Symbiosis Habitat

Re-Invent Process of Nature into Urban Environment
through a Zoo-Function Metabolism

AWRADS
^{2018 Archiprix –the best thesis design / nominated
2017 The National Golden Award for Architecture / the Best Newcomer Architect
2017 TEAM20-Architecture and urban planning competition / Sustainable Environment Special Award
2017 TEAM20-Architecture and urban planning competition / 1st place
2017 IEAGD-Taiwan 20 (6x2) / Top 20 Finalist
2017 Thesis Design Award / 1st place}

^{Date | 2017.02 - 2017.05

Instructor | Yu-Lin Chen

Site | Hsinchu city, Taiwan

#Individual Project

#Symbiosis #Urban Habitat #Zoological #Landscape #Animal Human #Ruinize}

A zoo is not a window through which nature reveals its entirety, but a prism which refracts whatever culture we project. But this land should exuberate its indignant sense of being. People possess and then are possessed by nature—from constructing a caging powerhouse to seeking a co-existing family. Manmade structures wear and tear into wilderness and into ruins, allowing more lives to be sheltered.

In the 18th century, a zoo was a creation of Empi r icism, w hich encouraged domestication and control over nature. In the 21st century, Empiricism abdicates and people view a zoo as a window to see nature. Still, a zoo is yet another un-natural existence.

How do we withdraw this out-of-date/place existence and resume a space for lives that came before human invasion to return, to multiply into a blooming symbiotic environment?

Hills and low mountain belts protect the original species that disappeared from the plain after this habitat was developed. Because of the landscape in Hsinchu and Miaoli, urban activities and protected wild animals have more interactions.

I started to study possible habitats in Hsinchu and Miaoli regions.

According to theories about habitats, cities have certain green spaces or potential “Patches” which are suitable habitats for wildlife. Should these spaces have passage ways for animals to move around, cities could create biological networks, which intertwine and overlap with the cities’ traffic networks. I have identified some potential patches in Hsinchu City, including parks, schools, open areas, rivers and water ways, which can form a network.

The design strategy involves a process of degradation, in which obsolete objects—manmade constructions and landscape—gradually decay and turn into wilderness.

There are THREE STAGES of this degradation and three boundaries that form and vanish in time.

Phase 1
Surrounding Area

Establishing eco-corridors and buffer zones to connect surrounding mountains.

After analyzing regional building varieties, corresponding structures could be added to areas of different functions and to passage ways in between.

Then, roads and streets can play not only the role of connecting people, but also of bringing co-existing beings together. (now in Taiwan suburb area, 70% wild animal dead by roadkill)

During this period, categorized species. The established buffer zones around the park would limit urban activities and form an activity borderline.

Phase 2
Zoo Transition Period

The zoo is still in use. However, large structures in the park return to wilderness gradually, while maintaining the minimal functions of the zoo with SHORT-TERM, SIMPLE STRUCTURES.

Before the original zoo ceases to be operative, the old field and track would serve as temporary cages and vegetation displays. People continue to look at the animals but change their viewing perspectives.

The old stadium is stripped to merely keep the structure and shape, so that native species could spawn according to our conservation plans. Animals are no longer exhibited for show.

If we are all individuals occupying the land and the forest, we should be equal. We hide behind buildings and bushes to peek.

Phase 3
Ecology Restoration

After non-native species die out and temporary structures rot into dirt, cages and their boundaries would be dismantled. Trees would grow into forests. Revived newborns would grow and return to their original forests, making the space a place for people to meet the original species and a place for more lives to thrive.

Existing Construction
Return to Wilderness

Each existing construction is categorized to beat different stages of the “returning to wilderness” process in terms of:

the level of human occupation,
the growth of wild species, and
the completeness of its structure.

Charater of
the Narrator

Eventually, people can wander and watch in the new stadium structure where animals move freely, going up along the rising hills. The vegetation in the garden refl ects people’s unyielding illusion of nature, which can still be altered as minds change. The entire evolving process is educational. When people understand that the wilderness that surrounds us is the true existence, the outward form will dissolve and the true nature would reveal itself.

Traffic passing underground; researcher and restoration assistant continue staying at the site, and working underground. This new building serve as a narrator, filled with different program at different stage.

Finally, it metabolize with public value and time as well.