曙昧之地 乍離之影—量度懸置地景之敘事景深

Abstract

In the process of urban development, architecture design has always been regarded as a tool to solve problems of landscapes in temporal suspension and functional dilapidation. Landscapes in temporal suspension generally implicates the disarticulated spatial status between decline and renewal, an ambiguous phase of urban planning “twilight zone” between the darkest hours and the break of dawn. In the landscapes in temporal suspension thus considered as spatial problems, the real evolution of everyday life of the surviving residents is often relegated to untold spatial stories under the suppression of the historical grand narrative and the functional deliberation pursuing higher land-use value. The self-righteous intervention of functional planning and design somehow restrains our imagination and perusal to urban spaces. The existence of landscapes in temporal suspension obscures our recognition of the urban space boundary. This thesis, by way of narrative design approach, intends to delineate not only the chronotope in space but also the subtle details behind the scenes of local residents’ real life to deepen the narrative dimensions of landscapes. Adopting the point of view of a bystander to peruse the landscape as a text, I thereby re-write the landscape narrative and construct an open text for further interpretations and alternative reading of the stigmatized landscape. The first phase of the design thesis is a landscape book incorporating image narrative, real local stories, interviews, field works, and fictional plot to construct a narrative structure which articulates space, time, and events. And the interplay between fiction and document is an attempt to demystify the unchallenged historical account so as to allow the permeation of “petite narrative” of everyday life. The book describes and interprets the Naval Fuel Factory of Hsinchu as a landscape of indeterminacy which has been pending for years after the war, and through the acts of squatting and self-help construction, evolved into a sprawling and interweaving texture of lived experiences. By establishing a “thick description” of characters and events in this landscape story, the first phase design foretells the following design intervention of the latter stages. The latter phases of the design expose the unendurable reality of confronting strong public intervention of enforced eviction after living in suspension for years, the local folks swing between eventual departure and conscious resistance while the narrative design approach manifests the dilemma of the spatial limbo. The closing stage of the narrative design is akin to a simulation of social movement which intends to summon collective memories and elicit consciousness and autonomous will without enforcing the designer’s own value and judgment. Narrative design is different from general spatial design which focus on forms, types, and users; and it touches on a dependant relationship and a deeper level of memory and emotion of the local. The habitual thinking of treating architecture as a toll of problem solving also hinders our ability to question and to recognize the essence of problems. As a consequence, spatial design may end up with more spatial and social problems. Narrative design does not appeal for a more beautiful or correct design outcome, instead, it tries to explore an alternative mode of design on the basis of on-site close reading, thick description, and re-writing to re-establish a landscape relationship of experiences and identity, even in the most estranged condition of landscapes in suspension.