted into the street life.


“Students made intensive communication with people who use the space in one way or the other and explained why they selected certain locations for their creation and finally, convinced them of the soundness of their ideas for their projects.” -(City Awakening)

The subsequent structures that exist illegally still satisfies the livelihoods of the local people, and ensures their safety through a clear collaboration between the architect, engineer, and residents. In an environment where solicitors, legislators, or city authorities are brought to concern, the cost to employ these bureaucrats often financially deter individuals from carrying out even the most small-scale projects. Such that, we begin to question why people are stripped of their power to bring life back to a dilapidated neighbourhood.

The 24 hour Convenience stores; a cultural institution within the modern asian city:

Another intervention made by Roan was to invite multiple artists and architects to illustrate the cultural phenomenon that is the convenience store amongst Asian cities.

A 7-Eleven in Taipei. A convenience store is often placed in areas with the highest foot traffic, where these sites are often extremely competitive amongst other franchises. 


Although Japan’s conveience store culture has been extensively over-documented, with many recommendations on what snacks to buy at the convenience stores on your next holiday, what is particularly unique about Taiwan’s convenience store culture that we discovered from Roan’s workshop  is the social role it plays within its own community.


Originally conceived in Japan when 7& i Holdings acquired the American brand in the 90s, in Taiwan  the 7-Eleven is considered as not only a consumerist icon, but acting culturally as a ‘third place’ for people in the local neighbourhood to meet and socialise. When we think of our home as our ‘first place’, and our workplace as our ‘second place’, the intermediary spaces of third places act as important forms of interacting with people from all walks of life. The familiarity, locality, and frequency at which people visit these third places allows for a greater chance to idiosyncratically meet both familiar, and unfamiliar faces.


For another series of interventions directed by Roan, artists and architects were invited to create installations addressing the culture of 7-Elevens in Taiwan. Most notably, one installation that illustrated this relationship between a 7-Eleven and the streetscape is a series of exercising machines made using old bicycle parts over a carpark in front of the convenience store. With this intervention, the streetface not only became a storefront to buy goods and services, but another place for people to exercise before returning home from work.


No matter where in the city, an urban intervention strategically, and precisely focused within a single area feeds energy into another part of the city. Much like acupuncture, it is both a science and an art that can be practised by urban designers by developing a thorough understanding of its local context; and successively developing small scale interventions that can be iterated quickly upon feedback by the city’s inhabitants.


Photo credit Julie Zhu.

The commutes that we all dread, and lost opportunities in Urban Design across Auckland:

With a collection of artists, architects, and urbanists at the table, through the workshop we attempted to follow a similar process of attempting to find the acupuncture pressure points (穴位 Xuéwèi) within the commutes we take in our own city of Tamaki Makaurau Auckland.


We were briefed to take three photos that are part of our everyday commute that presents an opportunity for an intervention that could take place.


What we subsequently discovered were the numerous consequences of an urbanism designed for cars, in addition to diminishing our engagement with the city as we progressively carry out more work remotely.


Key roads throughout Auckland are still poorly pedestrianised and traffic managed, the lack of amenity and visual interest provided from building street fronts will always deter the foot and cycle traffic along these streets. A street with no people, or shops, and only cars presents little opportunities for third places for people to impulsively stop by and socialise.

Although public transportation in Auckland is well covered and progressively improving, many transit hubs throughout the city are still giving a hostile impression for its inhabitants. Such that, a common theme that was presented amongst the panel was not only the number of opportunities that Auckland planning has missed, but also the potentials that it can uncover to make the city more livable, vibrant, and commercially successful.


Due to the city’s infrastructure and buildings not talking with the natural topography and landscape of the local area, we begin to wonder the thought process behind how many of these legally compliant, but hostile buildings are granted a consent in the first place.

       
Photo credit Julie Zhu.


If you’re currently studying Art, Architecture or Urbanism at a tertiary institution, recently graduated, or working in practice, I cannot recommend connecting with the collective at Asia Kiwi Architects, and Satellites for the representation and community involvement with other artists from similar backgrounds.


For those who have missed Roan Ching’s lecture and workshop last month, he will continue his tour in Te Whanganui a Tara, Wellington on the 9th of November, with his workshop hosted on the 24th.

Click on the link to sign up to the workshop.


Special thanks to:

Michelle Wang, organiser of Asia Kiwi Architects (AKA) for the introduction


Satellites:

Hosted by Arts Foundation Satellites, they aim to connect the past, present and future of Asian arts practice in Aotearoa, supporting the development of unique Aotearoa Asian voices.