島嶼未來的原風景 : An Archi-scape of an Island's Nostalgic Future

This is an entry to an international design competition held as part of a plan to build a resort of 40 to 50 villas on about 11.6 hectares of hilly land, surrounded by the sea on three sides, in the Qingwan area of the Fenggui Peninsula in Penghu, Taiwan. Teaming up with Lin Jianhua and Ryuji Shiraishi, like-minded friends from Taiwan and Japan, we refined our ideas into a single proposal not by dividing up the work, but by bringing ideas to the table together.

What stays with us most from the landscapes of Penghu is not the summer sun, but the sea and sky as monochrome masses that seem to erase human presence, and the black basalt ground. What is found there is not a "nature" that is merely pleasant and gentle to us humans. It is a raw force that at times refuses even to be grasped as something to look at: nature as what the ancient Greek philosophers conceptualized as physis. Imagining the lives of the island's people, who have long lived facing such nature head-on and coexisting with it, we envisioned architecture as a filter that receives its intensity and softens it.

For the site, we chose Lot A16, which has one of the largest changes in level of all the lots and views of the sea to the south and east. The building is half-buried in the ground, following the terrain, and the basalt excavated from the site is reused in the stone retaining walls. Two hexagonal volumes of different sizes are stacked and offset horizontally and vertically. The ground floor, built of piled coral stone and basalt, is "the earth, the rock"; the second floor, a lightweight dry-assembled structure of CLT, is "a nest set upon the earth."

One of the sources of inspiration was the Hejie Three-Courtyard Old Houses, the remains of an old Qing-dynasty settlement in Penghu: the deeply carved texture woven from unglazed brick, basalt, and coral stone; spaces where multiple layers of walls reveal and conceal, and inside and outside flip again and again until they merge into one; and the experience of enclosed courtyards and rooms linked in a circuit, as if the scenes of life once lived there were brought back before one's eyes. The old houses themselves contain no hexagons, but by linking spaces enclosed by hexagons, including the outdoor areas, we sought to amplify this sense of depth and endless continuity. All hexagon corners are set at 120 degrees for ease of construction, while the hexagons facing outdoor spaces are freely distorted, aiming for a kaleidoscopic experience in which one encounters Penghu's changing faces with each hour and season.

Environmental sustainability and the use of natural energy were among the competition's key themes, yet in this proposal we deliberately chose not to rely on new technologies such as solar panels. One reason is that they did not seem appropriate on a site exposed to sea winds so harsh that even stainless steel begins to rust within a year. More than that, the island already has more than enough sun and wind, and we believed that by coming to good terms with them, comfortable energy savings could be achieved. The cluster of hexagons deflects the strong summer sun and the northeast monsoon of winter, softening them little by little and guiding light and wind into every corner of the site and the building. This is energy saving that comes not from effort and endurance, but naturally, because it simply feels good.

Unfortunately, the result fell short of an award. Even so, this proposal, which looked anew at the climate and culture of the island of Penghu from both the memory of a distant past and the life of a future yet to come, remains one of our most memorable attempts.