BOOKTALKS| Urban Landscape Lecture Series—How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built
Introduction
You-Cheng Luo Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Chinese Culture University
Moderator
Hui-Fang Liu Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Development, University of Taipei
Speaker
Meng-Tsung Su Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Tunghai University
Hsin-Ko Yu Ph.D. Candidate in Urbanism, College of Architecture, TU Delft
Location
Winsing Art Place (No. 6, Lane 10, Lane 180, Section 6, Section 6, Minquan East Road, Neihu District, Taipei City)
Fee
Free admission, advance registration is required ($150 is available at the on-site bookstore with discounts on books and drinks)
Event Content
“The People vs. The World of Tomorrow” lecture series is extended from a late-night reading session for selected books at Winsing Art Place. Launched by the Winsing Arts Foundation, Hui-Fang Liu, Assistant Professor from the Department of Urban Development at the University of Taipei, invited experts in architecture to submit, share, and talk about their favorite theoretical works in the fields of landscape, cities, architecture, and more. Unlike previous discussions of pure architecture, we look at cities, buildings, and public spaces from a more diverse perspective, discussing concepts such as “urbanism,” “commonality,” “publicness,” and “future cities” in the books. The second session will feature an introduction to How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built by Professor You-Cheng Luo.
Since the publication of The Death and Life of Great American Cities in the early 1960s, the architectural community has consistently engaged in critiques and debates regarding the “practice” and value of traditional architecture and planning professions. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built may be seen as a later entry in this discourse: What happens after a building is “built”? This prompts us to reflect and reconsider certain matters, even feeding back into our rethinking of architectural planning, design, and construction. For instance: What is “architecture”? What is the “should” or “most appropriate” state of existence for architecture? How does it interact with users, communities, society, and even the broader historical context? Taking the architectural lifecycle timeline as its narrative framework, each chapter of How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built analyzes the lifecycle and journey of a building from multiple perspectives—before, during, and after its construction. It critically examines and challenges many established, mainstream, and even widely accepted values within the architectural profession.
