Nature as a luxury
In his projects, Wu always strives to reintroduce Taiwanese native species, so that the public may get to know and enjoy them. A clear example is his landscaping of the Mitsui Warehouse in Taipei City for the Taipei West Gateway project. Wu began by imagining what it must have been like outside Taipei’s North Gate 200 years ago. As the warehouse originally stood outside the city boundary, Wu has planted many wild grasses around it to evoke the meadows that grew there two centuries ago. Trembling in the breezes, the grasses remind passersby of riverside landscapes.
Wu was also responsible for the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab’s Urban Art Park project at the former Air Force Command Headquarters. The forbidding military walls there have given way to spacious paths. “I conceive of this space as becoming Taipei’s most expansive greenbelt,” Wu says. The place, whose green mood is set by the veteran banyans, hoop pines, and camphor trees, serves as a repository for the city’s memories and provides shade for pedestrians. The verges of the curving paths are adorned with judicious plantings that bring patches of wilderness into the city. Many scented herbs have been chosen which help to repel undesired insects such as mosquitoes. Just a gentle touch will release their fragrance. Wu explains his aim of reawakening our five senses: “Landscape architecture used to focus solely on visuality, but don’t forget we have other senses too: smell, taste, hearing, and touch.”
The garden outside Not Just Library at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park was once a derelict place. Its former wildness inspired Wu to aim for a primeval style and introduce nearly a hundred different plants into the garden’s narrow space, complete with various Taiwanese ferns. The dominant color is silvery grey. This is a quiet nook where the mind, saturated after a visit to the library, may relax and contemplate.
Wu has recently moved to a flat on the top floor of an old five-story building in Taipei’s Waishuangxi. His windows provide views of greenery, and the open-air space on the roof is a wonderland of plants large and small. Wu sees this green space as his greatest “luxury.” His approach of placing pots within pots gives room to mosses, herbs, and ferns at the bottom and shrubs and trees above. These green tiers shield the roof and the additional room he has built there from the full glare of the sun. In this rooftop woodland, insects have found a home, birds rest themselves, bees collect pollen, and butterflies feed on nectar, forming a food chain and a rich ecosystem. Wu comments: “The raison d’être of landscape architecture used to be its visual appeal, but how to coexist with our fellow inhabitants on the earth is a vital issue we need to address today.”
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, many people living in isolation have experienced mental health problems. Only when our physical freedom is curtailed do we apprehend how suffocating it is to be surrounded by concrete walls, and how revitalizing it is to immerse ourselves in nature,” Wu says. These thoughts have given rise to his contribution to Between Earth and the Sky: The Spiritual State of Our Times, a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Strolling into Wu’s “Heterotopia Garden,” we are engulfed by a green exuberance of plants of all kinds. Inhaling the fresh air, basking in the warm sunshine, and admiring the blue sky and white clouds, we realize how blessed we are to be alive.
Anti-Covid measures have restricted our physical movements, helping us to slow down and appreciate the healing power of nature in our daily lives. This is what inspired Wu to create the “Heterotopia Garden” for the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.