On a summer afternoon, behold Kaoshiung's Urban Spotlight. An old couple stands shoulder to shoulder by the edge of a pool enjoying the darting fish. Two young women, sitting on short stools, trade experiences of motherhood. A boy rides his bike, circumnavigating the small stage. Middle-aged people in sweatshirts walk their dogs under the shade of trees. Two lovers stroll by, and her pink skirt rustles against the purple peacock grass along the small path.... With the music floating in the air and a peaceful and leisurely atmosphere, the noisy traffic of the street flows by like moving water, leaving a sense of peace that city folk rarely have a chance to enjoy. It's a scene that recalls A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by the French pointillist painter Georges Seurat.

The former US ambassador's residence on Chungshan North Road in Taipei has today become the Spot-Taipei Film House, a favorite haunt of film buffs. After major renovations, it is hard to find any trace of the old layout.

City lights

Urban Spotlight is a reused space in Kaoshing's Hsinhsing district. Today it is one of the places to which Kaohsiung residents bring visiting friends. "Before-sheesh-this was just concrete pavement," remarks an elderly man named Chu, who is exercising at the Urban Spotlight. "But now it has really been improved. The air is good here." It's hard to imagine that before last September, this was just a dirty and sparsely used sidewalk next to a park. With promotion by the Kaohsiung Bureau of Reconstruction and with planning and design by the artist Lin Hsi-chun, 150 meters of sidewalk along Wufu 3rd Road have been widened by more than ten meters on each side, and landscaping and light art have been installed. Suddenly, it has become a space for leisure with a heavily artistic atmosphere. Particularly when night falls, small groups of musicians come to play on its plaza. The outdoor cafes here have nary an empty seat, and the children dance and move on a glass-paved stage that emits light. "For me, promoting the Urban Spotlight was not just a matter of designing an outdoor space," explains Lin Hsi-chun, a lecturer in the Department of Interior Design at Shu-Te University. "It was done in the hope that Kaohsiung residents would participate more in aesthetic experiences. It was a call for people to recognize and take pride in the beauty of cities."

Discussions about reusing neglected spaces are an instigator to getting a community to think about its future. When they look at the Sungshan Cigarette Factory's dilapidated canopy, some people see a sports dome and others see a school. What do you see?

Artists invade

One of the first sparks in the movement for reusing idle spaces occurred in the form of a very real drama. In the summer of 1997 a group of cutting-edge artists looked everywhere for an exhibition space to show their works, and they stumbled across the Taipei Brewery No. 1, which had ceased operations in 1987. The brewery, which was located at Chunghsiao East Road and Pate Road, may have been in a bad state of disrepair, but the vast space really attracted the artists. They felt that it was a space that could merge with the city and allow for unlimited creative possibilities. Billing the site as "Taiwan's Pompidou Center," they named it the Huashan Arts District and began a series of illegal-entry exhibitions, actively striving to use this abandoned space for artistic and cultural purposes.

When "Golden Bough Theatre," a blend of classical and modern theatre, was performed here, police officers brought the director into the station house under the charge of "illegally occupying national property." This caused the Taipei Brewery, which had been abandoned for ten years, to become a sudden focus of discussion about arts and culture at the end of the century. It served as a wake-up call for people to pay attention to the existence of idle sites.

And at the same time that artists were discovering the special qualities of the Huashan Arts District, Hung Meng-chi, head of the Taiwan Provincial Government's Cultural Department (which has become the Central Taiwan Office of the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA)), discovered that many poor young artists lacked a space to express their creativity. And so the department commissioned Lin Shun-jen, an associate professor of architecture at Tunghai University, and Shen Chih-swun, a professor of architecture at Chengkung University, to meet with artists. Together they found a warehouse next to the Taichung train station, and created a space for artists to live and exhibit: Stock 20 Art Center.

With the decline and transformation of the sugar industry in Taiwan, the beautiful campus-like complex of the Tseng-Yeh Sugar Factory was abandoned. But in keeping with the fond memories that the locals have about the factory, it has now become a favorite flower garden.

A turn of luck

With the hard work of both people in the arts community and government officials responsible for cultural matters, neglected spaces became an issue that could not be overlooked. For the millennium, the CCA formally took the "reuse of idle and neglected historic spaces and buildings" as one of its major annual policy goals, commissioning all county and city governments to make surveys about neglected spaces that could be reused. The response from the local governments was enthusiastic. They cataloged more than 200 spaces, ranging from 1960s-era granaries and 1970s-era cultural centers, to libraries, abandoned schools, military bases, Japanese-era government residences, and even prisons, tunnels and so forth.

The CCA's Central Taiwan Office, which inherited this task after the disbandment of the provincial government, first picked eight "trial sites" that would receive assistance for three years. These were the advance guard. In accordance with the Executive Yuan's plans to stimulate the economy, the CCA repeatedly proposed plans for local cultural buildings and cultural creativity parks. All were grounded in the principle of reusing abandoned spaces. As a result, neglected public and private spaces received various kinds of funding, and reuse projects sprang up like mushrooms after a rain. To date, probably more than 100 sites have been brought back into use in connection with these plans.

From north to south, idle spaces were transformed into official residences, cultural salons, the SPOT Taipei Film House, and the Red Chamber Theater, which were all planned by the Taipei City Government; the Taipei Story House, which was funded by a private individual; the Huashan Arts District and the Second Chungcheng District Precinct House, which were established by arts organizations; the Hsinchu #11 Air Force Village and the Nan-Ying Tsung-Yeh Arts and Cultural Center, which were promoted by community groups; the railway arts network, promoted by the CCA's Central Taiwan Office, as well as many other projects far too numerous to mention.

"Neglected sites," as defined by the Council for Cultural Affairs (under the conditions for its prize for best reuse), are "sites legally designated as historic relics, registered as historical architecture, or old abandoned built spaces that have not yet been designated." In reality, neglected sites need not be publicly owned spaces, and they need not be limited to separate and distinct buildings. Idle spaces can be found everywhere. Their scope includes a single empty building, a sidewalk, a row of houses, or an abandoned or wild piece of land. "So long as spaces aren't managed well and don't function well, then public and private spaces can both be included," says Lin Po-nian, publisher of Space Magazine.

And now, in an age when people have more leisure time, even school gyms and athletic fields can be included. "At night they constitute idle spaces," Lin points out. "With better management, these spaces could all be put to better use."

Sheet-glass skyscrapers in cities provide a sharp contrast to derelict industrial sites. A real estate pattern oriented toward new development has left Taiwan with numerous abandoned sites.

A problem and an opportunity

The first time you walk into Taipei's Huashan Arts District, Chienkuo Brewery, or Sungshan Cigarette Factory, you are sure to be startled by the forest-like greenery, the beautiful pools, and the vast expanses of these former industrial workplaces. One can't help but gasp in wonderment: How is it that large areas such as these are standing idle in the middle of a city?

"A neglected space in a city is an opportunity, and it's a special problem for Taiwan," says Huang Jui-mao, an associate professor at Tamkang University who wrote Creatively Remaking Cultural Spaces for the CCA. When he was conducting interviews abroad about neglected spaces that were being reused, almost all of the people he talked to didn't acknowledge the term "neglected spaces," he said, "because the vast majority of these places had been continually adapted for reuse." For instance, at the beginning of the 20th century in Europe, to accommodate large-scale cotton weaving factories, the old narrow windows that in the past had been good at keeping out the wetness and cold began to be replaced with larger windows that provided for better circulation of air.

"The Taiwan real estate model, on the other hand, is to abandon the old factory and find a new place to build the plants and residences," observes Huang, thus explaining why Taiwan has so many idle industrial spaces.

But "the atmosphere has changed," says Yu Chao-ching, a professor in the Graduate Institute of Architecture at Chung Yuan Christian University. Yu discovered that as soon as the economy turned sour, and people weren't so willing to spend money on new construction, their pace finally slowed and they discovered that there were old buildings ready to renovate. Not only can these be reused, but they often offer higher caliber construction and greater charm than new buildings. Long-abandoned sites have had a turn of luck and are under the spotlight again.

With equal parts design and idealism, what was originally a cold, dark and poorly used sidewalk has become Kaohsiung's "Urban Spotlight." It only gets more and more beautiful as day fades into night.

The beauty of industrial relics

As a result of industrial restructuring, quite a few spaces have been abandoned. As human civilization has moved into the information age, factories, which had been designed with large-scale machinery in mind, have begun to shrink. Moreover, traditional factories, which used to be located in city centers, have been forced to move because of the pollution they cause or because the real estate value of land has come to outstrip its industrial value. This process has naturally left behind some major "industrial relics."

There are many famous industrial sites on the United Nations' World Heritage List. In the past, Taiwan's efforts at preservation of cultural assets were focused on 100-year-old temples, residences and the like. But sugar factories, breweries, railway warehouses and roundhouses, which lack delicate carvings but at the same time hold people's collective memories, were almost entirely excluded from the realm of cultural assets-or were excluded, that is, until the concept of reusing idle spaces began to gain currency. Then these industrial relics were suddenly thrust into the spotlight.

Apart from industrial restructuring freeing up space, idle spaces have also come as a result of cities adjusting their functions. In the past cities have blended government, agricultural, industrial, commercial and military functions. Taipei, for instance, has a lot of factories, public residences, and military bases. Today, one office building can contain many different government units, a large shopping center can take the place of a street, and military units are scattered throughout the city center. This naturally leaves many neglected spaces that are removed from the functions around them.

From the spread of these neglected sites, you can also trace the history of a city's development. For instance, Taipei has developed from the three areas of Wanhua, Tataocheng, and the Old City District. Therefore, the Huashan Arts District and the Chienkuo Brewery were all at the margins of the old city, and constitute the first district of new development. And beyond the east and north gates, there are the Sungshan Cigarette Factory and the No. 44 Weapons Factory (in the Hsinyi Special District), which represent the second stage of development. Then the third wave in the 1970s pushed industrial development out into Neihu and Sungshan. With the railway tracks now underground, and the recent rapid expansion of the city, what had been the edge has become expensive city center real estate. Many neglected spaces have become highly valuable "preserves."

The abandoned Taipei Brewery, with its high ceilings and vast spans, provides a surreal atmosphere for artists to give full play to their creativity. Today it is known as the Huashan Arts District.

The fate of temporary uses

Most of the reused neglected spaces have been on land that some arm of the government suddenly determines to be of use for one of its plans. "After sitting idle, these sites one day suddenly have a new duty," explains Tseng Neng-ting, a specialist in the CCA's Central Taiwan office, who is in charge of neglected spaces. "Consequently, it is the fate of these sites to have a series of temporary uses." As a result, reusing these spaces well requires a lot of expertise.

The main principle in the reuse of neglected spaces is "making simple repairs" in order to achieve the goal of being able to reuse the resource. Otherwise, you can use it while you repair it, making the renovations in stages so as to sensibly and effectively develop meaning for the space. Take, for instance, the public baths in Tokyo that were converted into a gallery named SCAI the Bathhouse. If they had installed air-conditioning for the entire baths area, it would have constituted a huge expense. Due to financial considerations, when you enter SCAI the Bathhouse in winter you'd better keep on your coat and in summer be prepared to sweat. Similarly, for Taichung's Stock 20 (converted from railway use), some academics believed that if you had put a bathroom into each of the artist's studios, you would have cut down on the opportunities for interaction, and it also would have been "a waste of money."

For the "life" of reused spaces, you've got to preserve the stories and memories of the environment, and therefore you've got to be very prudent about how you redesign and rebuild. This is particularly the case for designated historic sites or historical architecture. You have to balance convenience with history.

In the past, preservation efforts put the emphasis on "rescuing" buildings and "freeze-dried" preservation. Five years ago, when the phrase "care for" in the Cultural Property Preservation Law was changed to "reuse," it signified that the field of preservation in Taiwan had moved from the more sedate stage of preservation to the more organic stage of "conservation," and that historic buildings had begun to become a part of people's lives. Enjoying art or sipping coffee in an environment infused with a classical atmosphere has become a new pleasure for urban residents.

Unfreezing antiques

"To be designated a historic site, a building must be a repository of excellent stories," observes Yu Chao-ching. "Otherwise, its architectural workmanship must be remarkable. Its character, special qualities and worth must first be understood." Yu points out that successful architectural preservation is a process of constant change-of preserving what is good in a site, and then adding new good things to it.

For some relics with tremendous historical significance, it is important to preserve their original appearance or to use them as a museum, such as Taipei's Presidential Palace, Fort Santo Domingo in Tanshui, the early Qing-dynasty British consulate in Takou, Kaohsiung City, the Wute Palace in Nantou, or Tainan's Julius Mannich & Co. (an old German trading company).

Apart from historic sites with storied histories and representative value, there are many old buildings that, through the application of a little creativity, can become a part of people's lives and continue to be vital places that can even stimulate area development. A good example is the Red House Theater, located in the Hsimen area of Taipei. Constructed in 1908 over a graveyard, it was designed as an eight-cornered pagoda, which was thought to ward off evil spirits. At one point the Red House served as a center for the sale of antique calligraphy. Then it was turned into a shopping center, and it attracted a lot of storytellers to perform here for money. Wu Chao-nan, a famous performer of Chinese comic dialogues, got his start performing here. In the 1970s when West Gate took off as a youth-oriented neighborhood, the Red House began to fall into decline, and in 1981 it was abandoned.

The wishes of an old house

Last year, with renovations to the Red House completed, the folk opera troupe Paper Windmill organized over 100 different performances there, including traditional performance arts, modern theater, music, and dance. The youths walking on West Gate's streets thus had another place to "catch a show." And Paper Windmill opens a "Holiday Tea House" on the second floor on holidays and weekends. With its eight-sided roof, old style chairs and tables, and the hubbub of people chatting over tea, it really gives one the feeling of an old teahouse. Thus Hsimen's Red House has entered a new glamorous chapter in its history. What's more, after the Yinghsi Gate Plaza in Hsinchu was expanded and beautified, it became a favorite spot for young and old alike to hang out. Now it is known as "the heart of Hsinchu."

Among the many examples of historical buildings that have found new uses, the Spot-Taipei Film House, which is located in the old American embassy, is one of the most controversial. A two-story building with double-decker porches that could have come straight out of Gone with the Wind, it was built in 1925. Its Greek style colonnade and the layout of its stairwell in its central hallway were among its most notable features. Two years ago, the city government decided to find a new use for the building, and the project designer decided to enlarge the facade to make it easier to use and to change the placement of the central hallway's staircase. By tearing down almost all of the interior walls on the second floor, they created a large space that could serve as an auditorium. Even though the coffee shop and bar have proved to be very popular, most scholars hold that the kind of wholesale changes to its structure went too far.

When designers conceive a new use for an historical building, "the people ought to be accommodating the building, rather than the other way around," says Yu Chao-ching. Ultimately, modern day people are just temporary custodians of these buildings.

Possession is nine-tenths?

What's more, because cultural institutions have been involved in most of these reused sites, it has fostered a sense of cultural uses taking precedence. Some people have begun to raise doubts about whether this monotony of uses is desirable. Can idle spaces only be used for cultural purposes?

"The right question is not: 'What are suitable uses for them?' but rather 'What are the needs of a city's people?'" explains Lin Bo-nian. Even in the case of the Huashan Arts District, where artists have been hard at work for five years, people still question why the artists, the first ones there, were given rights to use it. Why couldn't it be used as the Legislative Yuan or as the Taiwan World Trade Center's second exhibition hall? And the Chungshan Hall is in effect an auditorium without a backstage. It thus presents many inconveniences as a performance space. Wouldn't it make more sense to use it as a space for school graduation ceremonies or company shareholder meetings? Successfully matching idle spaces with their most appropriate use requires that its users suit it. It requires input from locals and NGOs to be done well.

"A neglected space should allow for all kinds of possibilities," says Yu Chao-ching. "If it can only allow for one kind of possibility, then it's just another kind of wall." Yu remembers that during a public hearing about the reuse of the Hualien Brewery, several groups proposed cultural uses. One resident who lived next to the brewery couldn't help but remark: "In the past the brewery was just something behind a wall, with no connection to our lives. It appears that a new wall is being built for the future."

Putting space to work

Do we need a space for art, or a space for leisure? A museum or a community center? These are open questions because a neglected space is an opportunity, bringing people together to think about their own future.

Particularly in a society that is constantly changing, the reuse of neglected spaces isn't just about using resources more efficiently. "Neglected spaces are an excellent indicator; they're an instigator of new values," says Huang Jui-mao, an assistant professor of architecture at Tamkang University.

At the foot of Chihshanyen in the Peitou District of Taipei, there is a building known as the "Owls' House." Before 1995 local residents knew little about this old house, No. 68 Yusheng Street, which was hidden behind garden walls and large trees. All they knew about it was that the crews that maintained streetlights stored their cleaning equipment there.

Beginning in 1993, residents began a long protest campaign against gas stations in the neighborhood. Everybody got together for long meetings in which they would discuss strategy. For these, people would have to pack inside homes, and they began to feel that they lacked a public meeting place. Eventually, as proposed by the community's borough warden and approved by the city government, this publicly owned residence was turned into a community center with the name the "Owl's House," in commemoration of the gelling of the community's consciousness.

Community residents tore down the walls around the Owl's House, and constructed a new performance stage outside. Women's groups and youth groups favor the open layout and wood floors inside. The community was involved every step of the renovation process, from filing the original application and exploring the site to estimating the costs of renovation. They were even responsible for most of the design work and supplied most of the labor.

Planning for the reuse of a neglected building also serves as a mechanism for matching the building's use with greater trends in society. Huang Jui-mao gives the example of the schools that have been closed all over the countryside because of population loss. Most of these abandoned schools in remote areas have a wealth of natural scenery and resources. If they could be turned into ecological classrooms that nearby schools can collectively support, the originally abandoned schools would have new lives.

Children in an old house

"Site reuse is happening every day and reflects the needs of a place at a given time," says Yu. "It's important that the process is participatory." When neglected private places in the countryside have been reused for the community, the warmth and poignancy in the process differs greatly from the hierarchical decision making used to determine the fate of most neglected spaces, and the results also show how reuse of neglected sites can get closer to meeting the needs of a community's residents.

There are abundant examples from Taiwanese rural towns. After putting in six years of hard work, the residents of the Chuantso Community in Shenkang Rural Township, Changhua County have recently taken over an old house and turned it into an educational center for youths. The old house had been abandoned for half a century, ever since its owner moved away and stopped caring for it. The village's residents had always thought it was a great shame. Eventually, they got in touch with the owner and got his consent to provide it for community use. At first some people wanted to use the old house for a community center, and some people wanted it used as a small museum. Finally, when they thought how children had nowhere to go after school let out, they decided to turn it into a children's educational center.

On hot summer afternoons, the children of Chuantso recite poetry in the educational hall that their elders fixed up. And the process of giving a new use to this old building has reconnected both the older and younger generations to clan history. It has meaning that transcends the revitalizing of the space.

In observing how communities have responded to reuse projects with boundless vitality and creativity, Yu calls for the various arms of the government to release more neglected spaces for reuse and, even more importantly, to provide a mechanism to help bring together the idle spaces and the NGOs in need of them, so that the possibilities for reusing neglected spaces can grow only broader.

A number of Aboriginal mothers left their hometowns when they were young to live in a military dependents' village in Tsoying, Kaohsiung County. When their children grew up and left home, they began to have some leisure time, so they took a neglected piece of land in the village and planted some special Aboriginal plants. Every day at dusk, these mothers come out to tend their crops, chat or even entertain their friends and relatives with karaoke. Word got around, and now in the area around Nantzu and Hsiaokang other Aboriginal women have found that planting gardens is a way to soothe their feelings of homesickness.

An empty aesthetic

With the reuse of neglected spaces becoming a fashion, some of these spaces have acquired new souls. But there are also many old buildings that have fallen to the wrecker's ball. As idle spaces' land values have rocketed in step with their cities' development, they have attracted attention. Partly in order to put money into the national treasury, the National Property Bureau last year issued a plan to deal with "neglected and underutilized government-owned properties." The bureau ordered the special municipalities of Kaohsiung and Taipei to develop plans to reuse neglected properties; failure to comply would mean possible confiscation by the central government. This was termed "historical buildings' final deadline," and it caused government units, out of fear that their assets would be confiscated, to "deal with" their neglected historic buildings by tearing them down. The first to be affected were various Japanese-era buildings, including the former residence of deceased Kuomintang bigwig Chen Li-fu, which was recently razed by the Bank of Taiwan. According to a survey by National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, in only two months 23 buildings were torn down in Taipei's Ta-an and Chungcheng districts alone.

Members of the public weren't strangers to these normally neglected Japanese style residences. How many countless times have Taipei residents walked down an alley to see an old tree extending over a wall and the sound of birds floating over its top. Pedestrians can't help but raise their heads and gaze upon the old gray tiles of the roof and the piece of blue sky behind it. Of course, there are also people who think that these places are just breeding grounds for mosquitoes and flies, and that it would more convenient to pave them over for parking lots.

"It's not the case that all neglected spaces should be reused," Yu says. "It may be that by providing a break there, the site allows for greenery and plants and room to breathe. Sometimes it's better not to reuse it." These neglected spaces, each of which has its own special set of circumstances, are like treasure maps provided by the passage of time.

Promising oneself a future

Located in busy east Taipei, where land is extremely valuable, the 15 hectares of the Sungshan Tobacco Factory seem entirely otherworldly, like an inner city Shangri-La. The factory building is arranged in a grid pattern, making it easy to cross from one part to another, and has ficus trees about two meters high growing on its abandoned roof. In the central courtyards, the European-style fountain and Western statues make it seem that time has stopped. Amid the thick, overgrown plants, there is a large water lily pool. Though the plant is abandoned, it isn't hard to sense how elegant it must have been in its golden age.

At the sight of this urban miracle, some people envision a school, some commercial buildings, some the Legislative Yuan. All who have visited the site have possibilities float up into their consciousnesses.

At the end of July, it was determined that the Sungshan Tobacco Factory would become the site of the Taipei Sports Dome (or the "Taipei Giant Egg," as it will be called in Chinese.) With aviation restrictions on its height, as well as historical preservation and transportation planning restrictions, hatching a valuable "golden egg" that was open to the public was a challenging exercise.

When you stand on one of the stretches of lawn on the Sungshan Tobacco Factory, you can raise your head to see the 101-story Taipei Financial Center building that has become a new symbol for Taiwan. In this neglected space, what else do you see?