Architecture has long been a most regrettable, unbecoming shortcoming of the "beautiful island" of Taiwan. Shop signs sticking out all over the place, iron window grates plastered all over buildings, and shacks willy-nilly sprouting on rooftops-an architectural crazy quilt more post-modern than post-modern, in "immigrant makeshift" style. People from overseas have a difficult time describing Taiwan cities as "beautiful." The best they can manage is "unusual."
Ironically, books on architecture represent some of the most elegant products of the Taiwan publishing world. The Taiwan publishing industry, known far and wide as the center for the "craft" of Chinese-language publishing, manages the production of architectural publications with boundless creativity. Whether it's the high-quality photographs, the originality of design, or the wonderful bindings and covers, the elements all form a synergy with the architectural works depicted in the books.
It's only been in the last five or six years that books on architecture have become popular in the marketplace. Before that such publications were only used in colleges and institutes. Nowadays such high-end textbooks have invaded the average home and become symbols of good taste in middle-class and intellectual families. But because of this, books on architecture have vacillated between professional and popular tastes. An architectural book on the shelf often does not mean the owner has given it a serious read but rather that he might pull it down "for a look" on occasion, or that it's only the beautiful pictures within that are of interest.
Scholars of architecture cannot bring themselves to write books that appeal to popular taste, while publishers soldier on despite losses, remaining committed to selling what is available. Yet in the uneven balance between the beautiful and the marketplace, some people do produce books that are big sellers. Architectural writer Chen Shih-liang, from his Architecture in Postcard I and Architecture in Postcard II to Hooked on Architectural Travel has produced an excellent model for the marketability of architectural books-and has pioneered a new direction for the genre.
When Hooked on Architectural Travel was still in the editing stage, the book's editor, Liu Mei-chin, constantly murmured to herself that the year's publishing success would be a total "gamble" on this one book. Her comments were more akin to self-hypnosis than publicity for the book.
The Ecus Publishing House, Garden City Publishing and the Owl Publishing House are all among those companies that deal in popular architectural books in Taiwan today. They each put out between ten and 30 titles a year. Other publishing houses produce a title or two among their cultural offerings. Against a yearly total of published books that frequently reaches 40,000 titles, architectural books as a genre barely weigh in the balance. The primary reason these books cannot be produced in large number is the high cost of design and printing, the relatively high risk involved, and the paucity of good authors. When a good production does hit the market, a few thousand copies are sold but these hardly represent much of a market share.
Chen Shih-liang's first book, Architecture in Postcard I, was published at the turn of the millennium and moved with a light step across that threshold. The unfamiliar and abstruse world of architectural theory, under his pen, was turned into best-selling prose. When popular architecture books were still in the pioneer stage, Chen had already logged some three to four thousand copies sold. His third, most recent book, Hooked on Architectural Travel went through six printings in two months (6,000 copies). Things are looking up for the future-the publisher jokingly remarks they have high hopes the sales goal for the year-end achievement award will be reached at the beginning of the year.
Architectural travel
Books on architecture haven't become mainstream market items in Taiwan. Aside from the fact that readers have never had a basic grounding in appreciating architectural aesthetics, local authors for the most part have been professionals with "high prestige and universal respect" living deep within their ivory towers. Even if they do venture out into the real world and write something, they are often not in the habit of talking with the public who actually use the architectural space itself. The exquisite pictures in their books are more attractive than the text. The content is thus badly out of sync with the needs of the public.
It is interesting that in the last two years the few books on architecture that have sold well seem to be pointing in the same direction: the authors have all made "travel" the main topic and have brought readers into the hall of architectural knowledge without kicking and screaming, acquainting them with a body of knowledge that combines science, art, philosophy and history.
In 2002 Garden City Publishing published the travel notes of the famous Japanese architect Ando Tadao, The Urban Wanderings of Ando Tadao, in which the author records philosophical and artistic thoughts stemming from his observations of architecture during travels around the world. In 2003 the China Times Publishing Company brought out The House Above the Waterfall by Cheng Han. With the eyes of an architecture aficionado, the author visited American architect Frank Lloyd Wright's famous structure and recorded in detail many anecdotes about the architect himself, producing a book that successfully broke into the bestseller list at bookstores.
Chen Shih-liang has consistently used his architectural travel experience from around the world as his material, doing all the writing and photography himself, and in the confines of an extremely small number of pages, has been able to put together global architectural trends and history in a way easy for newcomers to the field to digest. In Hooked on Architectural Travel Chen makes a first attempt at increasing the proportion of text to photos and talks about his subject in a more systematic way. He's an expert at using down-to-earth, everyday language and approaches his topic from the point of view of a true professional. Reading his book is just like taking a stroll with him. It is both fresh and lively.
Friendly connections
Hooked on Architectural Travel focuses on the works of world-famous architects. The book explains in vivid terms various styles, like "high-tech," "deconstructionist," "minimalist," and "post-modern." The practiced and critical eye of the traveler prevents Chen Shih-liang from being swallowed up in insignificance beneath the towering works of the great architects-quite the contrary. He frequently offers earnest critiques of what he sees. Although the failings of the great architects may be minute, they cannot escape the pen of Chen Shih-liang. What is especially commendable is that as he travels the globe he frequently turns his attention to the various obstacles facing the Taiwan architectural scene back home. For example, glass curtain wall buildings are still a staple of Taiwan architecture today. Chen Shih-liang does not mince words in his criticism: these structures represent a "willful" disregard by designers of common sense and practicality.
Chen holds a master's degree from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and is a well-known architectural designer in southern Taiwan. His work is characterized by a strong individual style and is infused with metaphor. In recent years he has been the presiding avant-garde designer for the hospitals in Kaohsiung, which has led to some fascinating discussion in Kaohsiung artistic circles.
The very special Kaohsiung urban style has been responsible for Chen Shih-liang's personable nature and his writing style. Roan Ching-yueh, well-known writer and architect, has commented that Taiwan architects are often high above the crowd, separated from the average person by an unbridgeable gap, but the works of Chen Shih-liang "exhibit a desire to make a very friendly connection," and foster a genuine, enjoyable conversation between those who study the aesthetics of architectural space up in their ivory towers and the people who actually use architectural space. The pictures in his books almost equal the text in volume and afford the reader a unique reading experience.
But Roan's words of praise may also point to an unavoidable obstacle in Chen Shih-liang's writing: an overemphasis on being reader friendly, where the use of "slang" vocabulary detracts from the professionalism of the content. For example, "You can't worry about being shame-faced when it comes to dreams, they just mirror your own ideas up front. But dreaming is also a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing because it represents hopes and desires." Such writing gives one a sense of novelty, a sense of language being out of sync, "using the language of the soap opera to talk about serious architectural topics." It's all extremely interesting but hard to avoid the trap of "trivializing knowledge."
Breaking down walls
There are few examples of beautiful modern architecture in Taiwan, and those that do exist are hardly at an international level. The architectural profession itself is made up of a small circle of people, and those who review modern architecture often find themselves facing their own teachers, their bosses at the office, or key decision-makers who will decide on project proposals. So, although it might look like books on architecture are gradually making some progress, there has not yet appeared on the market any book of completely open and frank criticism of Taiwan architecture written from the point of view of the user.
Chen Shih-liang's book is aimed at making just such a breakthrough.
"In the world of Taiwan architecture, I'd have to be considered the guy furthest out on the margins, but if you include the entire body of those who use architectural space, then the questions I raise and the criticisms I make fall smack in the middle of the mainstream," says Chen. The designers of what is claimed to be the tallest building in the world, Taipei 101, the Taipei Financial Center, had Taiwan's best resources available to them. Regrettably this building, which should have been Taipei's crowning glory, has attracted so little attention on the global architectural scene that it is shocking.
In Hooked on Architectural Travel there is a chapter on the Great Wall of China. Chen starts out with the idea of a "wall." The Great Wall was built to prevent national humiliation at the hands of the foreign barbarians, but after the tribal peoples beyond the wall invaded the Central Plain of China they often became accustomed to the land within the wall and were absorbed into the world of Chinese culture. Although the wall was built as a dividing line between two different worlds, precisely because of this it became a monument not only to the struggle between these two worlds but also to their interdependence and mutual need.
"Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, they cannot exist independently of one other," remarks Chen Shih-liang. "Writing about foreign architecture is just sharpening my sword. I'm hoping I can follow this up by creating an atmosphere of open discussion for critiquing Taiwan architecture in the future."
Reading this new book from such a "marginalized" yet at the same time popular author already has us looking forward to reading his next offering.
