
Hung-Nan Chu Principal Architect, Chin+Lin+Chu Architects & Associates
Albert Ho Principal Architect, Ho + Hou Studio Architects
Jeanne Lee Associate Dean & Architecture Dept. Head , School of Design, Ming Chuan University
Jay Chiu Principal Architect, Jay Chiu Arcitect & Associates
Grace Cheung Co-Founder, XRANGE
Kyle Yang Co-Principal Architect, ARCHITANGENT aRCHITECTURE+dESIGN
Ray Chu Associate Professor, Dept. of Architecture, Ming Chuan University
Jr-Gang Chi Curator of Winsing Book Exhibition
Winsing Art Place (No. 6, Lane 10, Lane 180, Section 6, Section 6, Minquan East Road, Neihu District, Taipei City)
$400 (The price includes liquor and refreshments.)
Over 365 days, 1,340 books arrived at Winsing Art Place’s bookstore from around the world.
Winsing Art Place Book Selections 2019-2020 marks the second exhibition of the series since the bookstore launched its collection initiative. It features nearly 300 carefully curated titles from a year of new acquisitions, including architects’monographs that sell out immediately upon publication, first editions of seminal architectural treatises, and firsthand accounts of architecture and art that have reshaped eras. Spanning the 1950s to the present, the exhibition invites visitors to trace the conceptual origins of captivating contemporary architectural spaces. This exhibition will foster creative reading through salon discussions and reconnect design thinking with imaginative possibilities through speakers’ book-centered dialogues. The opening salon will feature eight speakers from the architecture and art worlds, each bringing a selected book to share the stories and visions it evokes.
Eight architecturalists are invited to recommend one book during the opening, they are Hung-Nan Chu, Albert Ho, Jeanne Lee, Jay Chiu, Grace Cheung, Kyle Yang, Ray Chu, and Curator Jr-Gang Chi. Books they recommend are those crucial to their professional training and practice. As they are pursuing and passing on their idealism through their creation, these publications facilitate their transformations and achievements.
Jay Chiu and Albert Ho express their expectations for the development of modern architecture by introducing the collection of essays of Mies van der Rohe(1886-1969) and Fernand Pouillon’s(1912-1986) discourse on the housing planning in Paris respectively. These selected books also draw out the personal stories behind the speakers, such as Hong-Nan Chu's insights and revelations from the discussions on Transparency with the author Robert Slutzky in his class at the University of Pennsylvania. Grace Cheung spoke about receiving a Braille book unexpectedly during her study in New York, which led her to discuss the upcoming publication of paper sculptures. This experience broadened her imagination towards a more minimalist and three-dimensional approach to architectural publications.
For these professionals, books are time capsules that evoke past memories, meanwhile, continuously guide them to expand their imagination between the origins of their creations and their aspirations for the future. The interconnected knowledge system within physical books forms an invisible network, deepening and serving as a crucial indicator of architectural influence. As the speakers share the role of these books, the people and events they encountered throughout their careers are linked, as well as the spatial awareness they planted in the audience. The "unknown" feeling when picking up a book waiting to be read remains a beautiful experience that continues to inspire us and the next generation of architectural readers.