Abodes for the soul
In both old towns and courtyard homes, we can find commonly used but overlooked “corners” where the energy flows of people and places congregate. Chiang cites the Je Shui Pavilion located in Zhubei City in northwestern Taiwan as an example. The pavilion’s outer wall is long, but there is only one small gate 120 centimeters wide. When you visit the pavilion, the first thing you see is the sign of the pavilion in the shade of the trees outside the gate, which welcomes visitors and bids them farewell. As you walk in, what you see next is an Earth God temple with a temple square. The layout resonates with the land-based culture and ethics of a traditional agrarian society.
Take a turn and you will see a huge rock, making you feel as though you have entered a mountain village. Then you see a garden, not of ornamental plants but rather of edible plants such as sweet potato, Chinese angelica and papaya. There are also chickens scratching and pecking around. Stroll across a small bridge and you will hear the burbling sound of a brook, which filters out the noise of the bustling traffic outside. After you cross the bridge, you’ll see a traditional cooking stove of a kind now rarely seen in cities. This is the favorite “corner” of the employees at the pavilion, who lunch here on a daily basis. Every day, you can see people feeding the chickens as they eat.
A serene temple situated in a bustling city, the Bodhisattva Temple in Dali District, Taichung, was designed by Chiang Wen-yuan. When just built, the fair-faced concrete walls of the temple were austere. However, over time they have been embellished with greenery, and are now covered most of the year, being only bare in winter. Time has inscribed an ecological succession on the walls and adorns the temple in various styles in different seasons.
To Chiang, Western architecture is like a static music that emphasizes form, visual effect and balanced proportions; while Eastern architecture is a fluid music that does not focus on outward appearance. He associates the Bodhisattva Temple, a task-force creation, with a traditional Chinese poem that goes: “Deep, deep, how deep the courtyards are.” A perfect example of solar terms architecture, the temple is a place for people “to heighten awareness and visit space in time,” and have a holistic, “five-dimensional” experience in which sensation and location merge, as they were supposed to do in traditional Chinese poetry.
Chiang Wen-yuan and Allen Hoo founded the architectural firm Banmu Tang Environmental Integration and came up with the idea of “solar terms architecture” based on years of experience as practicing architects. They envision an architecture that not only meets people’s needs for basic lodging and leisure but also integrates with nature, effecting what ancient Chinese philosophers called “peaceful coexistence and unity of heaven and humanity.”
Lee Shwuting also confides that the core value of “solar terms architecture” is the Tao or Way mentioned in a passage in Laozi’s Tao Te Ching that goes: “Man follows Earth. Earth follows the Universe. The Universe follows the Tao. The Tao follows only itself.” In other words, the Tao of “solar terms architecture” is based on humanity and the universe. Inspired by this core value, forgiving, adaptable “abodes for the soul” have been built in the hopes of bringing about the peaceful coexistence of heaven and humanity.
Chiang Wen-yuan focuses on old villages and the traditional solar terms, creating a holistic connected ambiance.