Project Location：Redevelopment of Nantou Historical Village  Floor Area：22ha

Design Period：Oct. 2009              Status: Competition         Category: Urban Design

The design stresses more on the strategies and tactics of space living, including both materialistic and formal ones, as well as non-materialistic and intangible ones, which all have relations with space. We are not pursuing the single result of architecture design, but the multiple possibilities of form, from which, result is but a by product.

Huaqiangbei (HQB) is known as the No.1 Street for electronic products in China. However, this huge GDP driver is a messy and congested street block. As the saying goes: whether black or white, it is a good cat that catches mice, which means that form doesn’t matter as long as it survives and prospers. People, vehicles and commodities congregate into this place with different paces. Every type of people could find a niche for existence in this place. However, as the congregation intensifies, the competition for space intensifies as well. Hence the existing space becomes more and more congested and messy.

The concept of planning is to simplify the complicated issue. The design tries to adopt an approach of element observation and analysis called case reorganization to dismantle the complicated urban space in Huaqiangbei (HQB) into composing elements. Based on the understanding of the rule of the game of each single element, we start to search for various possibilities of another space order through design which could reorganize, regenerate and develop freely with the external forces. Without much change to the space dimension, the design provides more area, air, time and space.