When Tunghai University was es-tablished in the 1950s it was as prestigious as National Taiwan University, and most of its students, like those of NTU, went abroad for further education after they graduated. In those days, when most people in Taiwan had to struggle just to make ends meet, architecture, requiring large investments of capital, had little room for development.
In the 1970s when the economy took off, there were a series of speculative booms in the construction industry, but sadly, most of the work was as crudely done as before. The new houses and buildings all looked exactly the same; to maximize profits, open public spaces and facilities were cut out; the quality of construction work and materials remained poor; and interior designs were awkward and poorly conceived. The quality of life was sacrificed to speculative gain.
Faced with this situation, a "Tunghai Architecture Gang," led by Pai Hsi-min, decided to take what they had learned and make a difference in society.
Birth of the Tunghai Gang
Pai Hsi-min, now 56, graduated from the Tunghai Department of Architecture in 1977, at a time when the entire school only had some 2000 students. Pai recalls: "The whole program at Tunghai was very strong, but what influenced me most was Professor Han Pao-teh. I will always remember what he told us: You have to seek out the problems in society, analyze them to get to their basic nature, and then use architecture to provide solutions and lead the way toward a more progressive situation." Under Han's influence, graduates back then often did their graduation projects on reconstruction of farming or fishing communities, or on designing living space for disadvantaged persons such as the deaf.
Pai, nicknamed "the Chairman," gathered together a group of classmates and they made an analysis of the shambles that was Taichung's real estate market, drawing attention to the fact that the slipshod construction culture created by speculative building, which put a premium on speed, was actually causing people to feel more and more estranged from each other. They even drew on the rural construction concepts of Y.C. (James) Yen, a leader in the movement to offer education to ordinary and poor people in the early Republican era. Their goal was to recreate a sense of community and rebuild neighborly relationships through architecture. At the same time, based on their experience working in the real estate industry, they set their sights on the newly rising middle class, which was more open to new ideas.
When Tunghai University was es-tablished in the 1950s it was as prestigious as National Taiwan University, and most of its students, like those of NTU, went abroad for further education after they graduated. In those days, when most people in Taiwan had to struggle just to make ends meet, architecture, requiring large investments of capital, had little room for development.
In the 1970s when the economy took off, there were a series of speculative booms in the construction industry, but sadly, most of the work was as crudely done as before. The new houses and buildings all looked exactly the same; to maximize profits, open public spaces and facilities were cut out; the quality of construction work and materials remained poor; and interior designs were awkward and poorly conceived. The quality of life was sacrificed to speculative gain.
Faced with this situation, a "Tunghai Architecture Gang," led by Pai Hsi-min, decided to take what they had learned and make a difference in society.