ENISHI RESORT VILLA

Penghu Island lies off the west coast of Taiwan's main island. Being a periphery (in socio-economical and cultural context) of contemporary Taiwan, the archipelago is known for its unique characteristic such as the dynamic form of a sculpture and a fierce climate. The islanders live free of pretense and formality, cherishing their families, their ancestors, and the land that raised them. What we tend to lose sight of in our daily existence, swept up in frenzied economic growth and urbanization, still survives here. On this island, the owner, Liu Shufen, has a profound attachment to the land her family has held for generations, and her request was clear from the start. She wanted a small hotel like a traveler's home, a place to stay rather than merely sleep, where guests could feel the culture and climate of Penghu through close contact with their host and the local people. And, quite simply, it had to be "an architecture no one had ever seen."

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The budget was tight, and the technical and physical constraints were those of an island on the periphery. The answer that suddenly surfaced for making something "unseen" under such conditions was brainwaves, a subject that happened to interest us at the time. On the actual site, we recorded the brainwaves of the owner and the architect for twenty minutes each, broke them down into eight frequency bands by Fourier transform, and averaged them into stepped lines. The owner's became the undulating three-layer slabs in section; the architect's became the zigzagging void that cuts through them in plan. We sought to build the state in which the owner's memories and desires (heteronomy) and the architect's creativity (autonomy) complement and resonate with one another. It may sound like a whimsical stunt. It was in fact a deadly serious method for stepping outside the modernist way of thinking, which begins from conscious "function," "rationality," and the architect's individual style. We did not fill every corner with intention. We let the form "given" by the brainwaves become architecture as it was, an act of what we call "non-intentional intention."

Simply put, the form came first, and the functions were discovered afterward. The program was nearly a blank slate. Like primitive people who found their places in a cave one by one and gave them meaning to fit their bodies, we read the differences hidden in the given environment, and assigned the rooms as we virtually settled in. The usual flow of design (list the necessary rooms, arrange them, give the whole a form) was turned inside out.

The building is a concrete box, eight meters wide and thirty meters deep, that seems to have grown out of the earth. Its reticent exterior gives no hint of the complex, dense space inside. A void cut deep like a valley gently invites in the fierce sunlight and wind, staging a drama of light and air that shifts moment by moment. Common and private areas blend into a space unlike a typical hotel, weaving relationships among travelers, their hosts and staff, and the travelers themselves into something comfortable and intimate. The space is as complex as can be, yet a soft sense of order is felt everywhere within it, along with a reassurance as if held in the womb of the island. It wears what we call "coherent complexity."

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We used almost none of the artificial surface materials, such as gypsum board and wallpaper, and intentionally chose the rawness of unadorned materials instead, one that could stand up to the untamed nature of the island. The concrete is left as cast, carrying the rough imprint of inexpensive formwork made from the narrow boards commonly used in Penghu. To fill the complex structure reliably, we used highly fluid self-compacting concrete (SCC), and as a result every nail and every joint is deeply engraved, giving the surface a friendly, wrinkled expression.

That indescribable quality could only have come from the uncompromising communication among the owner, the design team, and the builders, and from the owner's determination and goodwill in conveying to us, especially those of us who had come from Japan, the atmosphere, sensibility, and way of life of the island on which this building stands. Before we knew it, our Japanese team's site visits had numbered more than forty, and the meetings with the owner and the Taiwanese team, in which we traded opinions and sketches candidly until everyone was convinced, ran late into the night almost every time. We spent nearly as much time again sharing meals around the table, talking with local people, and traveling to etch the island's landscape into our eyes and bodies. Ms. Liu allowed a process that looked, at first glance, like one great detour (or perhaps she even steered us into it herself?), and her steadiness and her trust in us are, even now, nothing short of extraordinary.

Architects from Japan, Taiwan, the owner, and the builders. Over seven years of dialogue, the core members grew beyond their original roles into a rhizomatic collective with neither hierarchy nor fixed division of labor, like an excellent soccer team. For some time after completion, we also took part in operations and PR. (This was interrupted by the pandemic, but we are considering restarting it.)

Looking back, this project has also asked and taught us (and still teaches us), how contemporary architecture is possible on the periphery. More precisely, it has shown us what the essence of "making architecture" is, one that comes into view precisely because it is the periphery. The name ENISHI (縁) celebrates the fated connections that brought us together here, the special bond between Taiwan and Japan, and the countless connections that will be woven from this place.