| 3 | Week of International Integration The talking flower city - Suturing the texture between the old city and the new city |
| Prof. Ming Song Shyu | |
| from 21st to 28th November 2004 |
| we are presenting a description of the week accompanied with photos and works Title: The talking flower city - Suturing the texture between the old city and the new city Project Leader: Prof. Ming Song Shyu Ming Chuan University 5, Deming Rd., Gweishan Taoyuan, Taiwan Tel. +886 2 28 414 803 Fax +886 2 28 414 803 E-mail: shyumingsong@yahoo.com.tw Brief description of the initiative: Construction of urban spaces was also process sorts of meanings been writing and rewriting. The urban physical forms we now perceived were formed by thousands of different social actors played with resources they could handle under different historical context. Modifying the physical spaces for public goods and reasons ‘easy to be used’, especially the insertion of urban infrastructures, absolutely were the major motifs for urban development and transforming. But when functions of some specific city became complicated as capitalist mode of production and consumption emerged within some coastal cities, reasons for space modification were no more just ‘easy to be used’. Beside convenience causes, how the city itself could assemble and generate capitals and labors manifested to be the new agenda for urban development. According to that, the coastal cities along the Mediterranean all experienced apparent transformation within theirs urban forms in the following years. Accurate bookkeeping and mechanicisms for banking and financing aimed at commencing or trading with long distance beyond all help to weaken dominance from the religious or local powers. Depending on personal credit played to be significant alternatives for financing than depending on God or some feudal powers. As more and more new riches, the merchants and the manufactures, emerged within these coastal cities from trading sectors, topics of “identification” regarding credit and reliance appeared vividly to be up-to-date agendas for constructions of urban space. That all spread out what we saw the Italian coastal cities so far. Through thorough historical-social analysis about the physical urban spaces, the course proposed to take Florence as the major case studies to figure outs topics of urban revitalization and historical-social meaning reconstruction, and expected that would towards to form the up-to-date agendas for most Asian cities. The courses would be divided into three sections generally: The first section put forth efforts on the analysis of the urban forms, handled them as physical “text” corresponding to historical readings. The beginning month envisaged to locate students’ project sites and outline topics for spaces in-filling or renovation. The next month exert more strength to document data from historical readers or internet and executed rough layouts for the sites before arriving Florence. From mid October the course would come to its second section. That would be a field trip and workshop take place right at Florence for two weeks; with the first week the field surveying in depth and documentation replenishing and the second week project finishing. The third section commence after students returning to school. The section try to guide the students to interfere some urban ‘realms’----the city moving patterns or the usage of public spaces,etc., in cities of Taiwan, like Taipei or Taichung their university located, in ‘rituals’ or ‘festival’ arrangement. All the arranged rituals or festivals would be set according to their experience or memory in the field trip in Florence and all would be requested to bridge with existing cultural prohibitions and social normative. The partecipants: Department of Architecture, Ming Chuan University Taoyuan, Taiwan Prof. Ming Song Shyu E-mail: shyumingsong@yahoo.com.tw Department of Architecture, National Taipei University of Technology National Taiwan University of Science of Technology |