The livability formula
About five minutes’ walk from Taiyuan Station in Taichung’s Beitun District, you will see two ten-story buildings that are white with intermittent bands of grass green: This is the Beitun Social Housing project. Back in the days before the Taiwan Provincial Government was downsized, the site was part of a residential area for employees of the information bureau. Today it has been transformed into public housing that puts into practice the right to adequate and affordable homes, with units that are only available for rent, not for purchase, and with priority given to disadvantaged people.
Chiang says: “In fact I have always been nostalgic for the neighborly interpersonal relations and pleasant atmosphere that characterized communities built for government employees and military dependents back in the day.” She incorporated this nostalgia into her blueprints, preserving the community’s original street pattern. The public housing is divided into two buildings, independent from each other but connected by walkways. “There are about ten households on each floor, which is the ideal number.” Chiang explains that studies have shown that this is the most appropriate scale for neighbors to get to know each other. When there are more than ten households, people are much more likely to remain strangers.
The wide walkways connecting the buildings have been placed on the second and fifth floors, forming a semi-open atrium between them nearly ten meters in height. The floor is lined with rubber so that elderly people and children can safely walk and play there, while a bold patchwork of colors—yellow, orange, blue, and green—has been employed to create visual focal points and give the space a lively atmosphere. The walkways are bordered by arrays of metal slats rather than by walls, an idea that draws on the bamboo fencing in old government employees’ and military dependents’ communities. But Chiang didn’t want the colors to be too monotonous, so at the suggestion of an artist friend she adopted a mixed color scheme with brown, orange-gold, and silver, creating a rhythmic pattern.
Chiang describes this public space as a theater, where everyone can find the most suitable niche for themselves. “The space can meet multiple needs, so nobody will get bored.” On the top floor of each building there is a collective residence that breaks down the pattern of separate homes. There are five studio apartments with their own bathrooms but shared living room, dining room, and kitchen, making this a place suitable for people who like to interact and share with others or for intergenerational co-housing. It is an expression of the designer’s social ideas and a scenario for future lifestyles.
The government employees’ community that previously stood on the site was built in 1963, and the mango, longan, lychee, and starfruit trees planted back then had grown to be three or four stories in height. The architect couldn’t bear to cut them down, so as far as possible she had them moved to the edges of the site and pulled the buildings back to give the old trees room to stretch out their branches. Good ventilation and good natural lighting are essential in residential buildings, and the airflows facilitated by the wide space between the two structures provide cool air 24 hours a day.
The architect made sure to provide each apartment with exterior windows to enable access to natural light all year round. Everyone has the right to daylight.
Apartment buildings are like towns or villages, playing host to people from all walks of life. “I’m best suited to designing for the common people,” says Chiang. For the Beitun Social Housing project, she wielded her design magic to imagine multiple diverse possibilities for “livability.”
This wooden footbridge over the Lyu-Chuan Canal links together multiple possibilities of urban life.