LEE, SZU WEI
School of Culture Resources, Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA), Taiwan.
TAIWAN, Taipei
My major is architecture and planning, and now is a PhD. candidate in Cultural Heritage and Arts Innovation Studies, TNUA. My research interests are museum, cultural heritage, and city cultural studies. I worked in National Taiwan Museum, and Building and Planning Research Foundation, NTU before my PhD. Studies. I have cross-disciplinary experiences on architectural heritage and museum. My thesis is discussing the making of museumscapes, by means of a case study of National Taiwan Museum System.
My articles published in Taiwan’s academic journals are as follows: ‘Reproducing memories: Wang Da-hong’s house in the art museum’, ‘Collecting architecture: the museality of National Taiwan Museum System’, ‘Social engagement in urban settlement conservation: a case of Toad Hill Settlement’, etc. I also wrote a series of articles about the post-war architecture in Taiwan, published in the museum journals.
The museum architecture in Old Taipei, in a perspective of modernity.
The multiple historical situations in Taiwan make coloniality and modernity intertwined in all aspects of the modernization process of this island, while architecture significantly take part in. During the Japanese colonial period, Japanese architects left many architectural works in Taiwan that incorporated Western, Japanese, and local elements. Our society gradually recognized the value of the Japanese-era architecture around the mid-1990s. On the other hand, the architectural production after World War II in Taiwan reflects an even more complex context, such as US aid, northern palace style, modernism architecture, etc. Since the 2010s, the preservation issue of modern architectural heritage has received official attention. In fact, nowadays most of the museum architecture in Old Taipei were not built as museums at the beginning.
Taiwan went through its first-time parties turning in 2000, the emerging cultural subjectivity drove an integrative plan between architectural heritage and museum renovation, that is, National Taiwan Museum System (NTMS). This cross-sector plan transformed three historical sites into museums, showing the central government's determination to value a city’s history. Regarding the process of restoration and curation, I see this plan as a series of collecting architecture, and each site represents social meaning of modernity in Taiwan. In addition to the buildings within NTMS, this talk attempts to create a perspective to review the museum architecture in Old Taipei through a museology approach. These buildings are museal objects on display in the cityscape, at the same time they are sending new messages to the society, which are all reflection of subjectivity and modernity.
Modernity, museum architecture, Old Taipei.