Twenty years ago, Huang Sheng-yuan was armed with a master’s degree in architecture from Yale University and seemed headed for the big time. Yet he settled in the relative backwater of Yilan County and immersed himself in the design of community projects. Among these are a neighborhood basketball court, a chicken barn for an Yilan County civil servant, and social welfare and public health centers.
But firmly planted in the middle of Yilan’s fields, where he conceives his architectural narratives, Huang has steadily expanded his reach in the county and made a name for himself.
In 2008, when Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan’s studio and storage complex in Bali Township on northern coast of Taiwan burned down, founder Lin Hwai-min chose Huang to design a new home for the troupe in nearby Tamsui District. What is now known as Tamsui Culture and Art Education Center further advanced Huang’s burgeoning reputation.
The facility has elicited widespread attention and discussion with a design cleverly integrating the surrounding landscape with nearby historical landmarks and embodying how the wind blows, how water flows and how people breathe.
Going international
That was simply a harbinger of things to come. As Huang and his Fieldoffice Architects—the firm’s Chinese name literally means “in the middle of a field—add the stunning Cloud Gate center to a list of achievements, an intrepid journey into the international architectural arena is just beginning.
In July, Fieldoffice exhibited a number of projects at Gallery Ma in Tokyo, recognized by Japanese architectural circles as their most prestigious temple. Huang is the first Taiwan-born architect to exhibit there.
“This is a step all architects in Japan must take on their way to fame,” said Wang Chun-hsiung, an associate professor at Taipei City-based Shih Chien University’s Department of Architecture. Famed Japanese architects such as Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, Kazuyo Sejima and Sou Fujimoto all exhibited at the gallery before earning recognition as top talents in their field.
2015 is also the gallery’s 30th anniversary, and giving a non-Japanese architect like Huang the honor of showing his work during the summer session from July to September, the most important session of the year, indicates how much the Japanese value his talents.
But locals have never been as enamored with this master architect as people from abroad. Perhaps this is because Huang has been living in Yilan for too long, or perhaps it is because of his unfashionable get-up consisting of an undershirt, shorts and flip-flops.
When Nobuyuki Endo, the gallery’s director and a key player in deciding its exhibits, was in Taiwan two years ago to give a lecture, he took the opportunity to visit some of Huang’s works in Yilan and was struck by Fieldoffice’s focus on the natural environment in its architectural designs. Upon his return to Japan, he reported his findings to the gallery’s planning and management committee, consisting of such luminaries as Ando, Hiroshi Naito and Sejima, deciding unanimously to invite Huang to exhibit.
Delivering inspiration
Endo is hoping Huang will inspire Japan’s architectural community and encourage reflection. As Endo told Wang: “Japanese architects today only care about buildings and lack vision. But Fieldoffice’s consideration of the overall effect is what architecture should be all about.”
What, in fact, should architecture really be about? Spend time around Huang and one discovers the field’s boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred.
One example is the Kamikaze Aircraft Shelter Museum in Yuanshan. Huang was drawn in 2001 to the bunker where Japanese kamikaze planes were hangared during World War II after seeing on the news it would be torn down to build a senior citizen’s activity center. He successfully lobbied the county government to reverse the decision, not only preserving the site, but renovating and redesigning parts as well. It is now one of Yilan County’s main tourist attractions.
Then there is a moat in a lush green area fronting Yilan Guangfu Elementary School. It is just one component of a city-preservation project undertaken by Fieldoffice architect Bai Tsung-hung. The project, named Vascular Bundle of the City, entails turning buried irrigation channels into open, meandering watercourses.
“Yilan originally had more water and a greener landscape,” Bai said, adding that he decided on his own to initiate the project because he felt it would make the city a better place.
Bai, who joined the firm after graduating with a master’s in architecture from Taichung City’s Tunghai University, said lightheartedly that his job is to hang out in the traditional areas of Yilan and build emotional bonds with local residents and employees of the old Yilan Distillery.
“It’s been hard but wonderful,” he said regarding the challenge of getting the project off the ground. “I’ve had to go around trying to sell the project to people. When I wasn’t able to push it any further, I had to stop and wait. In any case, I live here and I’m not going anywhere so whenever the person holding up the project figures it out, the call will come.”
Fieldoffice as a graduate school
Unlike most architectural firms, Fieldoffice resembles an architectural graduate school, largely because of the environment created by the relatively open-minded Yilan County bureaucracy. Huang explains that people with ideas on how to make Yilan better—from the county magistrate to the average farmer—are frequent Fieldoffice visitors.
“It’s hard to imagine. How many officials in other counties and cities even dare visit potential service providers? Just thinking about possible allegations of conflict of interest leaves them unwilling to take action.”
Yilan County’s eagerness to engage professionals in dialogue dates back to when the late Chen Ding-nan led the county from 1981 to 1989. After Chen took office, he launched an Yilan architectural movement that later was at the root of Huang’s decision to settle there.
Chen Teng-chin, the head of Yilan’s Environmental Protection Bureau, said that when Chen Ding-nan was planning Dongshan River Water Park and the Yilan County government complex, he established an internal construction task force closely interacting with the projects’ designers Atelier Zo and Takano Landscape Planning Co. That strategy imbued Yilan with a culture in which the government and the people joined together to give the county a fresh architectural look.
As an Yilan native and graduate of Tunghai University’s Department of Architecture, Chen Teng-chin was swept up by the vibrant atmosphere and joined the county government. Starting as a low-level technician with the county’s economic affairs department, he took part in this new movement and later recruited his best friend from college to join him. That friend was Huang Sheng-yuan.
After Huang’s graduation project at Yale was exhibited at Venice Biennale of Architecture, he worked at a world-renowned architectural firm in Los Angeles and taught at North Carolina State University. Though Huang established himself as a budding star in the field, he eventually abandoned what appeared to be a bright future because “it wasn’t the life I wanted” and returned home to Taiwan.
At that time, Huang’s parents had just emigrated to Canada, and after Huang arrived back in Taipei, he felt even lonelier than ever. That is when Chen Teng-chin extended a friendly hand.
For Huang, who had only been to Yilan twice before, the third time was the trick. He embraced an environment he had never witnessed before—the smell of wind-swept fields, the sound of raindrops falling in ponds and the dense but intimate earth. He was also taken with Chen’s parents, farmers who were as natural and real with him as with members of their own family.
Helping Huang’s transition is that the potential shown by the architectural movement in Yilan was finally catching on, even though Yu Shyi-kun had by that time taken over for Chen Ding-nan as county magistrate.
“Some people say it was very courageous of Huang Sheng-yuan to settle in Yilan at that time, but I never felt he was taking a risk,” said Chen Teng-chin, who recalls that the county was actually an ideal place in which to put down roots and grow.
A rebel working within the system
Behind his rebellious personality, Huang clearly understands what needs to be done to engineer change, an attitude perhaps derived from his parents, who were both teachers. Though he dislikes living life by going along with established ways, he came to realize that things only get done by working within the system.
Consequently, he has patiently tried to persuade and influence the bureaucracy to give him the chance to bring greater freedom to the city and maintain open spaces. In works such as Diu Diu Dang Forest and Luodong Cultural Working House, Huang set up urban metallic frames on different scales to occupy spaces that might have otherwise been developed or turned into malls.
“Other people try to think of ways to build more floor space. We have always tried to bring it down, so it’s no surprise we have offended so many people,” he said.
By the nonconformist architect’s own admission, he needs courage to continually toil within the establishment, and that courage, he said, “comes mostly from my wife.”
The self-deprecating Huang confides to lacking common sense and street smarts in many situations, but that he has always surmounted challenges by listening to his wife, Lee Ching-hwei.
One example: During the four years when Lu Kuo-hua of the ruling Kuomintang was county magistrate from 2005 to 2009 after 24 years of Democratic Progressive Party rule, Huang fell a low point in his life. The Luodong Cultural Working House project was constantly held up by technicalities raised by the county, which then turned around and accused him of delays in the design process and construction schedule.
Huang considered suing the county to clear his reputation, but he dropped the idea after his wife reminded him that taking the case to court would only result in the project’s suspension—an outcome unfair to the young staffers at Fieldoffice who had invested so much time and effort.
During that time, Tunghai University’s Department of Architecture tried to recruit Huang to head the department. He started thinking he might be better off returning to academia, but decided instead to continue fighting after his wife told him, “I think you still prefer practicing architecture.”
Lee’s unflinching support for her husband has included seeing the bright side of difficult times they have endured, including financially. Though Huang has been well-known for many years, and Fieldoffice has created several public landmarks in Yilan County, he remains in debt to the present day because of his firm.
Lee recalls one day when she and her husband took their children out for a drive. They stopped at a steamed bun shop for a snack and picked out several buns only for Huang to tell his wife after ruffling through his pockets: “Wait a second. I may not have enough money.”
In the end, they could only afford two buns, “but we were actually even happier, thinking it was kind of fun,” Lee said.
On the subject of not making money, Fieldoffice CEO Tu Teh-yu said that the “projects we do are capable of making money. It just comes down to how many problems you want to solve.”
Spreading the seeds of change
In fact, Fieldoffice is a profitable firm, and even when it was most stressed financially during Lu Kuo-hua’s time in power it still managed to pay its employees half of their salaries. Its debts largely result from the company’s high R&D costs—the extensive time and expense it invests in young workers seeking out problems and studying those problems’ historical contexts and general environments.
But Tu is generally dismissive of talk of the firm’s finances. “Isn’t it a bit foolish to gauge what we do based on money?” Both he and Huang have developed the habit of using value to weigh success. “This is the dynamic that allows us to continue moving forward.”
For Huang, Fieldoffice’s role as an architectural academy is far more important than making money. The firm has 20 to 30 young people conceiving ideas to make Yilan better, and the seeds that blew away from the firm are sprouting small Fieldoffices around Taiwan, from Tainan to Yilan.
“Our teacher [Huang] has only one expectation of us and that is to be ourselves,” said Chen Yo-zhong, who is preparing to leave Fieldoffice after finishing work on the Cloud Gate project.
Whether they join major architectural firms or go abroad to study or start their own business, these seeds are always reminded by Huang to “remember to be yourself.”
By having the courage to be himself, attaching himself to the land and bending his back in the middle of a field forging new architectural values, Huang has arrived as a prominent architect drawing international attention.
[by Jimmy Hsiung / tr. by Luke Sabatier]