Architecture, on the road of travel

Author: Zhu Peiting
Publisher: Woodslane Culture
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Travel is the continuous movement between a series of changing scenarios. During the process of moving, sometimes it takes a long time. If nothing interesting happens along the way, when looking back in the future, only a blank space remains, which is truly a pity. Airports, train stations, gas stations, skywalks, waiting shelters, elevators—these public spaces that we often pass through during our journeys can actually present unexpected visual effects under the clever arrangement of designers. Zhu Peiting, a fifth-grade architect who frequently travels abroad, has, during his many long-distance travels, not only formally observed the star architecture of various countries but also spontaneously visited transportation hubs in different places, as well as pavilions, escalators, lighting equipment, coin-operated machines, road signs, and other street furniture. Having received a complete architectural education in Taiwan, he has frequently traveled abroad to learn from experience after graduation because contemporary Western new architecture often features unexpected and astonishing shapes. Every time he encounters unconventional architecture that defies conventional norms, it is as if he is struck on the head, instantly awakening him from his long-standing design blind spots.
Following the author's footsteps, we travel nonstop across half the globe, from Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, all the way to Berlin, Munich, and Stuttgart in Germany; Brussels, Antwerp, and Bruges in Belgium; Paris, Lille, and Strasbourg in France; Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht in the Netherlands; as well as Luxembourg and Barcelona in Spain, visiting nearly thirty small and large, bizarre modern buildings and public furniture. Among them, the most eye-catching are the new Dutch architecture led by the young architect Rem Koolhaas (). These new buildings are renowned for their whimsical, rebellious, and tangled lightweight forms, as well as their bold attempts to defy gravity. Whether they are schools, libraries, museums, or residential buildings, their extreme and abrupt changes in form, as well as their highly revolutionary spatial arrangements, all prove that there are no absolute and eternal laws in the field of design.
The Netherlands, a country located on the edge of Western Europe with geographical conditions similar to Taiwan, has now become a dazzling new star in the global architecture world, like a fiery young man who indulges in pleasure.