Department of Cultural Affairs

 

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum X-site project is based in an outdoor plaza. Every year, open calls are made for proposals for temporary installations on groundbreaking issues in contemporary cross-disciplinary forms in order to build an integrated experimental dialogue between the museum, the plaza and the public. For the ninth iteration in 2022, cross-disciplinary team Blue House’s (藍屋) eponymous work stood out from the 20 proposals and was awarded first prize.
 
Entirely constructed around a blue theme, Blue House (藍屋) provides a perceptual filter transcending language, vocabulary and architectural rationality, to open a new and poetic chapter: perhaps vast, tranquil, mysterious, romantic, grief-laden; maybe the heavens, the ocean, the universe or technology. For the building itself, wooden structures were used to create small details with abstract meaning, while super-sized structures, curved floors and sloping roofs formed unique urban openings and physical experiences.
 
Blue House Study (藍屋研究) is a public activity project involving five experiential sites and a continuously running program drawn up by the Blue House team, a return to the primal ways of knowing—the five senses—to rediscover an intuitive way of collecting information about the world.
 
Blue House Study—Blue Ears: Space（ ）Sound (藍耳朵：空 ( ) 聲) sketches out the forms of Blue House (藍屋) by using sound to reflect the relationships between spatial boundaries, orientation, scale, materials and body.
 
Blue House Study - Blue Eyes: Inner Landscape (藍眼睛：心境) asks, if we don’t use our eyes to see it, what is blue and what is the house/home? What form would the Blue House (藍屋) take? In the dark, a dialogue of the senses builds a Blue House of collective imagination.
 
Blue Nose: Being There (藍鼻子：此在他方) replaces space with smell, transcending the physical boundaries of Blue House (藍屋) through the individual imagination of smell;
 
Blue Body: Spirit Song Over the Waters (藍身體：水上的精靈之歌) creates real, spontaneous interactions among people who meet at Blue House (藍屋) in the space between the tangible and intangible, where to exist is to participate.
 
In Blue Mind: Melt in Sleep, Bluetext (藍意識：融入共眠), a piece of ice in the shape of Blue House is held in the mouth as the initiator of sleep in a public space, while one feels one’s body and the architectural space combine as one. Bluetext (藍字) sees our bodies as instruments that measure space, using the self as a unit of measurement.
 
Through layers of observation and imagination scattered and connected like a constellation, Blue House (藍屋) achieves a spatial experience that allows for multiple layers of reading through pure architectural language, transcending single-purpose architectural forms in order to build a spatial universality and diversity. The two may seem to be in conflict, but they are not mutually exclusive. The goal is to explore a kind of empathy among all things in space and form, to shape more tangible and intangible interactions among people and to create an individual atmosphere that retains diversity and intimacy, allowing the unity and multiplicity of the space to coexist.
 
We look forward to the opening of this exhibition, when we can lead visitors to gradually become aware of and activate the multiplicity of spatial and physical perception.
 
2022 X-site: Blue House
Duration: May 21 to July 31
Location: Outdoor plaza, Taipei Fine Arts Museum
(No. 181, Section 3, Zhongshan North Road, Zhongshan District, Taipei City)