Ruin Academy
- Workshop 1, 4 weeks.
ANARCHIST GARDENER
SEE THE WORKSHOP PHOTOS HERE !
1. JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture (later JUT) presents us the building of the possible future Ruin Academy.
- The building is a 5-story student dormitory for the near-by Chinese Culture University.
- The 5th floor is an illegal extention, but good.
- All the building is filled with light-weight walls. There is not much natural light inside and everywhere smells like slow death. This is a pink prison with students living like chicken in small cells with god knows how many students each. Looks like a nightmare.
- Zero natural air movement but total air conditioning. Nothing is natural, nothing is real. What kind of people does this machinery produce? What is the revenge of these students? Probably to produce the next generation of pink plastic chicken.
2. The design objective is clear: clean up the building of all the walls and remove even the windows. Make this building breathe. Take it back to its original concrete structure ... modern cave-man style. Build up beds, fire, food and construct a sauna. Drill holes through the building. We present the sketches for JUT and engineers, who finally show the green light.
3. We meet the "volunteers" in the JUT's Urban Core Cafe just around the corner. Students look good and motivated. They come from different back-grounds: gardening, architecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering, agriculture, fine-arts. Many of them have already graduated. I don´t want to call them "volunteers", because it can come an easy excuse for crappy work. I call them constructor-gardeners and tell that the work must be real. I give a speach and Nikita critisizes me for being boring. Better start construction.
4. Construction starts. A professional demolition-team joins us and rips the guts off the building. Design starts and orgnizing material - mostly mahogany, top-soil and vegetation. Tool. Working security is a big question; plenty of people moving around this ruin.
5. First material arrives. The first set of hammers prove to be too light-weigh for the heavy mahogany and start breaking. The basement floor gets knocked off, I want to change the basement into a big flower bucket wiht trees. A 6 inch drill is needed in order to go through walls, ceilings and floors. We must create a wind inside the house.
6. Student dormitory gets ready and the vegetable gardern. First 2 trucks of top-soild arrives and the first bamboo and taro. Smells like victory. We drink beer after every working day. It is 38 degrees hot and I sweat like a pig.
7. Drilling the holes starts and the sauna construction. More "volunteers" keep showing up. My good students from Tamkang build the hard core of the construction-gardener force. Many things get build up in different levels and different corners. The crew is divided into small teams working like ants around the ruin. I know this will be ready. We have barbeque in the building and burn money for the gods (the Ghost Gate is open, somebody explains). Work is physical but the spirits are high. Typhoon passes Taiwan and we get heavy rains. Finally it rains inside the Academy through the 6 inch holes. Stalker enter the building. We start sleeping in the Ruin.
8. Crew-members have injuries, but they keep working. Small girls with big hammers and worn-out hands. It is very hot. Step by step the elements get ready. Bamboo already grows through the windows and basement has trees. Sauna is still in process and demands a lot of people. Jan Tyrpekl arrives from Dulan and finishes the sauna stove. We have a party.
9. Last day. Finishing touch and the guests arrive. Sauna is hot and beautifull. The "Archive" in the ground-floor hosts performances and a lady playing the cello ... brilliant; the whole ruin is resonating. People enjoy the sauna, which proves to be excellent - the stove works perfectly and the mahogany treats us good.
SEE THE WORKSHOP PHOTOS HERE !
Constructor-Gardeners:
Wu Yi-Lun 吳宜倫
Chang Ting-Ting 張婷婷
Chao Wen-Kai 趙文愷
Chang Hsiao-Wen 張曉雯
Wang Yu-Lou 王禹婁
Hsu Wen-Ching 許紋菁
She Ming-Hong 佘明鴻
Hsieh An-Pang 謝安邦
Chan Bo-Yu 詹博喻
Chang Yu-Shan 張玉姍
Li Li-Cheng 李立丞
Lin Yu-Chin 林郁芩
Lin Chien-Ju 林倩如
Teng Yu- Chang 鄧煜璋
Huang Chih-Jen 黃致仁
Kung En-Pei 宮恩培
Sun I-Jou 孫懿柔
Liu Che-Wei 劉哲瑋
She Chien-Hsun 佘建勳
Wang Hsiao-Wei 王曉瑋
Wayne Gretton 韋恩
Chen Mei-Ju 陳玫儒
Wang Chun-Ping 王淳平
Jan Tyrpekl
Chen Sho-Shi
Vicki Hsiao
Caro Hsaio
Frank Chen
Tseng Wei-Chen
Chiu Yu-Chen
AdDa
Hung Yi-Ling
Nikita Wu
Marco Casagrande
Workshop organized by Casagrande Laboratory together with JUT Foundation for Arts & Architecture.
RUIN ACADEMY
